Dustin Runnels had a lot to live up to, his father Dusty Rhodes was a wrestling legend, yeah he wore stupid yellow pokadot tights and a stupid looking headband but never the less he was a legend. Goldust had to compete with this all his career and Vince gave him the chance to get away from his past and his fathers shadow, and lo and behold - Goldust was born. A homosexual man, a movie starlet, whatever he described himself as, and there were many things, his gimmick was new and interesting.

We first came across Goldust in a series of vignettes filmed in various places such as movie theatres, expressing himself in an unusual and camp fashion, no need to say just HOW scary these were. We live in a homophobic society, not one I or OWW even pretend to condone but we do, Goldust was unique in style, unique in appearance and unique in the ring.

The gimmick could have caused a lot of heat, not in the usual heel way either, but in a twisted way, Runnels himself loved it. He had a new and unique gimmick, one we had seen before in Adrian Adonis, but it was very dissimilar to the one Adonis played. Adonis played a camp gay man and Goldust purveyed a dangerous unusual drag queen with sinister intentions where as Adonis was out for fun but Goldust seemed to have another agenda.
When Goldust finally debuted on Raw his wrestling skills were obvious for all to see, it was a new and unique style, and Runnels made the gimmick work. When watching Goldust you get the feeling that if played by anyone else the gimmick wouldn't have worked and that is testament to the way Runnels was.

Unfortunately Vince lost it, he lost the gimmick, he and his writing staff decided to change him, make him insane and he became The Artist Formerly Known as Goldust, needless to say it was not good. Runnels again saw a gimmick change, a born again Christian. When he and his manager, and real life spouse Terri, underwent divorce proceedings the WWF used this in the storylines and put Terri in a storyline with Val Venis as Lovers, we saw the return of Goldust to a huge ovation.