Dustin Rhodes Opens Up About his Falling Out & Mending of Relationship with Dusty

Dustin Rhodes discussed mending his relationship with his father, the late Dusty Rhodes, on the latest Talk is Jericho. Dustin and his dad had an adversarial relationship for a while many years ago, which led to issues between Cody and Dustin. Dustin discussed how he patched things up and was glad he did so, along with Dusty helping him during a low point in his life when he was struggling with addiction. Highlights are below:

On resolving his issues with his dad: “It was a long, long time ago, and it should have never happened. I think Cody had a lot of resentment toward me for that, certainly. And it’s a hard thing to talk about, and to bring up. But first few years it wasn’t — we weren’t on the best of terms, but we got past that. And I think that’s important for any child, sibling, whatever you may be, you have one parent, one dad, one mother. You love them, you take care of them, you look past your differences. You get over it, and you stay as close as you can until they’re gone. But one day they’re gonna be gone. And just like everybody else, there’s no escaping death. And it’s a road, we’re all gonna be there at some point. But stay as close to your mother and your father as you possibly can, and work through differences. And we did. We worked through our differences, and we got really tight and really close. And we knew that boundary would never be crossed again, and we didn’t cross it. And I’m just glad I had many, many years of that left before he passed.”

On any advice he gave that stands out about the business: “It necessarily wasn’t about the business, it was just in life, you know? I went through a thing when him and I were having that difficult time. I went through drug and alcohol addiction that was pretty heavy. I almost died, I was just about as bad as you could possibly imagine. And I’d had enough, and I don’t know if that’s some kind of spiritual awakening or whatever, or rock bottom of a three-day bender. But it was like, I’d had enough and I called him in the middle of the night. And I said, ‘Man Pops, I want — I need to get help.’ And I’m squalling and I’m crying, drunk and f**ked up out of my mind. He gets me into the Wellness Program, and to rehab, and I went and eleven years later I’m clean and sober. But it’s like, every single day from that point I got out of rehab, he would call me. And he was like, ‘You need to keep working your program, Dus. Keep working your program, and keep steppin.’ ‘Keep steppin’ is a big thing for me that he said that really stuck out, that he said every single day to me. And I use it all the time now on social media, ‘Keep steppin.’”