How Dusty Rhodes made a sweet success out of being partnered with Sapphire
To some it felt like another rib from Vince - but it really wasn't. And why Dusty had the last laugh
Dusty Rhodes took everything that Vince McMahon threw at him after he rejoined the WWF in 1989 and made it magical: polka dots, the Common Man promos - and even Sweet Sapphire.
#OnThisDayInWWE 35 years ago yesterday, The American Dream unveiled his shock new manager - the female superfan who we had recently seen in the front row at WWF events, cheering him on.
In his autobiography, Dusty revealed how it was Pat Patterson who came up with both the concepts of the “damn polka dots” and the ‘common woman’ - and convinced The Dream on both ideas:
Pat, who I love dearly, and his life partner, Louie who has since passed away, rest his soul, were talking to me about [the polka dots] and Pat brought up the marketing aspect of it.
Well, after listening to him, we had to fucking do it, because it just made sense.
So then he says, ‘Let's put a common woman with the common man’, and the idea was to have a hooker off the street; tall and skinny in a red dress who kind of looked like a female version of Slick, who was one of the WWF managers back then.
Dusty didn’t know Juanita Wright, who was a big wrestling fan and had started doing some in-ring work in her 40s.
But he said as soon as he clapped eyes on her, he knew it would be a big success:
Terry Garvin, who was one of the road agents for Vince for many years, knew Juanita as somebody who drove the wrestlers back and forth between the airport and the building in St Louis.
She was a big fan who loved the business and would do anything she could for the boys.
I believe she was 50-something years old back then, and Vince agreed to bring her in and—this is the good side of Vince where he has a heart—it made her more money than she ever made in her whole fucking life.
When she came in and I saw her, I said, "Oh my God!" because I just knew it would click.
In this shoot interview from 1999, Dusty confirmed that “Juanita was not my choice… but it worked”:
It had only been six months since Dusty made the shocking move back to the WWF (he had made regular appearances for Vince Sr, before he sold the company to his son) after he was fired by WCW and his Florida Championship Wrestling promotion was struggling financially.
Dave Meltzer had revealed in the Wrestling Observer in May 1989 that “there was a ton of heat” about the Dream joining - so much so that the bosses “sent out a memo to wrestlers to treat Dusty with respect and for there to be no problems."
Dusty admitted that he felt he was being ridiculed by Vince - and this was yet another test of how much humble pie he could eat.
In a way I kind of felt it was Vince saying that this guy - me - is getting old, so let's make him this goofy, mediocre character.
But when I was riding in the car one time with Pat and an African-American clerk who said to me completely out of leftfield, "You are the only one who can pull it off for us black guys," talking about Juanita and me, who would now have the character name Sapphire, I knew I got one step up on them.
As soon as he said that I just knew, because even in this ridiculous fucking getup I was still connecting with the people and I thought it would be fun to turn that around on them.
Fans loved the pairing - though as John Cena admitted on the WWE documentary about Dusty, The American Dream: The Dusty Rhodes Story: “The chemistry was great - but this wasn’t the Dusty I grew up on.”
In an interview in 2004, Sensational Sherri revealed “how much Sapphire loved Dusty” - and trained her to be able to compete in mixed tag matches with Macho King Randy Savage, culminating in a bout at WrestleMania 6:
Sapphire’s run with Dusty came to an abrupt halt around nine months later, when she abandoned their scheduled tag match against Savage and Sherri at SummerSlam, taking the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase’s megabucks instead.
In the same shoot interview, Sherri claimed that Sapphire cried when she was told that the office was splitting her and Dusty up and lost her love for the business and soon left the WWF.
But Vince’s right hand man at the time, Bruce Prichard, said that in fact Sapphire “was tired, she was tired of being on the road all of the time… She was up there in years and she just didn’t want to, or couldn’t do, it anymore”:
For Dusty, he focused on the positives of his partnership with Sapphire - and the huge amount of money they both made in their short time in the WWF:
So it backfired on [Vince] when I got over, but he took full credit and it ended up with me being there a year and a half making one of my biggest years financially without the headache and stress of being the boss.
Sapphire had a short run with Jerry Lawler’s USWA in 1993, teaming with the future Jaqueline, but largely kept away from the limelight - though was reportedly happy to sign autographs and tell kids stories about her time in the WWF.
Sadly, Juanita died aged just 61 of a heart attack at her home in 1996. As far as I know, there was no tribute or mention of her passing on WWF TV at the time.
But she is as fondly remembered as Dusty Rhodes, his polka dots and Common Man theme was in the WWF.
It wasn't a tag match at SummerSlam, it was Sapphire vs Sherri and then Dusty vs Savage in singles