Dustin Rhodes' Seven Gimmick May Be WCW's Most Embarrassing Ever

Nobody can doubt Dustin Rhodes commitment to his character, the man managed to keep the Goldust character relatively fresh for close to 2 decades. Though when he joined WCW back in 1999, even he couldn’t make this character work.

The character was Seven.

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Seven's Vignettes In WCW

For weeks there were vignettes on Nitro. The vignettes were undoubtedly creepy, but probably not in the right way, with some definite child molester vibes going on. In the vignettes, it would open on a little boy sleeping in his bedroom. Then a rough voice would whisper, “Awake My Son. What’s under your bed?” Dustin Rhodes would then appear in the child’s bedroom window, dressed in black, his face painted completely white.

This was Seven.

Seven would beckon the child towards him, putting his hand on the bedroom window. “Come to me and live forever. Join me in complete bliss. Now sleep my child.” As the child’s eyes went completely black…

These would go on for a few weeks. From the vignettes, it seemed like the character was some kind of supernatural, Undertaker-style gimmick that would scare children. Let’s be kind and say the pedophile vibes were unintentional. Even WCW wouldn’t go there, right?

These creepy vignettes would lead up to Seven’s big Nitro debut on November 8, 1999.

Seven's WCW Debut

On Nitro, the same hoarse whisper from the vignettes rang out through the arena, “Fear Me!” As the lights cut out, creepy music rang out through the arena and Seven appeared on the stage with fire and smoke behind him. He would then float (yes, float) down the ramp and levitate into the ring.

You could hear fans laughing at ringside…

When the lights finally came back on Seven had a microphone and said, “Cut the music and take a look at the crap I am wearing.” Not quite the same creepy horse whisper we had just been reminded he had at the start of his entrance.

Then Dustin Rhodes dropped the Seven character completely and cut a shoot promo, or at least worked shoot promo. He would go on to incredulously ask if he left the WWE for gimmicks like this. Rhodes said the Goldust gimmick sucked and Goldust almost ruined his wrestling career. (Dustin, and the Goldust character, would return to WWF less than 2 years later… Awkward.)

Rhodes said when he joined WCW he wanted to be just Dustin Rhodes, no gimmicks, but the powers that be said that Dustin was boring. He would then bury the Seven character by nonchalantly saying, “My new name is Seven by the way. They’ve dressed me up as Uncle Fester to play trick or treat all year long.” He would then bury WCW for firing his father Dusty Rhodes and said he plans to make WCW a miserable hell.

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WCW was pretty much a miserable hell at this time, but we're not sure how much that had to do with Dustin Rhodes though.

He would then close the promo with, “You will never forget the name… Dustin Rhodes.” Goldust’s catchphrase…Didn’t he just say he hated Goldust?

The whole thing mercifully lasted less than 5 minutes, and that was the end of Seven.

So… Why? What the hell was all of this? WCW made music for Seven, cinematic vignettes, Dustin did voiceovers, he would have spent hours in make-up, all for nothing? Apparently, at the time, Dustin was willing to do the Seven gimmick and according to Vince Russo, Dusty Rhodes even came up with the character himself. On his podcast, Russo explained why he had to end Seven before it even started.

“When I went to WCW, I adopted the Seven character, that was a creation of Dusty Rhodes. He came up with Seven. When it came to Dusty and Dustin, I respected what they were doing before I got there, so I'm going to go along with Seven. They cut vignettes and if you remember, there were children involved in these vignettes. I remember a window and all that stuff. Standards and practices pulled it. Dustin to this day, thinks I put the kibosh on it. So now, we're in no man's land. The only thing I could do that that point was... Dustin went out there as the character and he cut a shoot promo.”

Is Russo telling the truth?

Would the character even have worked if it had been allowed to play out?

Either way, Seven may be the most embarrassing gimmick in WCW history.