“You look at driving down the road, night after night, tryin’ to make a town, getting $25 – that’s hard times. It’s our duty to make it good times for the fans that pay their money to see us perform each and every night.”

My mom was from Germantown and was of German descent. She was a real force behind me and my dream. She was always my biggest fan, even when I was wrestling at an early age.

I admit, I don’t look like the athlete of the day’s supposed to look. My belly’s just a little big, my heinie’s just a little big, but, brother, I am bad, and they know I’m bad.

Terry Funk. Any time I got to wrestle with him, it was cool. Superstar Billy Graham was another one.

Believability and respect are two of the main ingredients in professional wrestling that are sorely missing today.

For as long as I can remember, my nickname was Dusty. I remember my dad naming me that because of the streets where we lived.

I’ve wined and dined with kings and queens, and I’ve slept in the alley eating pork and beans.

They say behind every successful man is a powerful woman. And there is no more powerful performer I would rather be in the ring with for a conversation than Stephanie McMahon.

I can’t explain it, but from the first day I stepped into a wrestling ring, I knew that one day I was going to be a big superstar. I knew that one day I would be the NWA World Heavyweight Champion like my hero, Lou Thesz.

At the time when I started, coming out of football, I always used a forearm or an elbow. When it became Bionic is when I said it was Bionic. I went to some secret doctor in Istanbul who put some Bionic stuff in there.

The business is my life, the ring my salvation, the locker room and roads my nourishment.

There’s nothing like being a Texan, and I’m proud to be one.

I wasn’t always Rhodes, but I was always Dusty. I was never called Virgil – not by my family, not by my friends. Even my teachers at school didn’t call me Virgil.

You pay your dues and work your way up through the system, whatever system there is – something guys in the business today don’t really understand, don’t have a clue.

Hard times are when a man has worked at a job for 30 years – 30 years – and they give him a watch, kick him in the butt, and say, ‘Hey, a computer took your place, daddy.’ That’s hard times!

If I could not be in this free and wonderful country – I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, mind you – Mexico is where I would live. I love Mexico, and I love the Mexican people.

The combination of old and new is what every wrestling organization should be like. That way, you have a chance to match up the legends in dream main events.

It’s mainly the high-end luxury market now that drives much of the fishing in the sea. It’s not feeding the starving millions. It’s feeding a luxury market.

I do quite like that Andrew Lloyd Webber song from ‘Cats.’ What’s it called? ‘Memory?’ Sends shivers up your spine.

If I didn’t swim my best, I’d think about it at school, at dinner, with my friends. It would drive me crazy.

I’d probably want to teach at university, because children would drive me insane. I suspect it would be English literature, Shakespeare and so forth. I’ve always been deeply, deeply in love with that kind of thing.

Age doesn’t affect driving – how do you like that?

My drive is other people’s success.

The United States is the only country where a driver can have a successful career – either in stock cars or IndyCar – and he won’t need a passport.

Same with golf: pick up a club. But not many can go out and get in a race car and experience a drive at over 200 miles an hour.