WWE Hall Of Famer Jim Ross recently updated his official blog with his thoughts on the passing of “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes. Below is an excerpt from the blog.

“Thursday wasn’t a good day. We lost a pop culture icon, a pro wrestling innovator and I lost a great friend. The Dream is dead.

As I was sitting in an office in Asheville, NC at Eblen Charities being interviewed by WWE for the upcoming Owen Hart DVD and discussing what May 23, 1999 meant to me my cell phone buzzed incessantly. It wouldn’t stop and interrupted our recording.

I needed to to take a break and collect my thoughts on a question that I knew was coming but that I still dreaded answering. I excused myself to the men’s room and eventually got around to checking my messages and to my horror I found out that my friend of over 30 years Dusty Rhodes had died at age 69 in Orlando, Florida.

The Dream and I talked about a week ago and he tried to convince me that he was “just fine.” I knew something was wrong when I saw him in San Jose at WrestleMania where I again questioned him about his health while sitting behind him at the WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Again, he declared himself fit and we talked of his significant weight loss. Then down in Orlando at a NXT taping the night before Mick Foley taped his comedy special for the WWE Network Dusty and I talked and he insisted that he was fine.

He was like John Wayne in his final movie ‘The Shootist’ who wanted no empathy from anyone and who wanted to go out on his own terms his own way.”

Check out the complete blog at JRsBarBQ.com.

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