Son Of A Son Of A Plumber

He wasn't good enough. Came up in eras that were dominated by Flair, Hogan, Hart, Michaels, Sting, Luger, Savage, Austin and Rock and there were no "secondary" world titles. He also never had the body that both companies were looking for at the time. Spent pretty much the whole two decades before AEW as a comedy character or suffering from addiction.

Totally agree. Early 90s Dustin Rhodes as ”The Natural” in WCW was by far his best in ring work, he was a favorite of mine back then and still is to this day for his WCW run 

I just read yesterday something I had never come across before. In 1993, when Hogan was coming back, Vince asked his guys to find fresh opponents for Hogan. Bruce Prichard and others pitched Dustin Rhodes, who had a cup of coffee with the WWF 2 years earlier when Dusty was there. Dusty had always begged Vince for a match with Hogan during that run, and Vince always said no. The pitch was for Dustin to come in as a heel and get those matches. Vince didn't like it, but they talked him into it. Prichard used the Dusty voice to pitch it and Vince eventually laughed and said that if they could convince Hogan, they would do it. Pricahrd was supposed to pitch it and worked on his presentation and was convinved that if he talked Vince into it, he could talk Hogan into it. But when the time came, Hogan only wanted to talk to Vince, and Vince wound up pitching it, probably half-heatedly. Hogan said, "You mean that tall, skinny kid I just saw job on WCW Saturday Night? Doesn't work for me, brother." And that was the end of that.

That's not accurate at all.  His tag team work with Barry Windham in WCW was phenomenal, especially that 1992-1993 period when you had the Hollywood Blondes, Miracle-Violence Connection, Steiner Bros., etc.  He then was in the U.S./TV title picture tearing it up with Rick Rude, Steve Austin, Ricky Steamboat, William Regal, and others., putting on banger after banger every night.  The Goldust character was not everyone's cup of tea, but it was enormously over for a period and certainly was not comedy relief.  When he came back to WWE teaming with Cody, he turned back the clock and had another incredible run beyond all expectations, carrying Cody to the best work of his career up to that point.  He had several really strong runs.  

I really liked Dustin for most of his career.
Never struck me as world champion material. That's all.

Kane was champion for one day. And Dustin wasn't in WCW when DDP was champion. We could easily fantasy book Dustin as the NWA champion in 1998, but that doesn't seem to be what the original question was about.