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The Red Rooster: A WWE Gimmick That Completely Tanked Terry Taylor's Career

Posted: Sep 4th 2022 By: Sean S. Lealos - TheSportster.com

Terry Taylor looked to become the next "Nature Boy" Ric Flair in wrestling, but a failed WWE gimmick destroyed his entire wrestling career.

WWE has always had a poor reputation for taking stars from other promotions and making them look bad when they arrive in the company. Some might claim WWE wants these stars to prove themselves before pushing them to the height of their powers. However, sometimes the wrestlers never recover. Terry Taylor fit that role of a promising star destroyed by WWE booking.

When Terry Taylor rose in the NWA rankings, some fans touted him as the next Ric Flair, but WWE saddled him with a humiliating gimmick. He ended up with his biggest feud being against a manager, and he lost to almost everyone he stepped into the ring with. By the end of his WWE run, no one thought Taylor would be the next Flair, or even a world champion at all.

Terry Taylor Was Supposed To Be The Next Ric Flair

Terry Taylor began his wrestling career in 1979, working for Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. It almost seemed that he couldn't find his spot as he was supposed to be in the Fabulous Ones tag team but lost the role to Steve Keirn, and then was supposed to be in the Fantastics, but lost that role to Tommy Rogers. Taylor finally got his first title when he moved on to the junior heavyweight division and won the NWA Jr. Heavyweight Championship. However, Taylor saw his greatest, and eventually, only genuine success as part of Bill Watts' Mid-South Wrestling, which later became the UWF.

Taylor went into Mid-South as a top contender from the start. He feuded early on with the Russian team of Nikolai Volkoff and Krusher Khruschev, and it was Khruschev that Taylor beat for his first of four Mid-South TV Championships. Taylor, who began coming to the ring in colorful robes, picked up comparisons to NWA World Champion, "Nature Boy" Ric Flair. He even feuded with "Nature Boy" Buddy Landell during this time. He then added the North American Championship to his collection, which at the time was the biggest title in Mid-South Wrestling, and it made Taylor the region's top contender to Flair's world title. When Crockett Promotions bought the UWF, Taylor was the TV Champion, but lost the title in a unification match with NWA TV Champion Nikita Koloff before leaving the promotion.

Terry Taylor Became The Red Rooster In WWE

By the time Terry Taylor left WCW, shortly after it purchased the UWF, he was a rising star and a potential future world champion. He made a quick stop in World Class Championship Wrestling, where he won a pair of titles there while feuding with Chris Adams, Kevin Von Erich, and others. However, in 1988, Taylor moved to WWE, where possible stardom waited. Taylor started off as a babyface, but he turned heel one month later and took on Bobby "The Brain" Heenan as his manager. That was the end of all credibility Taylor built up over his career to that point.

As soon as Taylor hired Heenan as his manager, something strange happened. Heenan was a manager of monsters in WWE during that era, with names like Big John Studd and King Kong Bundy in his stable. When Heenan talked to Brother Love about his new wrestler, he insulted Taylor constantly, saying he was small, not muscular, and had limited wrestling skills. Despite fans claiming Taylor could be the next Ric Flair, Heenan said he was an average wrestler. However, Heenan said he could make even someone as limited as Terry Taylor a star and renamed him the Red Rooster.

That one promo on The Brother Love Show destroyed Terry Taylor in WWE fans' eyes. If they never saw his work in Mid-South, and many didn't, they assumed Heenan was telling the truth. It then went off the tracks. The man who held 22 titles before coming to WWE and wrestled Flair for the NWA World Championship in the past was now losing to everyone he faced in WWE. The payoff was clear here and soon Taylor got tired of Heenan mocking him and beat The Brain in 30 seconds at WrestleMania V. The fans didn't care. Instead of capitalizing on the feud with Heenan, WWE kept him as the Red Rooster. He added a red Rooster Mohawk and squawked around the ring, acting like a rooster, an embarrassment to everything he accomplished in his career. He left WWE after less than two years, and his career never recovered.

Bruce Prichard said on the Jim Cornette Experience that the Red Rooster gimmick wasn't a rib, while also defending putting Dusty Rhodes in yellow polka dots. Prichard said that Taylor was a "cocky" and "arrogant" person who liked to "crow about himself." "That's how Vince saw him," Prichard explained. "Vince saw him as a very cocky, arrogant, kind of thinking he was the cock of the walk, and saw him as a banty rooster (a smaller, aggressive rooster)." Prichard said Vince wanted Taylor to be the cocky rooster and not just act like a rooster, ultimately blaming Taylor for the failed gimmick. Prichard then compared him to Matt Bourne, who made Doink the Clown a superstar, but Taylor never embraced the gimmick, and he failed. "Had Taylor just been himself, and been the cocky, arrogant guy that everybody else saw him as, he could have made it work."

Terry Taylor Went To WCW Before Coming Back To Work Behind The Scenes In WWE

Terry Taylor tried to resuscitate his career after leaving WWE, but he couldn't get any steam behind him even when he returned to WCW. Taylor feuded with Arn Anderson when he returned, but couldn't overcome the Horsemen member, and then he ended up as part of the York Foundation as Terrence Taylor, along with Richard Morton and Thomas Rich. While they won the six-man titles, that was the extent of his success there. After this, he bounced around for a few years and then moved on behind the scenes in WCW, TNA Wrestling, and finally WWE.

However, Terry Taylor doesn't feel it was that bad of a deal. In a shoot interview, Taylor talked about when he quit WCW after he learned they were taking the title off Bill Goldberg. He immediately called Vince McMahon and asked for a job, which he said Vince immediately gave him. When asked about the Red Rooster gimmick, Taylor laughed about it. "Yeah, and people still remember that," Taylor said. "Nobody remembers Terry Taylor, so who's right and who's wrong?"