10 Wrestlers Who Had No Business Being In The Ring

10. The Executioner

The Executioner was bone-chilling, but not remotely in the way the WWF intended.

He was meant to be an instrument of destruction hired by Paul Bearer to further torment the Undertaker. That was his wildly generic and short-lived onscreen character; in reality, the former Terry Gordy was brought into the WWF in late 1996 as, per Jim Ross speaking on Grilling JR in 2019, a favour to Michael Hayes, alongside whom Terry Gordy shot to super-stardom as part of the Fabulous Freebirds. "A lot of guys were pulling for Terry Gordy, for God’s sake, including me" JR elaborated.

He expressed that Gordy was hired, a few years after suffering irreparable brain damage, as a pity hire. They wanted to give the man a payday without ever actually thinking that the formidable, explosive brawler of yore would return as his true self. In JR's words, he was darker. He wasn't laughing and joking. He - and this is terrifying, considering he was ultimately hired to entrust the physical safety of his opponents - had to be guided to where the airport baggage claim was. He was profoundly brain damaged, and it in retrospect was beyond fortuitous that he was so mechanically sound in his prime. The muscle memory allowed him to get through it all. He would never be cleared for action under the rigorous standards of 2022.

Vacant behind the eyes, he was a scary presence - not for anything he did, in '96, but for what might have happened had it dragged on any longer than it somehow did.