10 Biggest Heat Magnets In WWE History
8. Terry Taylor
No less an expert on dodgy reputations than John Bradshaw Layfield has cited Paul ‘Terry’ Taylor as a man with more heat backstage than any other man in history.
That’s certainly debatable, but it’s reported from multiple sources that when he joined the WWF in 1988 he was handed the cringeworthy Red Rooster gimmick as a rib because of his vast unpopularity backstage, with the office insisting on Taylor wearing red and bobbing his head like a chicken whenever he appeared in public.
Taylor is infamous for two things, both of which have accrued him volcanic levels of heat over the years wherever he’s worked - WCW, the WWF, TNA and now back in WWE again. He’s considered to be wrestling's worst ‘stooge’ - a guy who’ll rat the boys out to management any chance he gets.
But back in the day, his fellow wrestlers in the WWF despised him so much that they cut up his clothes. Taylor’s response was to tell management, because of course it was.
His venal habit of acting as a locker room informant for the office is how Taylor has always managed to retain a job in professional wrestling before and after retiring from in-ring action, despite his obnoxiousness. He's been an agent, a booker, a trainer, an announcer and just about everything else.
The other thing? Well, apparently he’s an inveterate racist. He’s named - and quoted - in the WCW and TNA litigation on the thorny subject of racial discrimination in wrestling and, well, there are a lot of n-words being thrown around in those depositions and documents.
Red Rooster? Ruddy !*$%, more like.