WWE Gimmicks That FAILED The HARDEST Every Year (1985-2025)
37. The Red Rooster (1989)
The initial premise for Terry Taylor's 'Red Rooster' character required work but wasn't actually all that bad. No, it didn't make him look accomplished when he needed Bobby Heenan to effectively tell him how to wrestle, but Taylor's 'Cock Of The Walk' stuff was fine enough. It all went south once he turned babyface and split from Bobby.
Suddenly, Terry believed himself to be an actual rooster. He styled his hair like one, dyed some of it red and would literally crow like the farmyard animal. At one point, farmers living near arenas the WWF frequented had to petition him to stop that, because they said it was messing with their sleeping patterns and they thought his noisemaking meant it was the crack of dawn.
Sorry, rubbish joke, but not as rubbish as babyface Rooster over here.
As a good guy, the Red Rooster was crap. Simply put, he was crap. Fans laughed at him, not with him, and Taylor visibly hated playing the character. It's laughable that Bruce Prichard has always maintained on his podcast that Terry's guise would've been a huge success had he just shown a bit more interest. Pull the other one, mate - this wasn't getting over no matter how hard the dude tried.
It wasn't long until the Rooster was dropping further and further down the card towards glorified enhancement talent status. By mid-1990, Taylor had gone through enough and headed back to WCW, but the unfortunate gimmick he'd been tasked with playing followed him relentlessly for the rest of his career.