Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
Growing up a pro wrestling fan, one of the most magnetic teams/factions I ever saw were the Fabulous Freebirds. The boys from ‘Badstreet USA’were like rock stars to me. Michael Hayes was the groups voice, Buddy Roberts was the wrestler and Terry Gordy was the group’s muscle. Together, they were so big, bad and dominant….they raised hell everywhere they went. Each member had their strengths and weaknesses individually, but together…there were very few better.
Anybody else who were fans of the Freebirds knew that they lived their gimmick. They wrestled hard and partied even harder outside of the ring. That lifestyle would eventually catch up to the trio years later. No more so than Terry ‘Bam Bam’ Gordy who would overdose on drugs while on a plane in 1993. Gordy slipped into a coma and when he woke up…he had suffered irreparable brain damage. Eventually, Gordy returned to the ring, but many said that he was not the same person as before.
The usually lovable, joking Terry Gordy was replaced with someone who was darker, more quiet and subdued. He had become a shell of his former self. Because Gordy was changed both inside and outside of the ring….jobs in the business became less and less. Terry had truly fallen on hard times. It wasn’t until his Freebird brother Michael Hayes (Who was now employed by the WWF as Dok Hendrix) came to his aid.
Hayes reached out to Vince McMahon and asked if he could give Gordy a job within the company. According to both Jim Ross and Bruce Prichard, it was evident that this was not the same Gordy everyone was used to. He was given the gimmick of a masked executioner straight out of medieval times. Prichard claims the reason he was given a mask, was because Vince McMahon didn’t want fans to identify Gordy the way he was in his new condition. In essence, McMahon wanted to protect, Gordy’s reputation.
Whether you believe Prichard or not, Jim Ross did say that Gordy simply wasn’t the wrestler or the person he once was. The Executioner gimmick was Gordy’s last opportunity on a national/worldwide level. While the gimmick seemed silly, it was more of a favor to Michael Hayes and to help Gordy out than anything else. The Executioner made his debut at In Your House: Buried Alive in October of 1996. He interfered on behalf of Mankind in the Buried Alive match against the Undertaker.
Gordy was paired with both Mankind and manager Paul Bearer. Jim Ross said the reasoning was to help hide Gordy’s weaknesses with promos and in ring ability due to the brain damage he had previously suffered. Ross also said that Gordy was good friends with both Mick Foley and Paul Bearer outside of wrestling and they had hoped that being with friends would help bring Gordy out of the fog and darkness he was in.
The Executioner Terry Gordy then had his last real big match on pay per view two months later when he face the Undertaker one on one at In Your House: It’s Time. The Executioner lost the match and did a job to Goldust on WWF television. Paul Bearer would turn on Gordy by hitting him with the urn and thus Gordy’s WWF career was over. As much as people (including myself) hated The Executioner gimmick at the time….the reality was that it did help a down and out Terry Gordy when he needed it the most.
After his brief WWF stint, Gordy then wrestled sporadically on the independent scene until ultimately retiring from the business in 1998. He would pass away in 2001 at the young age of 40 years old.