Taylor was originally selected to be part of The Fabulous Ones tag team with Stan Lane, but that role went to Florida wrestler, Steve Keirn.

On June 7, 1981, Taylor won the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship from Les Thornton at the Roanoke Civic Center, dropping it back to him in the return match thirteen days later.

[4] On March 13 of that year, he defeated Ted DiBiase for the North American Heavyweight Championship, the Mid South region's top title at the time.

After Jim Crockett Promotions took over the UWF later that year, Taylor (then the UWF Television Champion) initiated a dispute with Nikita Koloff over the NWA World Television Championship by stealing Koloff's belt, which led to a unification match of the two titles at Starrcade 1987, which Taylor would lose before abruptly leaving the promotion.

Taylor won the Texas Heavyweight Championship from Matt Borne and defended it against Adams, Kevin Von Erich, and others.

Three days later he made his televised debut as babyface "Scary Terry" Taylor, he teamed with Sam Houston against The Conquistadors on the August 1, 1988 airing of Prime Time Wrestling.

[9] On the January 7, 1989 episode of Saturday Night's Main Event XIX, the Rooster lost a match to Tito Santana due to being distracted by an argument with Heenan.

[16] In 1990, Taylor returned to Jim Crockett Promotions, now renamed World Championship Wrestling (WCW) following a sale to Turner Broadcasting System.

[17] He later re-debuted as "Terry Taylor" and unsuccessfully challenged Arn Anderson for the WCW World Television Championship on several occasions, with most of the matches ending in time-limit draws.

[18] He feuded with Tom Zenk, Dustin Rhodes and Bobby Eaton, and won the WCW World Six-Man Tag Team Championships with Richard Morton and Thomas Rich.

The exception was at The Great American Bash, when he teamed with “Stunning” Steve Austin in a scaffold match, but lost when they were defeated by P. N. News and Bobby Eaton.

For a time in late 1991-early 1992, Taylor teased a face turn by arguing with manager Alexandra York and the rest of the group.

[21] He worked house shows in the spring against Typhoon, then became a broadcaster and backstage interviewer, wrestling his last on screen match on the May 22, 1993 edition of WWF Mania against Tatanka.

[17] Wrestling as a face, Taylor began a program with "Diamond" Dallas Page and defeated him at SuperBrawl IV on February 20.

As in the WWF, Taylor began commentary work and teamed with Tony Schiavone on play-by-play for WCW Power Hour.

After wrestling The Honky Tonk Man and Tex Slazenger during the spring and summer, he ended his run with three straight victories over Jean Paul Levesque on an August house show tour of Texas.

Along with Annette Yother, Craig Leathers, Eric Bischoff and Kevin Sullivan, he wrote content for Nitro and WCW pay-per-views.

He made his return to the ring on April 20, 1996 in Little Rock, AR when he defeated Steve Regal[17] and would occasionally wrestle on house shows over the next two and a half years.

His last on-screen appearance for WCW was as a company representative for a contract signing between Booker T and Scott Steiner on the March 19, 2001 episode of Monday Nitro for their match that would take place the following week.

On August 9, 2001, he defeated Bobby Eaton at 4th Annual Brian Pillman Memorial Show in a match refereed by Ricky Steamboat.

On December 30, 2003, Tayor lost to Steve Williams in a match for the vacated NWA Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight title in Guangzhou, China.