As soon as Taz heard the pop from the crowd when he first walked out to a WWE ring, he knew he was doomed.
There are certain WWE debuts that will live long in the memory of many fans. Especially if said fans were lucky enough to be watching those debuts live. Nights like Kane marching to Hell In A Cell and ripping the door off its hinges. Or Chris Jericho interrupting The Rock on his first night ever as a WWE Superstar.
Another debut around the same time as that which is not given enough credit is Taz's. At the Royal Rumble PPV in 2000, the former ECW Champion shocked fans when he marched to the ring to face Kurt Angle. The pop he got from his hometown crowd at Madison Square Garden was deafening. However, that wasn't necessarily a good thing.
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Taz was recently a guest on The Apter Chat and explained exactly why such a strong reaction on that stage was a bad thing for his WWE career. "Before I even got to the ring, I knew I was screwed. I knew that I was in trouble," Taz told Apter and his listeners. " I knew that the pop was not made or built by the WWE. That was made from myself and the guys that I was fortunate enough to put me over by ECW."
Taz had never wrestled in WWE prior to that night and had made a name for himself in ECW. There, he was a World Champion and one of the top guys in the company. That might have been the plan for him in WWE, but not after that night. Vince McMahon didn't like that a wrestler who had been created elsewhere was getting such a strong reaction without any input from himself and WWE.
Taz goes on to point out that had he been around today, a reaction like that would have been welcomed. Nowadays, WWE is in the business of picking up wrestlers from rival promotions and changing very little about them before they debut on Raw, SmackDown Live, or NXT. Unfortunately for Taz, he debuted at a time when WWE wanted homemade Superstars at the top of the card. He did go on to launch a successful post-in-ring career as an announcer, podcaster, and radio show host though, so it wasn't all bad.