10 Biggest WWE Boytoys

3. "The Model" Rick Martel

There were two incarnations of Rick Martel in WWE. He was first known as a tag team wrestler with Tom Zenk in the Can-Am Connection and later with Tito Santana as Strike Force. The Strike Force team was very successful as a couple of exciting babyfaces that could have great matches with anybody. They held the tag titles in 1987 at a time when there were a lot of great teams in WWE. Martel broke out as a singles star following WrestleMania 5 in 1989 when he walked out on Santana during a tag match. He became known as "The Model" Rick Martel in late 1989. He carried around a bottle of cologne called "Arrogance." It was pretty cheesy in a lot of ways, but it certainly fit the wrestling business at the time. There was a famous moment where he sprayed the Arrogance into the face of Jake Roberts, who was a babyface at the time. The story was that Jake was blinded by it and that led to their famous blindfold match at WrestleMania 7. WWE could have done more with the gimmick by pairing him up with a diva although there really weren't a lot of them around in those days. There was an angle with Sensational Sherri that didn't last long. It was built around a Martel feud with Shawn Michaels at SummerSlam 1992 where neither man was supposed to hit the other guy in the face. Martel was able to make a career out of The Model gimmick for about five years or so. He was never at a point where he was going to break through as a main eventer, but due to his ability to have good matches and the fact that he was easy to hate, he had a good career. The previously mentioned Tyler Breeze character has a lot of similarities to Martel. It's 20 years later, yet that kind of gimmick still works.