Ricky Morton made playing "face-in-peril" famous, and that is a formula you see in nearly every tag match to this very day. One of the faces spends a large majority of the match getting beaten down, until he is finally able to make the "hot tag" to his partner, who comes in and cleans house. Even if you didn't know those terms, you've seen it happen time and time again in matches. There was a time when Ricky Morton was the babyface in wrestling. It's what some like to call the "hot and cold" thing for face wrestlers... he was "hot", so the women enjoyed him, but he was "cool", so the men were fans, as well. He was an exciting performer, and everything he did was believable, letting the fans become invested. That's why his face-in-peril act worked so well. When he was getting beaten down, fans were strongly rooting for him to bounce back, and that, in turn, made his Rock-N-Roll Express tag partner, Robert Gibson, more over when he would get the tag and get in the ring like the proverbial house of fire. If you're going to popularize something that is still in use, 30 years later, to the point where people often take it for granted, and it's rare that people discuss you for it, you deserve to be on a list like this.
Columnist/Podcaster/Director at LordsOfPain.net for nearly seven years, with nearly 2000 total columns written. Interviewed and/or involved in interviewing the likes of Tyler Black/Seth Rollins (twice), Diamond Dallas Page, Jimmy Jacobs, Christopher Daniels, Uhaa Nation and more.
