8 Wrestlers Who Saved Their WWE Careers (By Being Awesome At Something Else)
3. John Morrison - Parkour
The problem with modern wrestling is that there exists so much of it. Merely very good matches are boring now, with no stakes behind them, and most everybody is a great athlete.
John Morrison astutely marketed his specifically impressive brand of athleticism to emerge from the doldrums of the midcard as a distinct performer. Morrison wasn't doing a great deal beyond exchanging meaningless midcard titles at the precipice of the last decade, during which time spring cleaning was a reality, and not the idle daydream of those damned now by sh*tty creative. His implementation of parkour set him apart, and he used it to invent the creative Royal Rumble elimination spot that Kofi Kingston went on to popularise.
He never became a headline act, but his unreal fast-forward agility compelled WWE to make use of it in big-time match scenarios, like the Elimination Chamber, bagging Morrison more significant payoffs, if not a World Championship. This art lent itself perfectly to Lucha Underground, in which Morrison's name and buzz continued to circulate despite better, purer in-ring workers rendering his generation more dated by the month.
And now, Morrison is back in WWE with, you'd expect, far better financial compensation than that with which he left.