Fans Demand to Know: “Why, Ricky? WHY?!”

It’s hard to imagine a competitor anywhere in National Wrestling Alliance history more beloved than Ricky Morton — which makes his actions at the Crockett Cup that much more shocking!

For generations, fans have tirelessly cheered the multiple-time champion. This support pushed Morton and tag team partner Robert Gibson — the legendary Rock ’n Roll Express — to a record-shattering nine NWA World tag team titles.

Indeed, fan adoration nearly buoyed Morton to the NWA World’s Heavyweight championship on numerous occasions. Throughout the late 1980s, audiences rallied behind the tag team specialist’s pursuit of then-champion Ric Flair — with Morton giving “The Nature Boy” all he could handle.

Over the course of more than four decades in the ring — with very few exceptions — the Hall-of-Famer has loved the fans in return. It’s one of many reasons Morton’s actions, using son Kerry’s World Junior Heavyweight championship to knock out his opponent and advance the father/son duo to the Crockett Cup tournament’s quarter-finals, were so surprising!

Ricky Morton smashes Arez with the Junior Heavyweight Title behind the referee’s back during their match at Crockett Cup.

“That’s not the Ricky Morton I’ve known and loved since I was a teenager!” declared Delores Huckabee, a devastated NWA fan in attendance that night in Winston-Salem. “Why would Ricky suddenly turn his back on the rules — and on the fans?”
Huckabee is only one of droves on hand in North Carolina, and watching the historic event worldwide on FiteTV, to wonder the same. Of all people, Morton seemed among the least likely to abandon the rulebook and, as a result, his following.

“Ricky Morton is a life-long ‘babyface,’” says NWA agent and producer Dr. Tom Prichard, applying a wrestling term used to describe crowd favorites. “Ricky’s always been good to a fault, an honest man who abides by the rules and has nothing but respect for the fans.”  Morton’s change of attitude at the Cup shocked him, admits Prichard, whose career was intimately tied to the senior Morton for years. As a member of Jim Cornette’s Heavenly Bodies with both “Sweet” Stan Lane and “Gigolo” Jimmy Del Rey, he feuded with The Rock ’n Roll Express across the country.

“I never thought I’d see the day Ricky Morton would break the rules just to win a match,” ‘Doc’ confesses.

“Ricky has always been someone whose commitment to the rules and the fans I’ve admired,” fellow NWA legend and tag team specialist Bobby Fulton agrees.

With partner Tommy Rogers, Fulton formed one-time NWA United States tag champions The Fantastics. Throughout the ’80s, Fulton and Rogers’ popularity rivaled that of the R’n’R Express — and both teams often found themselves facing many of the same foes.

“Tommy and I always seemed to wind up battling the same teams as Ricky and Robert,” Fulton says, “I believed then — and now — it’s because we shared similar honesty and integrity. It’s disappointing to see Ricky take a shortcut at this stage of the game. And why? Just to get ahead for one night?”

Morton betraying people’s trust “at this stage of the game,” as Fulton puts it, is particularly confounding. On more than one occasion, the icon has implicated he might not have much more time as an in-ring competitor — and it seemed guaranteed he would exit the same, crowd-pleaser he’d been since the 1970s

In fact, watching suddenly brash and cocky World’s Junior Heavyweight Champion Kerry Morton, many worried the youngster’s recent character shift might lead to family conflict in the final chapter of his father’s career. Now, though, fans are left to question whether Kerry’s changes might not reflect negative influence from his father.

“If Ricky’s just now showing this side of himself,” says Pritchard, “Who knows what might have been happening for months behind-the-scenes.”

For fans like Huckabee, who unquestionably represents a great many watching NWA, that doesn’t make sense. “What could possibly make Ricky want to suddenly turn on all of us?” she asks, “We’ve been there for him from the very beginning!

It could be his affiliation with the newly formed “Southern Six” faction, Fulton speculates, or “it could be none of us ever knew Ricky as well as we thought.”

“I’d hate to think he had us all fooled for so long, but instead of asking ‘why now?’” he concludes, “Maybe we should ask ‘How long has this been who you really are?’”