John Morrison has opened up about the Chris Benoit tragedy changing his WWE career path.
The 2007 Vengeance: Night of Champions PPV was originally going to see Benoit facing CM Punk for the vacant ECW Championship. After Chris failed to show up at the event, however, the company replaced him with Johnny Nitro, who ended up defeating the Straight Edge Star to win the title.
The former WWE star revealed details of that night during a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet. John Morrison noted that he had been one of the few ECW names who had been called up to the show without any definite plans for him at the event. His first reaction to winning the title was thinking that it was the best night of his career:
So I win the ECW Championship, and it was one of those. This morning, I thought I was just coming to this pay-per-view to eat catering and hang out, didn’t really have anything going on TV storyline-wise. To tonight, now ECW World Champion, the writers are all asking me questions. They’re going to start writing the show around me and, holy crap, this is the best night ever.
I Felt So Guilty: John Morrison
His mood completely changed, however, once the details of the tragedy started coming in. John Morrison denied thinking that his victory was tainted because of what happened with the Benoit family. Though he still finds the whole thing to be very confusing as he only remembers Chris Benoit as someone who respected his love for wrestling:
Then the next day, we get the news about Benoit and what happened. I felt like crap. I felt so guilty just for being happy with something that came to be because of the tragedy we’ve heard about and talked about ad nauseum. It’s still tough for me to be happy about how everything came about. I’m happy that I got that match and my career took a huge turn upwards because of everything. It’s just a very confusing thing to benefit from a tragedy, even if you really had nothing to do with it.
Elsewhere in the interview, John Morrison revealed that Mordecai had also been considered as a replacement for Benoit. The current AEW star believes that he was chosen for the role instead since he had been featured on TV more consistently before the PPV. Johnny Nitro would hold on to the ECW title for 69 days before dropping it to Punk. He also told the story of how Vince McMahon made him change his name to Morrison during this reign because he didn't like the word Nitro.
