John Morrison says he felt guilty for winning the ECW Championship the night of the Chris Benoit tragedy.
Current AEW star John Morrison/Johnny TV was the latest guest on the INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet podcast. During the conversation, he looked back at winning the ECW Championship at WWE Vengeance 2007. CM Punk and Chris Benoit were the original contenders for the vacant title at the pay-per-view that night, but Morrison came in as a last-minute replacement after Benoit failed to show up. It was only after the event that everyone found out about the tragedy that took place at Benoit’s home in Fayetteville, Georgia.
John Morrison noted that he was at the event as a standby and revealed how and when WWE officials told him he was winning the title.
“I was like a standby. I was booked to be there, maybe have a dark match, I don’t know. So, say call time is 1 pm, everything’s fine. I’m just in catering. Around 3 pm, I hear Chris Benoit hasn’t showed up, and if he doesn’t show up, I might need to fill in or something.
“Okay, sure he’ll be there though, it’s Chris. 4:30, 5 pm, me and Mordecai, Kevin Thorne, get called into talent relations, the two of us, and we’re told, ‘Hey, can’t get hold of Chris Benoit. He’s not here, and if he’s not here in another hour or two, it’s going to be one of you two guys versus CM Punk. We don’t want to let the crowd down by having the replacement lose. So whoever it is between you two is gonna win.’ So kind of like both looked at each other like, I hope it’s me,” John Morrison said.
John Morrison explained why he felt guilty
Speaking further, John Morrison revealed that while he doesn’t know who made that decision, WWE chose him over Kevin Thorn to win the ECW Championship, because he had more consistent TV time than Thorn leading up to Vengeance 2007. He noted that he spent the entire time before the match fearing that Chris Benoit might show up at the last minute.
However, John Morrison said he felt guilty about being happy about his unexpected title win after learning about the tragedy.
“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,” John Morrison continued. “They’re going to start writing the show around me and, holy crap, this is the best night ever. 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 nauseam.
“Because up to that point, as far as I knew, I thought Chris and his family were just very nice people, you know, and Chris I thought was nice to a point. He always liked me, I think, and respected me, because he could tell that I liked wrestling and that’s what I was there for, but he was one of the guys that was kind of going to weed you out if he didn’t like you, or if anyone thought you had an attitude problem, you’re gonna have to deal with him,” John Morrison said.
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