Former WWE star John Morrison has opened up about being the replacement for Chris Benoit at the Vengeance 2007 pay-per-view. The event was originally scheduled to feature Benoit versus CM Punk for the vacant ECW Championship; however, Benoit was absent from the show without prior notice. It was later discovered that weekend that Benoit had killed his wife, his son, and himself, though these details were unknown to the locker room during the broadcast.
Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Morrison—then known as Johnny Nitro—recalled being at the arena as a standby with no creative plans for the night. Around 3 p.m., he heard rumors that Benoit had not arrived. By 5 p.m., talent relations called Morrison and Kevin Thorne (Mordecai) into a meeting to inform them that one of them would likely replace Benoit and win the championship to avoid disappointing the crowd.
Winning The ECW Championship
Morrison described the hours leading up to the match as a period of intense pacing, initially hoping Benoit would not show up so he could receive the title opportunity.
“So we’re at Vengeance 2007, not everyone’s there. It’s a pay-per-view, but I happen to be there. The ECW roster didn’t have a lot of representation at that particular event. Say call time, I think it was maybe 2pm. 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.
“4:30/5pm, 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 we kind of like both looked at each other like, ‘I hope it’s me.’ I don’t know who made that decision with that call (for Morrison to win), but I’d had a lot more TV time consistently than he had up to that point. Whoever made that decision? Thank you. I agree. Good call.
So we have that talk, and then I spend the next two hours pacing, hoping that Chris Benoit does not show up. Walked out to the parking garage a couple of times, just to see if I saw a car coming. I didn’t. Then the pay-per-view started, put my tights on. The whole time I’m like, ‘Oh my god, Chris Benoit is gonna show up, and this is gonna get squashed, and I’ll just be back to business as normal.’ He doesn’t show up, though, and we have the match. I wrestle CM Punk. It was a great match, Punk and I had several after that, leading to eventually the two of us having great chemistry. The first couple were a little clunky, but still fun. 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.
Reflections On The Benoit Tragedy
“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. 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. Because up to that point, as far as I knew, I thought Chris and his family were just very nice people, 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. I kind of felt like it was cool that he saw me in regard to the fact that I did like wrestling then, I like wrestling now, more than that, I loved it, and I still love it. And as mentioned, confusing, like talking in circles about it.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
