Former John Morrison opens up on replacing Chris Benoit at WWE Vengeance 2007
Tragedy struck the wrestling world in June 2007 when Chris Benoit murdered his wife Nancy and son Daniel before committing suicide. During the weekend the tragedy unfolded, Benoit was scheduled to face CM Punk for the then-vacant ECW Championship at WWE Vengeance. The match was changed at the last minute with John Morrison filling in after Benoit no-showed the pay-per-view.
In his recent appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Morrison reflected on that confusing night and his ECW Championship victory.
“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 2 p.m.. 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 p.m., everything’s fine. I’m just in catering. Around 3 p.m., 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 p.m., 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.”
When the details about what happened started to come out, Morrison felt guilty for being happy about his title win.
“I felt like crap. I felt so guilty just for being happy with something that came to be because of the tragedy that we’ve all heard about and talked about ad nauseam,” he said. “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 like 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.”
After his initial WWE release in 2011, Morrison made a brief comeback nearly eight years later. That run spanned for a period of two years before parting ways with the company again. Since 2022 he has been an active competitor in AEW.
Rosanne Raphael is a wrestling writer with over three and a half years of experience covering all things related to the industry. From a kindergarten teacher to PR Associate to turning her lifelong passion for the industry into a career, Rosanne is currently writing for F4W Online where she focuses on wrestling news, analysis, and storytelling.
Rosanne previously contributed to Sportskeeda as an Assistant Content Manager.
When not consumed by wrestling, Rosanne is a musician and an aspiring artist.