Former WWE Superstar John Morrison has heaped praise on former rival CM Punk, stating that the former WWE Champion is “one of my favourite opponents”. Morrison and Punk came up through the ECW brand at the same time in the WWE, battling it out for the ECW Championship on multiple occasions and to varying degrees of success.
The two men became big rivals in 2007, when they fought for the vacant ECW Championship. Their match at Vengeance 2007 was originally not meant to happen, with the bout booked being CM Punk vs Chris Benoit. However, that night saw the demise of Benoit as he no-showed the pay per view, leading WWE to add Morrison to the match in his place. CM Punk vs John Morrison was booked for the ECW Championship.
Despite not being originally part of the match, John Morrison beat CM Punk to become the ECW Champion. It wasn’t a great match as the pair seemed to lack chemistry, although over the coming weeks and months they would build up their matches until it was one of the best on the card.
They wrestled many times after that point (over 100 times according to Morrison) but mostly on house shows. CM Punk would lose against at Summerslam 2007 but finally beat his rival on ECW TV weeks later. CM Punk vs John Morrison was one of the best feuds on the ECW brand at the time, even though it only began due to horrific circumstances.
John Morrison recently spoke with BOOTLEG UNIVERSE about many aspects of his career and the topic of CM Punk came up. Morrison (real name John Hennigan and known but an obscene amount of names, including Johnny Elite) revealed that CM Punk became one of his favourite opponents ever and that he loved wrestling the former AEW Champion.
I’ve wrestled the guy, not recently, but probably close to 100 times. At the beginning, we were butting heads quite a bit. It took like 20 matches, and then after that … I thought our chemistry was on point and he became one of my favorite opponents.
He also revealed how the Best in the World does have a temper and that while he does not agree with what CM Punk did to get himself fired by AEW, he understands due to the injuries he has sustained in the past.
He’s always had a temper when things don’t go his way. In his defense, what he wants is to make it, you know? … I don’t know exactly the extent of his injuries, but I think he tore … his upper tricep or something on the dive, … which is very frustrating. So he’s frustrated because he’s got this big opportunity to carry the company, and he’s got this huge paycheck, and he tears his tricep and his foot.
He’s one of the people that changed the course of the industry, and it’s never cool to see anybody like that get hurt. What I think is funny is how he dealt with it because in some ways he just lashed out at the entire AEW roster. Whether they deserved it or not, I don’t know. From his point of view, they did.
John Morrison most recently wrestled in All Elite Wrestling as Johnny Elite. He suffered defeat to Samoa Joe and Miro in his two big matches, although the door has not closed to a potential return for the former ECW Champion. Meanwhile CM Punk looks to be fired from the company and a CM Punk vs John Morrison rematch in AEW looks very unlikely.