Johnny TV Recalls His Transition From Johnny Nitro to John Morrison, Still Feels Like He Could Be World Champion of WWE or AEW

Speaking to Insight with Chris Van Vliet, AEW wrestler Johnny TV spoke about his change in WWE from his days as Johnny Nitro in MnM to later John Morrison. Below are some highlights from Insight:

Johnny TV on His Change To John Morrison and Who in WWE Thought He Resembled The Doors Frontman

“I can’t remember, but it wasn’t a thing that had happened like super frequently. Was more so that, and we’ve talked about this, I think. When I won the ECW championship, I was Johnny Nitro. Prior to that, Vince had mentioned a few times that Johnny Nitro is not a champion’s name, or not a good name, ‘You got to change it.’ [I responded]’ Why do you think that, Vince? Is it because it reminds you of WCW Monday Nitro?’ [Vince said] ‘Yes.’ The day after I won the championship. Actually the week after, because the day after, everyone on the roster got some very bad news. But we can talk about that if you want later. The week after, Vince walked up to me in catering, which is rare, and said, ‘You got to change your name.’ Put a paper down on the table and a pen and said, ‘Just make a list of names.'”

“So I was really on the spot, and I just started writing down what could be an M and M name that fits? Then I was like, maybe Johnny Brando, John Morrissey, John Morrison, couldn’t think of very many Ms, so I made a list of kind of like celebrity, Brando, Morrison, Johnny Brando, stuff like that. The first one that I’d written down was John Morrison, and a couple of hours later, I handed this list to Vince, and he just went like this and read the top was like, ‘John Morrison, I like it. That’s it.’ So then after that, I kind of went from this Johnny Nitro wet hair look to getting the makeup department to flat iron my hair. I used to say I wanted it to look like Farrah Fawcett’s hair. But once I started doing that and wearing aviators, I got a ton of people saying, You look just like Jim Morrison, even to the point where I started getting fans asking me if I was Jim Morrison’s brother sometimes, and I would sometimes make a smart ass comment, like, I mean, he died in 79 if I’m his brother, am I a vampire? Now I’d be like, 80 years old. I don’t know how to do the math. The math doesn’t math on that.”

On His Perception That He’s Underrated and If There Was a Chance He Could’ve Become World Champion in WWE

“I mean, you can say what you want about this, but to this day, I still feel like I could be world champion of WWE one day, maybe AEW. I feel like I just need another opportunity. The way wrestling works, in my mind is things come in waves. Might have mentioned that to you before, but you ride a wave for a while, and then it passes and you’re kind of waiting for the next wave. Sometimes you’re waiting longer than other times, but when waves come and you catch them, they take you places, and like the ECW Heavyweight Championship win for me was like the first huge wave that I caught, and it led me to some really amazing places, and it could have ended up leading me to become a world champion on Raw or SmackDown, or it could have just completely backfired and like, something else weird happened and then led to nothing. So I’m kind of happy with how things turned out, and don’t what if? Anyone watching this, don’t What if?”

During his WWE career, Morrison became a multiple-time tag team champion and WWE Intercontinental Champion. However, he never won the WWE Title or the World Heavyweight Title. That said, he did have one run with the now-defunct ECW World Title in 2007.

As previously reported, Johnny TV was recently forced to shave his head bald after losing a Hair vs. Hair match to Angel de Oro at a CMLL show last month.