John Morrison lit up Moonlight Drive this morning as the now-seasoned ring veteran made his first official return to the company that brought him into the wild and crazy world of professional wrestling on WWE’s The Bump.
The Bump cuts back to the video of short-haired John Hennigan giving his 2003 Tough Enough Champion speech and John reveals that he still indeed does have the trophy. Next up they talk about his wild Royal Rumble spot back in 2011 in which he scaled the barricade Spider-Man style to stay in the match. Morrison remarked how the hardest part of the whole spot was keeping his balance on the cushy top of the barricade.
They show him wrestling people outside of WWE, including photos of him with Austin Aries, Rey Fenix and being under both the Lucha Underground and the IMPACT Wrestling banner. Both companies get named on the broadcast.
John then goes into detail about why he left WWE, citing that he wanted to do something different and part of that was getting involved with movies. He originally only planned to be away for a year, but time just flies on by. He always knew he was going to come back to WWE, but was having a lot of fun working outside of the company. Morrison was happy having autonomy being an ambassador and “the guy” for all these other companies.
Morrison thinks that many people will be surprised as to what he has in store for when he steps back in a WWE ring. He credits his time on film (and behind it) as a way that has evolved his mindset when looking at wrestling. Even though so much of his ring work focuses on parkour, factoring the product as a whole is an important factor for him. Wrestling is his first love and because of that, he kept acquiring skill as a means to expand on that love.
Kayla has JoMo’s first surprise in store and it’s a video message from his former WWE Tough Enough trainer, Al Snow. Al says he cannot be happier for John and says he’s very, very proud of John. He knows he’s going to be Hall of Famer one day. John gets a little emotional and says that Al really cares about people. He thinks Al is one of the smartest people in the wrestling business today. Al still is a big part of his life and comments on how “The Man with Head” may currently be in the best shape of his life.
The next guest up was The Miz, who was live from his new home. Miz says if it wasn’t for John, he would not be where he was today. John always looked out for him and he’s happy to see him back. He hopes it’s under the blue banner of SmackDown. After The Miz was asked about Bray Wyatt, John later reiterates that he’d love to go to SmackDown and rekindle that fire with his former “Dirt Sheet” partner.
The two reflect of their time doing that popular web series before YouTube and social media hit it big. John talks about how he and Miz would be in the super-long car trips but they would brainstorm ideas for “The Dirt Sheet” and says how much fun that was. John would come up with some wild ideas for Miz and it would sometimes get Miz in trouble with the other boys, the one example being the Bob Holly impression he did (which Miz does say was a pretty accurate rendition). He remembers Bob shoulder bumping him backstage and saying how he watched the episode.
John was asked about The Miz’s success since he left WWE and has nothing but high praise for his “Awesome” amigo. He says how it’s always customary for talent to be told to boost their personality “up to eleven” and just be yourself. The Miz never had to do that. He was always himself and never had to get to eleven because he was already there.
The Miz talks about the innate chemistry that he and Morrison had together. He was asked about how important having that friendship off-screen meant for their star-power both then and today. Miz feels that to have a great tag team, it’s a good mindset to be together constantly.
One thing that made the two work so well was that they weren’t afraid to give one another crap. Morrison thinks that although they’re close, he and Miz are two distinct personalities and that was the point of “The Dirt Sheet.”
Miz and Morrison go into detail as to what happened after they won the Tag Titles on SmackDown. Around that time, they remember ripping on CM Punk during an episode of “The Dirt Sheet” and after they won the belts, they were asked to cut a promo. An irate JBL comes up and dresses them down in front of the entire locker room. (“Nobody liked me in the locker room,” Miz recounts). Then Miz sees a now-angry Morrison take off his coat and getting ready to fight JBL. John says that JBL thought for some reason that Morrison was going in for a handshake, but Morrison ended up shoving JBL. Everybody was holding everyone back John’s apology to him was “I don’t like you, I never did but I respect you.” This whole time Miz did nothing, but keep his head down. John recounts that two weeks after that JBL wanted to take Morrison out for drinks.
Later on, John Morrison is asked to evaluate some of the WWE roster and calls Seth Rollins a super talented guy and says he’s been doing a great job at the top. Kayla Braxton, however, brings up that Rollins once said in a podcast from several years ago that’s he’s accomplished so much more than what Morrison had in his career. Morrison was asked what he would say to Rollins’ face if he was here and Jo Mo had the following to state about Seth:
“He’s clearly an accomplishment-oriented guy, right? He’s citing all his past accomplishments. I feel like this is a guy who has been drinking a lot of his own Kool-Aid if you know what I mean and sometimes you shouldn’t be drinking that much of your own Kool-Aid. He likes to talk about how he’s the best. It’s not like original in wrestling, really. Like Bret Hart, Mr. Perfect, HBK, Punk, Jericho, everybody likes to say they’re the best, but Rollins believes it and Tweets about it and tells everybody about it pretty much non-stop. I think he’s a “Build-A-Bear” superstar. He’s a combination of a lot of guys, all those guys I mentioned.”
Kayla is told that they have has to move on due to time and to get his thoughts on more superstars. Morrison is holding a Rollins figure during this and tells the figure that “you got lucky” before tossing it aside. Morrison also gives his thoughts on Shinsuke Nakamura, Sami Zayn, Ricochet, Finn Balor, Aleister Black & The Fiend.
Morrison then sits in for The Bump’s interview with Lio Rush as well and the two have crossed paths with one another on the independent scene.
RELATED: John Morrison Explains Why He Left WWE In 2011
The full episode of The Bump is below:
