John Morrison believes mental health is incredibly important in the world of professional wrestling regardless of who you are.
Former WWE Superstar John Morrison was recently a guest on The Bootleg Universe Podcast with producer Adi Shankar (Netflix’s Castlevania, Judge Dredd) to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about wrestling companies offering therapy for their talents, Morrison said it’s voluntary but not mandatory. Morrison goes on to detail how wrestlers can be paranoid attending therapy that’s set up by the company they work for.
“It’s like not mandatory, it’s voluntary,” John Morrison said. “And also, this enters into your head if you talk to a therapist that’s set up by the company you work for. Do they tell somebody what you’re saying? That’s how paranoid you get, because there is such thing as doctor/client privilege, and that applies to therapists, but wrestling organizations that I’ve worked for aren’t very scrupulous with stuff like that a lot of times. And they wanna know, like, “Oh, so this person has borderline personality disorder. Good to know; let’s give them their 90 days.”
When the subject of former AEW World Champion CM Punk came up, Morrison said he believes Punk is someone who suffers from mental health and how much someone like him must suffer when he’s not authentically allowed to be himself.
And that’s a man who’s suffering, I can identify with that, but that’s also a man that’s suffering that’s not taking any shit, he’s gonna call everyone on their crap and then some, you know what I mean, that’s authentic,” John Morrison said. “If you’re not authentically yourself, it’s a feel thing, you can’t really put it into words, but you can tell it’s almost a primal thing.
“It’s tough because that’s specifically the reason he dropped the pipe bomb, the promo, his Austin 3:16 moment basically, it’s based on carrying this weight, bleeding in public, being in pain, and calling people on their crap. And I definitely get why it would be hard or scary or feel wrong to turn that off because that’s what brought you to the dance.
The conversation eventually shifted from mental health to intellectual properties, and Shankar spoke about a conversation he had with Cody Rhodes after their All In pay-per-view back in 2018.
“My feeling was, this is all great, right? This is all f**king great, but you have created a media asset, and you don’t quite know what that means,” Adi Shankar said. “So it’s no different than a screenwriter writing a script on spec, Lionsgate turning that into a media franchise, and then the screenwriting getting like completely cut out, and then the history books get rewritten, and it’s like, “Oh, it’s a Lionsgate movie”. Well, no it actually came out of this guy in Sherman Oaks’ mind, his brain.”
“But then as time goes on, and that person is cut out the process, the vision that he had existed for a movie or a sequel, a PPV or two or three, or a year or two or three. And then it started becoming someone else’s vision,” John Morrison chimed in.
Adi Shankar went on to speak about how he feels The Elite were screwed over with the creation of the All In event that was done in conjunction with Ring of Honor.
“And I think this is fundamentally an issue with the way intellectual property works in America… I kind of felt like the IP laws were stacked against the creators; they really favored the corporate entities here,” Adi Shankar said. “It’s almost like, here if you don’t have a ton of knowledge as to how the mechanics of entertainment and business work, you will get fucked… If you’re a young creator coming up today, a young creative, and I consider Cody, Kenny, Young Bucks, they’re creators. If you’re just like any other content creator coming up today, what protections do you have?”
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What do you make of John Morrison’s comments? Do you agree with his comments regarding CM Punk? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit The Bootleg Universe Podcast with a link back to this article for the transcription.
