At WWE Vengeance 2007, Chris Benoit was supposed to face CM Punk for the vacant ECW World Championship, but Benoit was not at the event.
In his place, John Morrison, then known as Johnny Nitro, stepped in and would end up winning the match Benoit had been slated to win.
On a recent edition of the “Insight” podcast, Morrison spoke about being around for the show, despite not being booked, and his impromptu match. He said,
“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 1pm, everything’s fine. I’m just in catering. Around 3pm, 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.”
Hours later, there had been no word from Benoit, and the decision was made for either Morrison or Kevin Thorne to face Punk instead.
Morrison explained that WWE did not want the last-minute replacement to be seen as a dud, so whoever was picked would be winning the title. He said,
“So we have that talk, and then I spend the next two hours pacing, hoping that Chris Benoit does not show up. Walked out to the parking garage a couple of times, just to see if I saw a car coming. I didn’t. Then the pay-per-view started, put my tights on. The whole time I’m like, ‘Oh my god, Chris Benoit is gonna show up.’”
Benoit did not appear, as that weekend, he killed his wife Nancy and their son Daniel before taking his own life. He was 40 years old.
On the podcast, Morrison recalled how “the best night ever” was quickly overshadowed by the next 48 hours surrounding the Benoit tragedy. He said,
“Then the next day, we get the news about Benoit and what happened. I felt like crap. I felt so guilty just for being happy with something that came to be because of the tragedy we’ve heard about and talked about ad nauseam.
“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 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.”
Morrison would hold the ECW World Championship for several months before losing the gold to Punk, who would finish the year with the gold.