Photo From Augusta
Having carefully constructed both career and ring persona, ECW star John Morrison knows that succeeding in and outside the wrestling ring depends on brains as much as brawn.
Mr. Morrison began his professional career on the wrestling-themed reality show Tough Enough . Signed to World Wrestling Entertainment, Mr. Morrison took the name Johnny Nitro and, after garnering some success and popularity, John Morrison. Although a wrestling fan as a child (Mr. Morrison admits that the occasional schoolyard bout periodically landed him in trouble), Mr. Morrison originally thought he would pursue other interests, studying film and geology at the University of California Davis.
"I thought about filmmaking, about treasure hunting," he said during a recent telephone interview. ''But then I saw Tough Enough on MTV and thought that was something I could do. It was everything I wanted to do. It was physical. It was storytelling. It was all those things I was interested in."
Although clearly rooted in the physical, Mr. Morrison said he quickly learned that wrestling success was also an intellectual pursuit. He said the wrestlers who become truly successful are the ones that consider how they approach their career and work hard to maintain it.
"You need to always think," he said. "Wrestling is this uniquely American thing, the biggest and greatest show. It's a show that gives fans what they want to see. That takes work, because I'm not sure fans always know what that is. They just know it when they see it."
The core to Mr. Morrison's approach is to remember that in many ways, wrestling is nothing more than a big, loud and occasionally violent morality play. It's about action and consequence, with consequence sometimes being a folding chair to the skull.
"The root of sports entertainment is striking a chord, making people feel something," he said. "Wrestlers are essentially showing society the things we all want to do. They are standing up to their boss or living up to a dream."
Over the course of his career, Mr. Morrison has won championships, formed fruitful partnerships -- he's currently one half of the current WWE tag team champion pairing -- and developed a fan base. As his career has developed, so has his perception of success. Initially, his measures of success were fairly standard, matches won and money earned. Today, he takes what he considers a more Zen-like approach to success and satisfaction in the wrestling world.
"My thinking has evolved," he said. "When I perform in front of a crowd, when I perfect a move, that's what is interesting to me. It's sort of like self-actualization. Now, the secret of that success is you can't be happy with just anything. You have to find joy in improvement. That's what I'm trying to do, every day."
(source: Augusta Chronicle)
Now that's a great shot.