John Morrison

Acrylic and spray on 24″ x 24″ wood

John Morrison may be one of the most gifted athletes of his era. His combination of high-flying acrobatics and showmanship quickly made him a crowd favorite. Born John Hennigan, he made his national wrestling debut as a part of the third Tough Enough competition, of which he was a winner. After training in Ohio Valley Wrestling, he was called up to Raw as the assistant to Eric Bischoff under the name of Johnny Blaze. The next week he was called Johnny Spade, and then three weeks later to Johnny Nitro. After a few months in that role, he returned to OVW where the tag team MNM was formed with Joey Mercury and their valet Melina. The team honed their skills in developmental for about a year before debuting on Smackdown in April 2005.

In their first match there they won the Tag Team Championship from Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero. They would go on to hold the titles a total of three times. They were mainstays of the tag division for the next three years, including a physically intense feud with Matt and Jeff Hardy. They would split up as Melina became active in the Women’s Championship hunt and Morrison became a part of the Intercontinental Championship scene, a title he would hold three times.

In 2007 he was drafted to ECW, where he would defeat CM Punk for the ECW World Championship. After winning the title, he again changed his name to John Morrison due to his resemblance to the Doors frontman Jim Morrison. He and Punk would go on to have a feud with several great matches. After losing the title to Punk, Morrison was teamed up with his rival the Miz, a pairing that worked right off the bat. They were portrayed as haughty douche bags that talked trash on everyone around them, especially with their web show The Dirt Sheet. The duo had tremendous chemistry and became the workhorses of the tag division, feuding with Hawkins and Ryder, Cryme Tyme, Punk and Kingston, and the Colóns. The program with the Colóns was probably my favorite as all four worked great together and there were several hilarious promos, including Morrison referring to them as the ‘Colons’, pronounced like the anatomy instead of like the stuff that makes you smell good.

Breaking off again as a singles wrestler in 2009, he competed against Shelton Benjamin, Chris Jericho, Jeff Hardy, Rey Mysterio, Sheamus, R-Truth and his former partner Miz. he left the company in late 2011 and has since competed overseas and on the American independent circuit. He still has a large and energetic following based on his years of entertaining crowds the world over.

About the piece: This one surprised me, because I went in with one plan and it completely turned into something else, then transformed again. I was initially going to do it pretty straight-forward and representational, but after doing that with the Scott Steiner piece I opted to go a little more energetic. I was at first going to do it all with a palette knife, which I largely did, but then also used a foam brush to move the paint around and streak it. I then added the stenciled area in the lower right corner using a portion of the stencil I had cut for the Rob Van Dam piece. I guess that’s the way plans go: They’re good as long as they work, and when they don’t it’s time to improvise!