Career
John Randall Hennigan (born October 3, 1979) is an American professional wrestler, better known by his ring names John Morrison and Johnny Nitro. He is currently signed to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) performing on its SmackDown brand.
Before being promoted to the main WWE roster, Hennigan entered the third season of Tough Enough, a televised competition that would award the winner a WWE contract. He was one of the winners in the competition and assigned to their developmental territory, Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW), to continue his wrestling training. While situated at OVW, he was placed in tag team competition, alongside Joey Mercury, in which they won the OVW Southern Tag Team Championship on one occasion. It was also during this time that he and Mercury, alongside their manager Melina, were known as the stable MNM.
After signing with WWE, the group were called up to the SmackDown! roster and on their debut in April 2005, Hennigan and Mercury went on to win the WWE Tag Team Championship. After their third and final reign ended in May 2006, Hennigan and Melina turned on Mercury. Hennigan and Melina were let go from the SmackDown! roster and debuted on the Raw brand. During his time with the brand, Hennigan competed in singles competition and won the WWE Intercontinental Championship twice. In June 2007, Hennigan was drafted from Raw to the ECW brand. During that time, he won the vacant ECW World Championship. Hennigan formed a partnership with The Miz in late 2007, with the two capturing the WWE Tag Team Championship and the World Tag Team Championship on separate occasions, although they split in April 2009. Hennigan is a one-time world champion, winning the ECW World Championship once.
Tough Enough
Before getting into professional wrestling, Hennigan attended the University of California at Davis studying both film and geology. Upon deciding that he did not want to pursue either path, Hennigan began his professional wrestling career training at the Supreme Pro Wrestling school. After failing his audition for the second series, he was accepted as a cast member for the third season of the WWE/MTV reality show WWE Tough Enough in 2002, eventually becoming the co-winner with Matt Cappotelli. For winning, Hennigan was awarded a WWE developmental contract and assigned to WWE's developmental territory Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) to continue his training. Hennigan competed in a Bar Room Brawl match at the Vengeance pay-per-view in July 2003. Hennigan and Cappotelli made an appearance on an episode of Heat in January 2004, losing to Garrison Cade and Mark Jindrak in a tag team match.
WWE (2004- present)
On March 1, 2004 Hennigan debuted on the Raw brand under the ring name "Johnny Blaze". His gimmick was that he was the apprentice and assistant of the Raw General Manager, Eric Bischoff. The next week his name was changed to "Johnny Spade", and three weeks after that it was changed to "Johnny Nitro". The Nitro name, which finally stuck, was a reference to Monday Nitro, the flagship show of World Championship Wrestling for which Bischoff had previously worked, and to drive the point home he began using the Nitro theme as his ring entrance music. Nitro acted as Bischoff's apprentice and assistant until June, when he was sent back to OVW. To explain his departure, Hennigan lost a match on the June 7 episode of Raw against Eugene, which carried the stipulation that upon his loss, he also lost his job.
Upon his return to OVW, Hennigan was put into a feud with his former partner Matt Cappotelli. During the course of the feud Melina was brought in to the company as Nitro's ex-girlfriend and an ally of Cappotelli, only to turn on him and side with Nitro. Not long after, Nitro and Melina were joined by Joey Mercury, forming the faction "MNM". MNM wrestled in OVW for around a year, holding the OVW Southern Tag Team Championship once, before being called up to the main SmackDown! roster in April 2005. In their first match for the brand, they won the WWE Tag Team Championship from Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero. MNM held the titles for three months, having successful titles defenses against the teams of Mysterio and Guerrero and Hardcore Holly and Charlie Haas, before dropping them to the Legion of Doom (LOD) at The Great American Bash. They won the titles again in a four-way match defeating The Mexicools, William Regal and Paul Burchill, and LOD, but lost them to Mysterio and Batista days before the Armageddon pay-per-view in December. Due to help from Mark Henry, MNM defeated Mysterio and Batista in a rematch on December 30 to win the Championship for the third time. They began a rivalry with the team of Paul London and Brian Kendrick that lasted over three months, until they dropped the championship to London and Kendrick at May's Judgment Day, with the storyline leading to Nitro and Melina suddenly turning on Mercury after the match, breaking up the group. Later that night, Melina and Nitro were booked off the SmackDown! brand by having the General Manager, Theodore Long, "fire" them.
The next week Nitro, along with Melina, debuted on the Raw brand in a loss to WWE Champion John Cena. Hennigan was immediately placed in the WWE Intercontinental Championship picture, beginning his first reign at June's Vengeance pay-per-view defeating champion Shelton Benjamin in a Triple Threat match also involving Carlito. Hennigan held the belt for four months, feuding with several challengers before losing it to Jeff Hardy on the October 2 episode of Raw. Nitro recaptured the Intercontinental title from Hardy on November 6 when the General Manager for the night, Eric Bischoff, restarted a match that Nitro lost by disqualification. The next week, however, Hardy won the title back.
In addition, Hennigan was featured in a sporadic feud with John Cena throughout 2006. The feud was unique in that it also involved non-wrestler Kevin Federline, who appeared on the October 16 episode of Raw. Federline was then, in storyline, trained by Nitro for a match with Cena, which he won after interference from Umaga.
In November, MNM reunited on an episode of Raw to accept an open challenge from The Hardys (Jeff and Matt Hardy) for the ECW December to Dismember pay-per-view, a match that they lost. MNM and the Hardys feuded across the brands throughout December, with the feud intensifying after Mercury was legitimately injured at Armageddon in a four-way ladder match. Mercury wrestled Matt on SmackDown!, while Nitro continued to feud with Jeff for the Intercontinental Championship on Raw, including a steel cage match at the Raw pay-per-view event New Year's Revolution. MNM lost to The Hardys at the Royal Rumble, and again at the No Way Out pay-per-view in February which ended the feud. MNM continued on and off as a team until Mercury was released from WWE in March 2007.
Without Mercury, Nitro's association with Melina was played down as she began competing for the WWE Women's Championship. Nitro was paired up with Kenny Dykstra, until the annual WWE draft, during which Nitro was sent to the ECW brand and Dykstra to SmackDown!.
Hennigan made his ECW debut on June 19 with a win over Nunzio, and the next week, at Vengeance, took the vacant ECW World Championship in a match against CM Punk, when he was called upon to replace the missing Chris Benoit.
A few weeks after getting the title, Nitro's name was changed to John Morrison and his gimmick was tweaked to be even more conceited and self-aggrandizing, modeled after Jim Morrison, to whom Hennigan bears a resemblance. After defeating CM Punk again atThe Great American Bash, he began taking part in a "15 Minutes of Fame" segment on the weekly ECW on Sci Fi television program, where if a wrestler could either defeat him or last 15 minutes without being defeated, they would earn a title shot. The first wrestler to do so was CM Punk, which set up another match between the two at SummerSlam, which Morrison won by illegally using the ring ropes for leverage. The next week, Punk again became the number one contender; this time, however, Punk won the Championship. Hennigan was then suspended for 30 days for violating WWE's Wellness Program, renewing his feud with Punk upon his return, as well as competing against The Miz for the number one contendership to the title.
Though rivals, Morrison and The Miz teamed together on the November 16 episode of SmackDown!, and were booked to take the WWE Tag Team Championship from Matt Hardy and Montel Vontavious Porter. At Survivor Series, Morrison and The Miz were both defeated by CM Punk in a triple threat match for the ECW Championship. After the defeat, the rivalry aspect of Miz and Morrison's relationship was dropped, as they were now portrayed as trusting friends. The team had many successful title defenses over the next few months, before dropping the titles to Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder at The Great American Bash in a fatal four-way match which also featured Jesse and Festus and Finlay and Hornswoggle. Neither The Miz nor Morrison were pinned, as Hawkins pinned Jesse to win the titles. Afterwards, they started a feud with Cryme Tyme (Shad Gaspard and JTG) through each team's Internet show, which then transitioned to matches on Raw and pay-per-view, at Cyber Sunday. After winning the Slammy Award for Best WWE.com exclusive earlier in the day, Morrison and The Miz won the "Tag Team of the Year" Slammy Award on the December 8, 2008 episode of Raw. On December 13, Morrison and The Miz won the World Tag Team Championship from CM Punk and Kofi Kingston at a Raw house show Morrison and the Miz engaged themselves in a feud with The Colóns (Carlito and Primo), who were the reigning WWE Tag Team champions. Their feud culminated in a tag team lumberjack match at WrestleMania XXV. At the event, the duo lost the World Tag Team titles to The Colóns to unify the World Tag Team and the WWE Tag Team titles, in the process. As part of the 2009 WWE Draft on April 13, The Miz was drafted to the Raw brand to split up the team, and, as a result, Miz attacked Morrison.
On April 15, 2009, Morrison was drafted to the SmackDown brand as part of the 2009 Supplemental Draft. In Hennigan's first match back for the brand, on April 17, he defeated R-Truth. Morrison turned into a fan favorite on the May 1 episode of SmackDown by defeating Shelton Benjamin, and then engaging in a backstage fight with Chris Jericho, after Jericho slapped him. At Judgment Day, Morrison defeated Benjamin in a rematch. Following a succession of wins - including one over then-World Heayweight Champion CM Punk in a non-title match - Morrison began lobbying Smackdown General Manager Teddy Long for a title shot against the winner of CM Punk and Jeff Hardy's title match at Night of Champions. This was granted the following Friday. On the July 31st edition of SD, John Morrison had his first World Title match against Jeff Hardy but failed to win the title.
