Johnny Bollywood (Johnny TV) has revealed why Vince McMahon did not approve of the Johnny Nitro name during his WWE run.
During a recent interview with “The Wrestling Classic,” Johnny said his early WWE name changes came quickly, starting with Johnny Blaze before moving to Johnny Spade and then Johnny Nitro.
He explained that McMahon believed Johnny Nitro was not a “champion’s name,” while the name also reminded him of WCW.
Johnny later made a list of around 50 possible names, and McMahon selected John Morrison from the very top of it.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On Vince McMahon rejecting Johnny Nitro: “I was on Raw as Johnny Blaze, got a cease & desist. Then it was Johnny Spade, I hated that name. Then, Johnny Nitro. This was within like the first four weeks of me being on Raw as Eric Bischoff’s apprentice. Vince didn’t like the name Johnny Nitro, he just said it wasn’t a champion’s name. But, it really kind of reminded him of WCW, I think.”
“I was like, ‘Oh my God’, and wrote down like 50 names. The top one happened to be John Morrison and he was like, ‘John Morrison, alright, good name. That’s your name.’”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. I know that he knows about The Doors and he got it, but when he came in and saw me, I had been slaving over this — I had like an hour for this name list. I don’t know if he was like, ‘Oh, John Morrison, Jim Morrison, yeah’ or if he was just like, ‘John Morrison, that’s you, okay.’”
On his Lucha Underground run: “That was one of my absolute favorite times in my career. First of all, I was the second phone call for Lucha Underground as far as talent goes. They called Blue Demon Jr first. I remember I’d been talking to Chris DeJoseph and he’d been telling me about this, Konnan had been telling me about this new thing that was starting up. Before the first taping, they had everything set up and they had a practice ring. I went a couple of times and there was one day I went with a stunt guy and a good friend of mine. I was showing him wrestling and he was showing me how to clean up some of my twists and just different physical cues, little martial arts tricking nerd stuff that I really am into. We were there and there were two wrestlers that I’d never met before, it was Pentagon and Fenix. All of us were like trying new stuff and they were like really cool. It felt like, this is going to be so rad because there’s so many times where a promotion starts and then some egos get involved and everything gets kind of confused and mixed. At the beginning of things, usually it’s not like that. For Lucha Underground, it didn’t really get like that. It changed obviously, but to me, it didn’t feel like there was a bunch of people that were miserable to be there. I think that during Lucha Underground season one, I fully lost my fear if that makes sense. I was throwing new tricks, I was sending stuff that I had kind of been nervous about sending before and learning different kinds of Lucha. It felt really fulfilling creatively, like physically and creatively. Getting to be surrounded by that roster, yeah man, it’s the best.”
