John Morrison on “Dirt Sheets” series, The Miz, and Lucha Underground

Recent episode of The Buzzards Wrestling Podcast show had John Morrison as the guest. Topics discussed included working with the Miz on the “Dirt Sheets” series, The Miz in general, and Lucha Underground influencing ideas in the WWE and Impact Wrestling.

On the topic of teaming with the Miz and their “Dirt Sheets” segments, Morrison stated he had a lot of fun working on those segments. Claimed the creative freedom allowed ended up being very useful for both him and the Miz towards developing their characters more in the WWE at the time.

“I think the reason it was fun to watch and to do was because Miz and I found this little loophole and niche and we had creative autonomy. Not full creative autonomy, because we still had to run ideas by people, but Miz and I, we wrote the episodes of The Dirt Sheet while we were traveling from town to town. We got to a TV taping and we would go into the pre-tapes room and we would usually get one hour to tape our episode and it was really cool. It was creatively fulfilling and it gave us a chance to get our personalities across to fans of WWE in a way we didn’t get because it’s really hard to get TV time, in which you can do that kind of talking and cut those kinds of promos.”

When discussing The Miz still working in the WWE, Morrison praised him for all the hard work he’s done over the years to make his character become one of the best in the WWE.

“He’s an extremely hard-working guy and one thing to note on successful professional wrestlers, in my opinion, is people believing their own hype, living their own gimmick, people who are emphatically themselves, The Miz is all those things. I think that’s why, when you’re watching him, he seems like The Miz all the time, there’s no slipping in and out of character and that’s because he’s doing him, that’s who he is, obviously with the volume turned up on TV. It’s rare that you can find somebody that’s so all-encompassing as a character and I think that’s why he’s been so successful.”

Later in the interview, Morrison stated Lucha Underground’s style of wrestling has started to show some influences in both the WWE and Impact Wrestling. He felt both Impact’s Total Deletion storyline and WWE’s House of Horrors match were recent ideas likely influenced by Lucha Underground’s gritty style for wrestling.

“Totally agree. I feel like Lucha Underground was the first promotion that’s really integrated the gritty, action movie feel with wrestling. Shooting the vignettes that stitch Lucha Underground together, with coverage like a TV show or a movie has set that trend. You’re right, the Total Deletion and WWE House of Horrors and even some of the costumes in WWE. I feel the trends were started in Lucha Underground.”