Over the last, say, twelve months in WWE, it has seemingly become vogue to go out of the way to be as outwardly and openly offensive as possible. Sure, there’s always been a tendency from the folks in Stamford to cross over the line, but lately, they’ve not only crossed it, but trampled it, spit on it, and took a big ol’ dump on it. Seriously, think about it – recently, we’ve had terrorist attacks taking place on the same week as REAL terrorist attacks, mock suicides, and blatant exploitation of a performer’s death. When you take all that into consideration, having a dude fake that he has a stuttering problem seems downright trivial in comparison.
Which isn’t to say it wasn’t WrestleCrap, because rest assured that it was.
Especially when you consider what WWE had to work with. Matt Morgan was a big, muscular guy, a legit 6’7” monster who not only showed potential in the ring, but actually wanted to learn and become a better performer. He showed signs of really being something in OVW, and Jim Cornette went so far as to say that he believed that within two or three years, he’d be headlining WrestleMania. And before you scoff at that, the last two guys Corny said that about were Brock Lesnar and Dave Batista…both of whom did just that. All Morgan needed, Cornette surmised, was some time to hone his craft.
Which, naturally, meant that WWE would bring him up WAY too early (twice, actually) and stick him with a stupid gimmick.
Or should that be g-g-gggg-gimmick?
Yes, Matt Morgan, the 6’6” behemoth who Jim Cornette claimed was not only a future main eventer, but a future WRESTLEMANIA MAIN EVENTER, was told to go out and pretend to stutter. In fact, here’s big Matt to explain all this to you.
Morgan would come to the ring, and stare down his opponent. Despite the fact that the handful of foes he faced quivered with fear (and with good reason, as they were the pastiest jobbers this side of Randy and Bill Mulkey), Morgan took it that they were laughing at his speech impediment. He’d rant and rave before the match, and then the destruction would begin.
And make no mistake about it. Morgan absolutely obliterated these men in record time, in a manner that was very impressive. No doubt fans would have gotten behind him had he just gone into the ring and killed man after man. Instead, all he could do was sputter out his lines and roar.
There’s really no need to even emphasis such a roar with a sound bite, as you can just take one look at that photo above and you almost need to cover your ears.
Make no mistake about it- he roared a MIGHTY ROAR.
And that was about it. Morgan did the best he could with this stupid gimmick (even going so far as to study people who really did stutter to try and make it realistic, which somehow made it sound even less realistic), but this was basically a career killer. After all – who could take seriously a monster with a bogus speech impediment? This is really one of those deals where you have to sit back and wonder…who the hell thought such an idiotic idea would get over?
And here’s the biggest joke of all. Matt Morgan had a college degree. Would you care to guess what it might be in? Finance? Computer science? Philosophy?
It is in COMMUNICATION.
There’s no punchline I could ever write that could compare to that.
Matt M-m-m-morgan: “Tonight, I take years of frustration out on my opponent and d-d-d-d-destroy anyone in my path! And after my match is done, everyone will remember the name Matt M-m-mmmm-mmmm–mmmmorgan!”