JohnCenaFan28
10-10-2008, 06:38 PM
Rather than be a bench player on an NBA roster, Matt Morgan opted to become a benchmark for today's hybrid athlete on the pro wrestling/sports entertainment scene.
Dubbed appropriately The Blue Print in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, Morgan is a well-defined 7-0, 375-pounder who can wrestle and talk. Not to be outdone, he also boasts a very impressive 40-inch vertical leap -- unheard of, for someone his size -- and he has plenty of charisma.
Morgan, 32, a standout high school and collegiate basketball player, is a jacked powerhouse who can leap like NBA star Vince Carter -- almost.
Morgan graduated in 1995 from Fairfield High School in Fairfield, Conn. A pre-season high school All-American in basketball, he stood tall among excellent hoops company.
''I got a nomination to play in the McDonald's All-American game, which I didn't get chosen to play in,'' he said, ``but I got nominated which was a huge honor. They give it to the Top 100 high school players in the country. Stephon Marbury, Vince Carter and Kevin Garnett were the main players. It was a great class. It was a really tough class. To be mentioned in their breathe was pretty cool.''
Morgan did attend the 5-Star and Nike basketball camps featuring those elite high school ballers.
''Stephon Marbury was my point guard there, and he helped me get a lot better -- playing with great talent like that,'' Morgan said. ``In Fairfield, there's only a handful of talent you're going to get better with, and I really, really sealed my fate as being a small forward because I could really jump high and shoot 3s. Being 6-foot-9, 6-10 when I was just a senior, it really did me a lot of justice going to an All-American camp so I could find how to play center or power forward, because my real skill set was a three.''
Like Dirk Nowitski.
``Exactly, accept I can jump.''
Is Marbury unfairly labeled by the public?
''It drives me nuts because I see the media eat him up, and a lot of it is deserved because he opens his mouth too many times,'' Morgan said. 'At first I was like, `Ah, they're painting this poor kid the wrong way. He's a good kid,' but even at camp he had like these tantrums.
``Dante Calabria, who played for North Carolina, was our camp counselor, and Christian Laettner [Duke/NBA] was the head coach of our camp team. Stephon's our point guard, and we're going through drills, and everybody -- college and NBA scouts -- are checking him out and checking out the rest of our team. We had a few good players who went on to play [Division I college ball].
``Christian Laettner is working on chest passes with us, and Stephon whizzes the ball 100 miles per hour like a fast ball. He was so jacked up with big muscles for a high school kid. Christian wasn't paying attention, and Stephon gave a little tug, tug, wink, wink, watch this, and as Christian wasn't looking, Stephon chest passed it at his face, and Christian Laettner's nose broke, started bleeding.''
Special treatment.
''Stephon Marbury, because he was the top guy at the camp at the time, they didn't kick him out or nothing,'' Morgan said. ``He was still the top dog there, but I remember Christian Laettner wanted to kill him. Kill him. Off the court, Stephon was a great kid. I liked him. Actually, he was my roommate. I thought he was a really cool kid.
``At first, I thought with the Timberwolves and then leaving the Timberwolves, he started to get a little arrogant. Then when he came to New York, I was like it's not going to be good. Being home is not going to be good for him. He has so much pressure on him.
``He has like 30 brothers that were failed NBA prospects at one time or city legends in the high school game. He has a lot of pressure on his shoulders, and New York is not the place to do that. In my opinion, unless you can run with that ball, I knew he would not mentally be able to do it. He just lashes out too much and opens his mouth too many times.''
Morgan is a fan of the NBA.
``One of the things I like watching the NBA for is I'm the blue print of pro wrestling. I'm 7-foot. I'm 320 pounds. I can do moonsaults off the top rope. I have a 41-inch vertical leap. I bench press 600 pounds. So when I watch the NBA, I want to see somebody that wants to set the athleticism forward a few years.
``Watching the NBA right now, they're there, because there are so many foreigners coming over who are 7-foot-2, 7-foot-1 like Dirk Nowitski who can shoot from half court. Kevin Garnett is not 6-11. He is legitimate 7-foot-1, every bit of it, and he can shoot threes.
``They're lanky, skinny, but they can bring the ball up the floor. They can dunk. They can shoot threes. It's the evolution of the game. I like watching those trendsetting, forward type players. So Dirk, Kevin Garnett, guys like that. I love watching them play.''
Morgan played college ball at Monmouth University in New Jersey, before transferring to Chaminade University in Honolulu where he graduated with a degree in Communication.
''It's funny,'' he said. ``It was a double-edge sword for my career in basketball.
``I needed to put on size my freshman year at Monmouth. We made the NCAA Tournament [in 1996]. It was great. We got spanked by Marquette in the first round of March Madness.
``My coach [Dave Calloway] then locked me in the weight room that summer. He wanted me to get bigger. I was 6-11 and only like 225 pounds which is still pretty big for a college basketball player, but my coach wanted me to be the back-up center. A guy went down with an injury, so I wasn't going to be playing my natural position of a 3 or 4.
``I put on 30 pounds of mass that summer, but I got addicted to getting bigger and busted my %$# in that weight room, loving it. With weights, it's very simple. The more you lift, the bigger you get. You can see the progress in the mirror when you're working out, and I loved that.
``My coaches loved it until I got up to 365 pounds my senior year. I was a stringbean as a kid growing up. Growing three inches every summer makes it hard to put on mass.
``I finally took weights seriously.
``The double-edge sword of this is my coach first put me in the weight room to put on a little bit of mass, not to become 365 pounds three years later.''
Morgan grew up a pro wrestling fan, and his enthusiasm for the sport continued into his college days.
''I just loved watching pro wrestling my entire life -- loved it, loved it, loved it,'' he said, ``and everybody on the team used to call me Big Daddy Cool like Kevin Nash [who ironically played college basketball, too]. I think it's ironic I work with him now in TNA because he was one of my favorite wrestlers growing up -- hm and Undertaker. I loved Nash's cool persona.
'I knew he played college ball. My friends were like, `You should totally do this,' and even my college coach got in on it. He said, `You need to tryout. You need to do whatever you need to do to do this. Screw basketball. You'll be a bench player at best on the pro level.'
``Just to suffice my dad's pressuring, I accepted a tryout with the Indiana Pacers through my agent Keith Glass. I also had an NFL tryout with the Rams.
``I don't know how they do this, but when I was at the camp, I got three offers to go to football combine camps -- just out of the blue. At 365 exactly, I still had my 40-inch vertical leap. To put that into perspective, [NBA star] Vince Carter has a 42-inch vertical.''
What makes a person into a persona.
``Athleticism comes into what I want to get into -- pro wrestling -- and to add that vertical leap when it's necessary and use it as an attribute, use it as a tool, if I can really do it, why can't I do it in the ring.''
Morgan had to start somewhere but where?
``Trust wasn't even in the equation yet, because I was too dumb and young not to give a crap and too trusting, I guess. It never bit me in the %$# actually.
``I was still in college, and my season was done my senior year. I had a fifth year to complete academically because I still hadn't graduated because I had transferred to Chaminade in Hawaii which hosts the nationally-seen Maui Invitational every year. That's why I switched schools so I could get more national attention.
'I met this guy in the gym. He was a pro wrestler. He did the indies, Pro Wrestling Hawaii. He introduced me to a promoter. The promoter said if I come up with $500, he would show me how to train and make me part of the show. I said, `Cool.' I had one year of college left. I couldn't play college ball anymore.
``This was fantastic. I definitely wanted to do this.
``I gave him 500 bucks, and I never heard from him again. He shut off his cell phone. I even drove to this dude's apartment. Nothing. He never answered his door. No one was ever there. I wanted to kill this guy. I'm surprised to this day he has not come out of the woodworks and tried to claim me. Thank God for him he hasn't. He's a piece of crap.
``From that, I got a bad taste in my mouth. I graduated finally.''
Morgan graduated magna cum laude with honors.
'Then I moved back to Connecticut. I went to Stamford, The Titan Towers, and was working out in their gym with a friend of mine who was working for WWE's magazine. He knew I was dying to get into wrestling. Keep in mind, I still hadn't done the combine or the Indiana Pacers' tryout. I was trying to get into wrestling. That was my passion.
``I wanted to show my family I was at least going to try basketball, and if it didn't work, then I was going to do wrestling. My family didn't know the economics of wrestling, the longevity of it. In the NFL, its 3.5 years. Basketball, it's probably worse.
``A big, tall, white guy being at the end of the bench of an NBA team was not enticing. At least not to me. I wanted to play.''
Enter WWE.
''I went to the Stamford headquarters of WWE. I met Vince McMahon, Jim Ross, Tom Prichard, my first meeting there,'' Morgan said. ``I saw Vince McMahon lifting in the gym. I went up to him, told him how much I respected him and how I loved the show and then asked him what do I do to get started in this business.
``He looked at my friend who wrote for the magazine and said where did you find this big guy from? He's huge. He asked me how big I was, how tall I was and where I went to school. I told him what was going on, and he goes you should really do your family justice and try out those sports.
``He couldn't guarantee me a job. At that point, Ohio Valley Wrestling [WWE's feeder group] was really sizzling with John Cena, Batista, Brock Lesnar. They had a lot of talent.
'I said, `Sir, with all due respect, I'll drive anywhere I have to, to do any developmental you need me to do. I want to learn how to wrestle the right way.' I had a bad taste in my mouth from what happened in Hawaii. I told him the whole story about getting ripped off.''
Prichard, now the Florida Championship Wrestling trainer for WWE, believed in Morgan, and Prichard is a very good one to have in your corner.
''Tom Prichard really went to bat for me,'' Morgan said, ``and said he didn't want me to go to an indie company because they would have to re-teach me from bad examples I'd be practicing with some indie group. He said that the indie promoter might give me the wrong way of how to train.
'He said, `How can an indie promoter who's never been 7-feet tall train you to be 7-feet tall and wrestle?' He said to wait a little bit, and they'll figure it out.''
While waiting, Morgan worked at Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
'I didn't want to do the Pacers' tryout. I did not want to do the Rams' tryout. I wanted to wrestle.
``Tom Prichard was the one I talked to a lot on the phone each week. He would say, `We don't have anything, yet. I hadn't heard any new news of being able to sign you or anything like that.'
'I really had this bug. I wanted to start wrestling. There were indie shows, and he said, `No, no, no. Don't do that.' I see now why he said that. He wanted to start with a 7-foot canvas so he could teach me the right way. Thank God he did.
'He told me Tough Enough [II] was coming up. He said, `Why don't you send an audition tape for that and see what happens. I can't gimmick it. I can't work it for you that you get on the show.' No one has that pull because MTV has the insiders of who gets on the show just as much as WWE. It's MTV's show on their network.
``So I sent a tape of me lifting in the gym, dunking a basketball and doing all the athletic things I can do and cut a promo of why I'm not some fat slop sitting on the couch who watched Tough Enough I, eating Doritos, saying, `I can do that.'
``I am a guy who loves wrestling. I loved wrestling. Even if it wasn't cool to like wrestling, I still liked it. Even the five years of funk, when it wasn't cool to like pro wrestling because it was still in the transition from cartoon to attitude era, I still loved it. I still watched it.
``I hosted Monday Night Raw and Monday Nitro parties in my dorm with my basketball teammates and football players. I'm a lifelong fan.''
Morgan believes the future is bright.
''It will take another big wave for that to happen again,'' he said. ``There's another wave that still has to hit. I'm not saying this because I work here, but I think TNA is on that course to do something different, and that's what it's going to take to get those college kids to have pizza and kegs in their dormitory again, watching Spike TV on Thursday nights, because they're going to see somebody do something or act something they've never seen before.
''For me, it was the whole nWo thing,'' he said. 'Going `Wow, this is real. That part's real. Maybe that's not, but this is real.' Anytime you have that, and you can't tell what's real and what's not, that's awesome. That draws anybody. My mom was even interested during that whole invasion thing.
``It's funny how it comes full circle. Now I work in a company with [the nWo's] Kevin Nash, and he gives me a crapload of advice each day. I talk to him on the phone. He helps me backstage.''
Morgan dealt with a setback when he tore his ACL on Tough Enough II.
''I tore it training on the beach, because you know training on the beach makes a good pro wrestler,'' Morgan sarcastically said. ``I guarantee you that was MTV's idea to train on the beach and to make us puke and die and quit.
``It was only the third week of the show. With amount of the rehab, they wouldn't let me stay. They basically said I had to go. Before I left, I talked to Al Snow and Bob Holly and the rest of the trainers. I said, `What do I do? I'm not just here to be on MTV. I could care less if these stupid cameras are here. I don't care about them. How do I get on the WWE show? What do I do?'
'They're like call the office. See what happens. I got home, and I got a call from the office, before I even called them. Jim Ross and Tom Prichard heard I did really well, and they said, `How's your knee?' and I said, 'I got to recuperate a little bit,' and they said there was an audition camp coming up in Cincinnati at Heartland Wrestling Association with Les Thatcher. OVW and HWA, which were developmental at the time for WWE, were hosting tryouts.
``They asked if my knee was feeling up to it. Could I get in the ring? They weren't expecting me to be Lou Thesz or Karl Gotch by any stretch of the imagination. They just wanted to see if I was still that blank canvas that they think they could work with.
``On Tough Enough, they heard I did very well bumping and locking up. They showed me something once, and that's all it took for me to learn which is really good in this business.
``They worked with that. I showed up to Les Thatcher's camp, HWA, and A.J. Styles was at that camp as well looking for a job with WWE. My very first match, not many people know this, was at that camp with A.J. Styles.''
Good company.
``At Tough Enough, all I learned was how to lockup and back bump and front bump. I only had two weeks with the show. So I took that with me, and Tom Prichard said have a match with A.J.
``I remember A.J.'s face was getting white. I was 360 pounds at the time, muscle. He's probably thinking what's he going to do with me. I wouldn't have wrestled me. I had no clue of what I was doing, yet. I could have literally broken his neck.
``Here's this kid [Styles] having me powerbomb him -- moves I've never performed before -- and he trusted me enough to take care of him with certain moves, and low and behold, we both got offered contracts from that match.
``He turned his down. I accepted mine and moved to Louisville, Kentucky where I met Jim Cornette at OVW, and he's been my mentor ever since.''
Cornette now works for TNA with Morgan and Styles.
``I think that [HWA camp] match helped A.J. just as much as me because he was able to take a 7-foot green kid who's never wrestled a day in his life and make me semi-presentable, let alone get a job for me. He definitely made me look like a freaking monster that day, and I think it helped him, too.
``God, that's got to be the worst situation ever to be in -- not to get into a ring with just a big muscled, jacked-up kid who's wrestling, but a big muscled, jacked-up kid who's never wrestled in his life, except to be on Tough Enough for two weeks. I could chain wrestle and bump and things like that, but I had no business powerbombing him and chokeslamming him.
``On the outside of the ring, he had turned his back, and I was in the ring, and he wanted me to reach over the top rope and grab him around his neck and pull him up into the ring and put him on his back, like a Baldo Bomb. I was like, `Oh my God. He's really letting me do this to him.'
``I was so thankful to him after the match. It came across as I looked like a freak of nature, and that's a lot of skill on his part.
``Just imagine that. Imagine if you were put in a ring with someone who has never really had any experience or training at that point, who's 7-foot, 360 pounds legit of all muscle, throwing you around that ring like a ping-pong ball. I would run for the freaking hills. Right now I would not do that.''
A WWE method to the madness.
``Tom Prichard was not feeding A.J. to the wolves so he gets hurt. He was testing A.J. and testing me to see if I could follow a good leader. They paired me with A.J. because A.J.'s the best guy in that locker-room to lead me through a match, and they paired A.J. with me to see if he could lead Matt Morgan through a match.
'Tom Prichard, the first thing he ever said to me before that match, was to treat everyone of these guys like a carton of eggs. `Do not crack any eggs, Matt.' I said, 'Yes, sir,' and I'm an athlete, and I did what I was supposed to do.
'During that match, I'm thinking, `Oh my God, that had to hurt.' I'm [whispering], 'Are you OK?' A.J.'s [whispering], 'Shut up man. I'm fine. Quit asking me.' I'm like, 'All right. Let's go then.' He's a tough kid.''
• More Morgan to follow.
• Morgan is also Beast on American Gladiators on NBC.
• TNA iMPACT! (9 p.m. EST/PST Thursdays, Spike TV) is hitting the road for the first time and landing at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip for a live show at 9 p.m. EST/6 p.m. PST Thursday, Oct. 23.
Celebrating its fourth season on Spike TV, TNA iMPACT! will leave its home at Universal Studios Orlando for the first time in company history for a one-night-only live event to celebrate iMPACT! moving to high definition.
Appearing live will be TNA champ The Samoan Submission Machine Samoa Joe, Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle, The King of the Mountain Jeff Jarrett, The Icon Sting, Booker T, The Phenomenal AJ Styles, The Instant Classic Christian Cage, Beer Money, Inc, LAX, Awesome Kong, TNA Knockouts' champ Taylor Wilde and more.
Tickets are on sale at the Hard Rock Hotel box office, all Ticketmaster locations and TicketMaster online.
• TNA tapes TNA iMPACT! four times a month at Soundstage 21 of Universal Studios Orlando. Admission is free. Seats are first come, first serve.
Source: Miami Herald
Dubbed appropriately The Blue Print in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, Morgan is a well-defined 7-0, 375-pounder who can wrestle and talk. Not to be outdone, he also boasts a very impressive 40-inch vertical leap -- unheard of, for someone his size -- and he has plenty of charisma.
Morgan, 32, a standout high school and collegiate basketball player, is a jacked powerhouse who can leap like NBA star Vince Carter -- almost.
Morgan graduated in 1995 from Fairfield High School in Fairfield, Conn. A pre-season high school All-American in basketball, he stood tall among excellent hoops company.
''I got a nomination to play in the McDonald's All-American game, which I didn't get chosen to play in,'' he said, ``but I got nominated which was a huge honor. They give it to the Top 100 high school players in the country. Stephon Marbury, Vince Carter and Kevin Garnett were the main players. It was a great class. It was a really tough class. To be mentioned in their breathe was pretty cool.''
Morgan did attend the 5-Star and Nike basketball camps featuring those elite high school ballers.
''Stephon Marbury was my point guard there, and he helped me get a lot better -- playing with great talent like that,'' Morgan said. ``In Fairfield, there's only a handful of talent you're going to get better with, and I really, really sealed my fate as being a small forward because I could really jump high and shoot 3s. Being 6-foot-9, 6-10 when I was just a senior, it really did me a lot of justice going to an All-American camp so I could find how to play center or power forward, because my real skill set was a three.''
Like Dirk Nowitski.
``Exactly, accept I can jump.''
Is Marbury unfairly labeled by the public?
''It drives me nuts because I see the media eat him up, and a lot of it is deserved because he opens his mouth too many times,'' Morgan said. 'At first I was like, `Ah, they're painting this poor kid the wrong way. He's a good kid,' but even at camp he had like these tantrums.
``Dante Calabria, who played for North Carolina, was our camp counselor, and Christian Laettner [Duke/NBA] was the head coach of our camp team. Stephon's our point guard, and we're going through drills, and everybody -- college and NBA scouts -- are checking him out and checking out the rest of our team. We had a few good players who went on to play [Division I college ball].
``Christian Laettner is working on chest passes with us, and Stephon whizzes the ball 100 miles per hour like a fast ball. He was so jacked up with big muscles for a high school kid. Christian wasn't paying attention, and Stephon gave a little tug, tug, wink, wink, watch this, and as Christian wasn't looking, Stephon chest passed it at his face, and Christian Laettner's nose broke, started bleeding.''
Special treatment.
''Stephon Marbury, because he was the top guy at the camp at the time, they didn't kick him out or nothing,'' Morgan said. ``He was still the top dog there, but I remember Christian Laettner wanted to kill him. Kill him. Off the court, Stephon was a great kid. I liked him. Actually, he was my roommate. I thought he was a really cool kid.
``At first, I thought with the Timberwolves and then leaving the Timberwolves, he started to get a little arrogant. Then when he came to New York, I was like it's not going to be good. Being home is not going to be good for him. He has so much pressure on him.
``He has like 30 brothers that were failed NBA prospects at one time or city legends in the high school game. He has a lot of pressure on his shoulders, and New York is not the place to do that. In my opinion, unless you can run with that ball, I knew he would not mentally be able to do it. He just lashes out too much and opens his mouth too many times.''
Morgan is a fan of the NBA.
``One of the things I like watching the NBA for is I'm the blue print of pro wrestling. I'm 7-foot. I'm 320 pounds. I can do moonsaults off the top rope. I have a 41-inch vertical leap. I bench press 600 pounds. So when I watch the NBA, I want to see somebody that wants to set the athleticism forward a few years.
``Watching the NBA right now, they're there, because there are so many foreigners coming over who are 7-foot-2, 7-foot-1 like Dirk Nowitski who can shoot from half court. Kevin Garnett is not 6-11. He is legitimate 7-foot-1, every bit of it, and he can shoot threes.
``They're lanky, skinny, but they can bring the ball up the floor. They can dunk. They can shoot threes. It's the evolution of the game. I like watching those trendsetting, forward type players. So Dirk, Kevin Garnett, guys like that. I love watching them play.''
Morgan played college ball at Monmouth University in New Jersey, before transferring to Chaminade University in Honolulu where he graduated with a degree in Communication.
''It's funny,'' he said. ``It was a double-edge sword for my career in basketball.
``I needed to put on size my freshman year at Monmouth. We made the NCAA Tournament [in 1996]. It was great. We got spanked by Marquette in the first round of March Madness.
``My coach [Dave Calloway] then locked me in the weight room that summer. He wanted me to get bigger. I was 6-11 and only like 225 pounds which is still pretty big for a college basketball player, but my coach wanted me to be the back-up center. A guy went down with an injury, so I wasn't going to be playing my natural position of a 3 or 4.
``I put on 30 pounds of mass that summer, but I got addicted to getting bigger and busted my %$# in that weight room, loving it. With weights, it's very simple. The more you lift, the bigger you get. You can see the progress in the mirror when you're working out, and I loved that.
``My coaches loved it until I got up to 365 pounds my senior year. I was a stringbean as a kid growing up. Growing three inches every summer makes it hard to put on mass.
``I finally took weights seriously.
``The double-edge sword of this is my coach first put me in the weight room to put on a little bit of mass, not to become 365 pounds three years later.''
Morgan grew up a pro wrestling fan, and his enthusiasm for the sport continued into his college days.
''I just loved watching pro wrestling my entire life -- loved it, loved it, loved it,'' he said, ``and everybody on the team used to call me Big Daddy Cool like Kevin Nash [who ironically played college basketball, too]. I think it's ironic I work with him now in TNA because he was one of my favorite wrestlers growing up -- hm and Undertaker. I loved Nash's cool persona.
'I knew he played college ball. My friends were like, `You should totally do this,' and even my college coach got in on it. He said, `You need to tryout. You need to do whatever you need to do to do this. Screw basketball. You'll be a bench player at best on the pro level.'
``Just to suffice my dad's pressuring, I accepted a tryout with the Indiana Pacers through my agent Keith Glass. I also had an NFL tryout with the Rams.
``I don't know how they do this, but when I was at the camp, I got three offers to go to football combine camps -- just out of the blue. At 365 exactly, I still had my 40-inch vertical leap. To put that into perspective, [NBA star] Vince Carter has a 42-inch vertical.''
What makes a person into a persona.
``Athleticism comes into what I want to get into -- pro wrestling -- and to add that vertical leap when it's necessary and use it as an attribute, use it as a tool, if I can really do it, why can't I do it in the ring.''
Morgan had to start somewhere but where?
``Trust wasn't even in the equation yet, because I was too dumb and young not to give a crap and too trusting, I guess. It never bit me in the %$# actually.
``I was still in college, and my season was done my senior year. I had a fifth year to complete academically because I still hadn't graduated because I had transferred to Chaminade in Hawaii which hosts the nationally-seen Maui Invitational every year. That's why I switched schools so I could get more national attention.
'I met this guy in the gym. He was a pro wrestler. He did the indies, Pro Wrestling Hawaii. He introduced me to a promoter. The promoter said if I come up with $500, he would show me how to train and make me part of the show. I said, `Cool.' I had one year of college left. I couldn't play college ball anymore.
``This was fantastic. I definitely wanted to do this.
``I gave him 500 bucks, and I never heard from him again. He shut off his cell phone. I even drove to this dude's apartment. Nothing. He never answered his door. No one was ever there. I wanted to kill this guy. I'm surprised to this day he has not come out of the woodworks and tried to claim me. Thank God for him he hasn't. He's a piece of crap.
``From that, I got a bad taste in my mouth. I graduated finally.''
Morgan graduated magna cum laude with honors.
'Then I moved back to Connecticut. I went to Stamford, The Titan Towers, and was working out in their gym with a friend of mine who was working for WWE's magazine. He knew I was dying to get into wrestling. Keep in mind, I still hadn't done the combine or the Indiana Pacers' tryout. I was trying to get into wrestling. That was my passion.
``I wanted to show my family I was at least going to try basketball, and if it didn't work, then I was going to do wrestling. My family didn't know the economics of wrestling, the longevity of it. In the NFL, its 3.5 years. Basketball, it's probably worse.
``A big, tall, white guy being at the end of the bench of an NBA team was not enticing. At least not to me. I wanted to play.''
Enter WWE.
''I went to the Stamford headquarters of WWE. I met Vince McMahon, Jim Ross, Tom Prichard, my first meeting there,'' Morgan said. ``I saw Vince McMahon lifting in the gym. I went up to him, told him how much I respected him and how I loved the show and then asked him what do I do to get started in this business.
``He looked at my friend who wrote for the magazine and said where did you find this big guy from? He's huge. He asked me how big I was, how tall I was and where I went to school. I told him what was going on, and he goes you should really do your family justice and try out those sports.
``He couldn't guarantee me a job. At that point, Ohio Valley Wrestling [WWE's feeder group] was really sizzling with John Cena, Batista, Brock Lesnar. They had a lot of talent.
'I said, `Sir, with all due respect, I'll drive anywhere I have to, to do any developmental you need me to do. I want to learn how to wrestle the right way.' I had a bad taste in my mouth from what happened in Hawaii. I told him the whole story about getting ripped off.''
Prichard, now the Florida Championship Wrestling trainer for WWE, believed in Morgan, and Prichard is a very good one to have in your corner.
''Tom Prichard really went to bat for me,'' Morgan said, ``and said he didn't want me to go to an indie company because they would have to re-teach me from bad examples I'd be practicing with some indie group. He said that the indie promoter might give me the wrong way of how to train.
'He said, `How can an indie promoter who's never been 7-feet tall train you to be 7-feet tall and wrestle?' He said to wait a little bit, and they'll figure it out.''
While waiting, Morgan worked at Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
'I didn't want to do the Pacers' tryout. I did not want to do the Rams' tryout. I wanted to wrestle.
``Tom Prichard was the one I talked to a lot on the phone each week. He would say, `We don't have anything, yet. I hadn't heard any new news of being able to sign you or anything like that.'
'I really had this bug. I wanted to start wrestling. There were indie shows, and he said, `No, no, no. Don't do that.' I see now why he said that. He wanted to start with a 7-foot canvas so he could teach me the right way. Thank God he did.
'He told me Tough Enough [II] was coming up. He said, `Why don't you send an audition tape for that and see what happens. I can't gimmick it. I can't work it for you that you get on the show.' No one has that pull because MTV has the insiders of who gets on the show just as much as WWE. It's MTV's show on their network.
``So I sent a tape of me lifting in the gym, dunking a basketball and doing all the athletic things I can do and cut a promo of why I'm not some fat slop sitting on the couch who watched Tough Enough I, eating Doritos, saying, `I can do that.'
``I am a guy who loves wrestling. I loved wrestling. Even if it wasn't cool to like wrestling, I still liked it. Even the five years of funk, when it wasn't cool to like pro wrestling because it was still in the transition from cartoon to attitude era, I still loved it. I still watched it.
``I hosted Monday Night Raw and Monday Nitro parties in my dorm with my basketball teammates and football players. I'm a lifelong fan.''
Morgan believes the future is bright.
''It will take another big wave for that to happen again,'' he said. ``There's another wave that still has to hit. I'm not saying this because I work here, but I think TNA is on that course to do something different, and that's what it's going to take to get those college kids to have pizza and kegs in their dormitory again, watching Spike TV on Thursday nights, because they're going to see somebody do something or act something they've never seen before.
''For me, it was the whole nWo thing,'' he said. 'Going `Wow, this is real. That part's real. Maybe that's not, but this is real.' Anytime you have that, and you can't tell what's real and what's not, that's awesome. That draws anybody. My mom was even interested during that whole invasion thing.
``It's funny how it comes full circle. Now I work in a company with [the nWo's] Kevin Nash, and he gives me a crapload of advice each day. I talk to him on the phone. He helps me backstage.''
Morgan dealt with a setback when he tore his ACL on Tough Enough II.
''I tore it training on the beach, because you know training on the beach makes a good pro wrestler,'' Morgan sarcastically said. ``I guarantee you that was MTV's idea to train on the beach and to make us puke and die and quit.
``It was only the third week of the show. With amount of the rehab, they wouldn't let me stay. They basically said I had to go. Before I left, I talked to Al Snow and Bob Holly and the rest of the trainers. I said, `What do I do? I'm not just here to be on MTV. I could care less if these stupid cameras are here. I don't care about them. How do I get on the WWE show? What do I do?'
'They're like call the office. See what happens. I got home, and I got a call from the office, before I even called them. Jim Ross and Tom Prichard heard I did really well, and they said, `How's your knee?' and I said, 'I got to recuperate a little bit,' and they said there was an audition camp coming up in Cincinnati at Heartland Wrestling Association with Les Thatcher. OVW and HWA, which were developmental at the time for WWE, were hosting tryouts.
``They asked if my knee was feeling up to it. Could I get in the ring? They weren't expecting me to be Lou Thesz or Karl Gotch by any stretch of the imagination. They just wanted to see if I was still that blank canvas that they think they could work with.
``On Tough Enough, they heard I did very well bumping and locking up. They showed me something once, and that's all it took for me to learn which is really good in this business.
``They worked with that. I showed up to Les Thatcher's camp, HWA, and A.J. Styles was at that camp as well looking for a job with WWE. My very first match, not many people know this, was at that camp with A.J. Styles.''
Good company.
``At Tough Enough, all I learned was how to lockup and back bump and front bump. I only had two weeks with the show. So I took that with me, and Tom Prichard said have a match with A.J.
``I remember A.J.'s face was getting white. I was 360 pounds at the time, muscle. He's probably thinking what's he going to do with me. I wouldn't have wrestled me. I had no clue of what I was doing, yet. I could have literally broken his neck.
``Here's this kid [Styles] having me powerbomb him -- moves I've never performed before -- and he trusted me enough to take care of him with certain moves, and low and behold, we both got offered contracts from that match.
``He turned his down. I accepted mine and moved to Louisville, Kentucky where I met Jim Cornette at OVW, and he's been my mentor ever since.''
Cornette now works for TNA with Morgan and Styles.
``I think that [HWA camp] match helped A.J. just as much as me because he was able to take a 7-foot green kid who's never wrestled a day in his life and make me semi-presentable, let alone get a job for me. He definitely made me look like a freaking monster that day, and I think it helped him, too.
``God, that's got to be the worst situation ever to be in -- not to get into a ring with just a big muscled, jacked-up kid who's wrestling, but a big muscled, jacked-up kid who's never wrestled in his life, except to be on Tough Enough for two weeks. I could chain wrestle and bump and things like that, but I had no business powerbombing him and chokeslamming him.
``On the outside of the ring, he had turned his back, and I was in the ring, and he wanted me to reach over the top rope and grab him around his neck and pull him up into the ring and put him on his back, like a Baldo Bomb. I was like, `Oh my God. He's really letting me do this to him.'
``I was so thankful to him after the match. It came across as I looked like a freak of nature, and that's a lot of skill on his part.
``Just imagine that. Imagine if you were put in a ring with someone who has never really had any experience or training at that point, who's 7-foot, 360 pounds legit of all muscle, throwing you around that ring like a ping-pong ball. I would run for the freaking hills. Right now I would not do that.''
A WWE method to the madness.
``Tom Prichard was not feeding A.J. to the wolves so he gets hurt. He was testing A.J. and testing me to see if I could follow a good leader. They paired me with A.J. because A.J.'s the best guy in that locker-room to lead me through a match, and they paired A.J. with me to see if he could lead Matt Morgan through a match.
'Tom Prichard, the first thing he ever said to me before that match, was to treat everyone of these guys like a carton of eggs. `Do not crack any eggs, Matt.' I said, 'Yes, sir,' and I'm an athlete, and I did what I was supposed to do.
'During that match, I'm thinking, `Oh my God, that had to hurt.' I'm [whispering], 'Are you OK?' A.J.'s [whispering], 'Shut up man. I'm fine. Quit asking me.' I'm like, 'All right. Let's go then.' He's a tough kid.''
• More Morgan to follow.
• Morgan is also Beast on American Gladiators on NBC.
• TNA iMPACT! (9 p.m. EST/PST Thursdays, Spike TV) is hitting the road for the first time and landing at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip for a live show at 9 p.m. EST/6 p.m. PST Thursday, Oct. 23.
Celebrating its fourth season on Spike TV, TNA iMPACT! will leave its home at Universal Studios Orlando for the first time in company history for a one-night-only live event to celebrate iMPACT! moving to high definition.
Appearing live will be TNA champ The Samoan Submission Machine Samoa Joe, Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle, The King of the Mountain Jeff Jarrett, The Icon Sting, Booker T, The Phenomenal AJ Styles, The Instant Classic Christian Cage, Beer Money, Inc, LAX, Awesome Kong, TNA Knockouts' champ Taylor Wilde and more.
Tickets are on sale at the Hard Rock Hotel box office, all Ticketmaster locations and TicketMaster online.
• TNA tapes TNA iMPACT! four times a month at Soundstage 21 of Universal Studios Orlando. Admission is free. Seats are first come, first serve.
Source: Miami Herald