10 Real Life Events That Forced WWE Title Changes (6)

6. John Morrison Wins ECW Title After Chris Benoit Incident

In June of 2007 the ECW Title was vacated because Bobby Lashley, the current champion, was drafted to Raw. The announced match for the ECW Title at Vengeance: Night of Champions was supposed to see CM Punk challenging Chris Benoit. It would have been the first time they ever wrestled each other.
That match didn’t happen because that was the same weekend when Chris Benoit committed a double murder suicide on his wife Nancy, son Daniel and himself. At the time of the show, WWE didn’t know what happened with Benoit. All they knew was that he wasn’t there and they had to put somebody in his place. They even aired a Benoit tribute show the next night on Raw when they had heard that he died.
Due to Benoit’s absence, plans changed and Johnny Nitro took Benoit’s place. According to reports following Benoit’s death, it was revealed that Benoit was moved to ECW to win the ECW Title and be a veteran presence on that brand while working with younger talent.
Nitro ended up defeating Punk clean for the ECW Title. They feuded for several months with Nitro actually changing his name to Morrison while he was still the ECW Champion.
Credit WWE and the performers for making the best out of what was a very bad situation.