Before kicking off the Liv Morgan World Tour, and before becoming the first Women’s Crown Jewel Champion, the current Women’s World Champion sat at home nursing a dislocated shoulder. As Liv Morgan recovered for six months throughout 2023, she says she had a moment of clarity.
Over the first decade of her career, she’d allowed her ring work to speak for itself. During her time away, Morgan took a step back and felt like she had lacked a true voice or character. As she plotted her return to the ring, she created the Liv Morgan Revenge Tour built around the realities of her injury, while envisioning a path back to the top of the WWE mountain.
“The Liv Morgan Revenge Tour,” Morgan tells Uproxx Sports, “gave me such a purpose.”
Some of the best stories in professional wrestling have been at least somewhat based in reality, and the way Morgan was injured gave her a motive, direction, and something so personal and true, that it allowed her for the first time in her career to really sink her teeth into a story.
“Rhea (Ripley) really did dislocate my shoulder,” Morgan says. “I really sat home for six months watching her ascend to the top of the division. And so it was all really personal to me, and I used all that to come back and do exactly to her what she did to me. But I did that and more.”
While she’s navigated trying to find her character throughout a decade in WWE, elements of who Morgan is as a person have helped her continue to chip away at this dream. Her drive, passion, wanting to learn as much as she can, and desire to give herself an opportunity to see what she could achieve has brought her this far.
“(My time away) just gave me the time and space that I needed to really settle into my own, which brought out the best version of Liv Morgan than we’ve seen thus far,” Morgan says.
The last seven months have been a whirlwind for Morgan. She kicked off the Raw after WrestleMania 40 with a beatdown of Ripley that would alter the trajectory of her career. A legitimate shoulder injury suffered in the melee forced Ripley to relinquish the title and led to Morgan beating Becky Lynch for the belt. That win kickstarted the pivotal run of her career, with new twists and turns added by the month.
“I like to believe that everything happens for a reason. Even if you don’t know the reason, I know that’s so cliche, but I really live my life by that. And so even when things happen that I feel are bizarre or even unfortunate things, I always tend to think that on the other side of it, it is going to be for a greater purpose,” Morgan says.
“There’s so much beauty in the madness and it’s cool to be able to pivot and adjust when things aren’t going the way we anticipated it, because we took something that was supposed to be great and we made it even greater. And so I just think that the stars are aligned and everything is happening exactly as it should.”
Morgan has embraced the “crazy, messy love triangle” that’s followed her dynamic with Dominik Mysterio and Ripley, “whether they love to hate us or hate to love us.” Mysterio switched allegiances, Morgan joined the Judgement Day while Ripley was ousted, Raquel Rodriguez returned to join her side, and Ripley recently suffered another injury that will sideline her for the foreseeable future.
Paired alongside Mysterio and thus far able to hold off Ripley, Morgan isn’t just matching the status quo for a world champion — she’s literally doing things that haven’t been done before.
The latest in her evolution from charting a Revenge Tour to creating a Liv Morgan World Tour came with a championship-worthy diamond ring, after claiming the first-ever Women’s Crown Jewel Championship in a win over Nia Jax last week.
“It means so much to me on so many different levels,” Morgan continues. “We’ve made history in Saudi Arabia. We had the very first women’s title match for the Women’s Crown Jewel Championship. And that is so much progress. I feel like since I’ve started in WWE, all I’ve wanted to do is really carve my own path and see how great I could become. And the fact that I’ve made history and the first and only Women’s Crown Jewel Champion, I am just so proud and so honored. And I just hope that I do it justice.”
The opportunities are endless for where Morgan goes from here. She’s open to the idea of a second Evolution all-women’s wrestling show, with a loaded roster across Raw, Smackdown, and NXT.
“I don’t think we need our own show to be more prestigious,” Morgan says. “I think we are prestigious and I think people tune in specifically for the women’s segments and for women’s wrestling. But to give the fans what they want is why I would love to have another all women’s show in Evolution part 2.”
A WrestleMania main event is something that’s eluded Morgan across her career, but calls it the pinnacle of wrestling in WWE and is without a doubt an accomplishment she’d love to check off her bucket list.
“You can’t get any bigger, higher, better, more prestigious than main eventing WrestleMania,” Morgan says. “I spend a lot of my life dreaming and hoping and wishing. And I’ve been fortunate and lucky and blessed enough to have a lot of those things come true. So yes, main eventing WrestleMania is definitely on my list. With whom, I don’t know what that looks like or what it is but I hope that we can find out together.”
Morgan can accomplish just about anything because at this very moment she genuinely has the faith and belief that she can. As she continues to build upon her second world title run, the Liv Morgan we see onscreen every week couldn’t be any more different than the one that was Smackdown Champion two years ago.
“It’s just a different Liv Morgan. The Liv Morgan that won the SmackDown Championship from Ronda Rousey, that girl she was just happy to be there. She maybe didn’t even see herself or believe in herself as a champion yet. She was a girl with just a pipe dream, cash in her briefcase at the right moment in the right time,” Morgan says.
“This Liv Morgan is the most confident version of herself so far. This Liv Morgan knows her worth. This Liv Morgan knows she’s the greatest women’s champion of all time. This Liv Morgan knows she’s untouchable. This Liv Morgan knows she has the most dominant faction in all of WWE by her side. That’s the difference.”
