This thread is kind of funny in the context that I've always seen WWE as having chosen Johnny Nitro/John Morrison over Shelton Benjamin in June 2006 when he beat Benjamin for the Intercontinental Championship at Vengeance. After that, Morrison became something of a 'project,' ranging from Cena/K-Fed to ECW Champion to the Dirtsheet and everything to the 'Raw Rumble' this week, while Benjamin was made placeholder United States Champion for I think 243 days, never even sniffing a significant push beyond strong midcarder again. That seemed to be where WWE began viewing Benjamin as strictly midcard material, while seeing something a bit more in Nitro... er, Morrison.
Don't see Morrison as the "new" anything, it's not like he debuted in 2010, he's been around for a long, long time. Unless you want to get flamed to death by calling him the new Shawn Michaels which used to be a semi-popular thing to do on these Internets. Happily Morrison himself has addressed that.
I won't say Morrison is outright better than Benjamin, but I do think Benjamin's list of best singles matches indicates that he needed an experienced veteran who extensively knew psychology like the back of his hand. It's why his best singles matches are with Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho and Christian in my estimation (not that god-awful ladder match from TLC '09). (Orton at Bad Blood '04 is a worthwhile match, too, since Orton had at the very least a precocious sense of old-school, almost NWA-influenced heel psychology to his work at that time.) Though he had a bunch of excellent tag matches with Haas, like against Guerrero and Tajiri in the ladder match or even recently in ROH against the Kings of Wrestling, and he stole the show in a couple MITBs, obviously.
Morrison's list of best matches in WWE so far indicate that it depends more on the strengths of his opponent like most workers and the chemistry with which he forges his matches than necessarily being so dependent on their battle-hardened grasp of psychology, though obviously that always helps for anybody at least a little. Very strong list of matches against guys as disparate as Jericho, Punk (love their chemistry), Sheamus (great old school work from both when they go at it), Miz, Bryan, Bourne, Edge, Rey, Jeff Hardy, Ziggler, McIntyre (violent no DQ bout on Smackdown), Tyson Kidd (their Smackdown series makes my mouth water), DH Smith (underrated ***1/4 match on Superstars, August '09), Carlito and good matching up against Undertaker in tag matches and an Elimination Chamber encounter about a year ago as well as with Shawn Michaels in a tag match with DX. There you have old psychology-based vets, powerhouses, slugfest-style heels, high-flyers, at least one spot monkey, and almost everything in-between.
Just my two cents, free to be thrown down the storm drain.