Chris Benoit murdered

[jimbo12345]

Quote A:HOw do you know they carry on with major injuries? I used to be a big fan of WWF then WWE...they had scenes that suggestd to the fans that "what a brave man...fighting on through such pain", making the adrenaline rush and the excitement more gripping. Yes, i'm sure there were exceptions. But these guys are insured to high hell. I doubt they would insure someone who knowingly does such physical expolits when they have such injuries.

I can think of....i can't remember his name (the guy who had a sock he stuck in people's mouths) hurting himself bad, and the match was stopped. Also British Bulldog, Brett Hart etc.

Footballers also play with injuries, as do probably every other sport.

Quote B:Because of the pain they are in? I can't believe for a second in their contracts it would say "you are obliged to perform with major injuries".\



I used to love wrestling mate, more than football. Benoit was always cool.
I'm guessing steroids may have played a part in his demise mentally.

I know that wrestlers have wrestled with injuries because I follow the kayfabe side of wrestling as well as the real life side of it. The information is freely available.

I am unaware of how/if wrestlers are insured though by your statement "But these guys are insured to high hell." I'm thinking maybe you know something I don't. Perhaps you can point me in the direction of some reports on the insurance taken out on professional wrestlers. I'd be interested to know if/how this works for them.

I can think of....i can't remember his name (the guy who had a sock he stuck in people's mouths) hurting himself bad, and the match was stopped.

I've read Mick Foley's (the guy who had a sock he stuck in people's mouths) autobiography and I can't think of a time when this happened (in fact, he is as near to the opposite of that as you could have picked out). Perhaps it was in kayfabe, perhaps it never happened, perhaps it was someone else or perhaps wrestlers do get injuries "Other than fatigue" (and I missed it).

I can't believe for a second in their contracts it would say "you are obliged to perform with major injuries".\

I would doubt that as well.

I used to love wrestling mate, more than football. Benoit was always cool.
I'm guessing steroids may have played a part in his demise mentally.

Don't call me "mate".

What is kayfabe? Made up?

As for the insurance, it's just an assumption. These guys to whoever they are contracted to, are worth a lot of money through the shows, merchadise etc. If they were to be injured/made to retire, this is bad for both the contract holder and the company. They insure against such events. Like Pam Anderson insuring her boobs etc.

Foley, that was his name. I think it was a "hell in a cell" match where he either got slammed from the top of the cell, or he jumped from the top and fell badly in the cell.

Excuse my "mate"...it wasn't meant as a friendly thing, just a term we attach to sentences where i come from (occassionaly) petal.

[jimbo12345]

And Sid Justice, when his leg snapped. That was nasty!!! Jake the Snake also had something bad happen. Didnt' Owne Hart die in the ring?

The biographies i'm sure are mostly true. But i assume that in contracts they sign, they are not allowed to publicly discuss certain goings on in the wrestling world.

Enemy....is that better?

[fstrulz]

I think Vince McMahon has something to do with it... Vince had a very bad relationship with Bret Hart (Bret even beat him in the locker room). Then, Bret's brother, Owen Hart, died when the ropes support suspending him all the way up from the top of the arena suddenly snapped, which dropped him all the way down to the ring.

Then years later. Eddie Guerrero died all of a sudden in his hotel room.

And now, it's Eddie's best friend, Chris Benoit.

[Smith]

Hes a celebrity, and his whole family, including him was murdered.

[Cheese]

Foley, that was his name. I think it was a "hell in a cell" match where he either got slammed from the top of the cell, or he jumped from the top and fell badly in the cell.

Awesome match. Foley got thrown off the cage, thrown through the cage (which knocked him unconscious and lost him a tooth) and still carried on going.

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Mick Foley is proper mental, I read in his book that he lost his ear whilst wrestling in Germany. Still kept wrestling the match though.

[jimbo12345]

I don't care how coreographed it is...falling from them heights on anything other than a crash mat has got to really hurt. And twice. Good entertainment.

Ohhhh noooo....i got that rush again. Whens the next wrestlemania!?!

[Cheese]

Ohhhh noooo....i got that rush again. Whens the next wrestlemania!?!

Ages away.

[jimbo12345]

i saw an ad for this TNS thingy....seems to be a lot of the old-school peeps there.

But, i was a WWE guy.

[Cheese]

From Rajah.com:




I'm sorry if this is a bit disjointed. I don't know what my intention was in writing this. I just wanted to write something to get my thoughts down on this touchy issue. I wanted to write on Tuesday, but I simply couldn’t do it. It still hurt too much. I found the strength to get through it this morning and this is the result of that.
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I was going to have fun on Monday night. I was going to play some poker with the boys, we would put a three hour episode of Raw up on the TV and laugh at the ridiculousness of the Vince McMahon death angle. At about 4pm Monday I remarked to my buddy Sean that I would buy him and his wife some shirts thatWWE was selling with "I DID IT" on the cover in reference to that silly angle. We laughed about it. He thought I was joking. I wasn't. I was going to do it. I was ready to leave the house at around 8pm or so, but before I did I hopped on the net to do my usual browsing. I stopped by the Oratory Forums to see this chilling topic: "Chris Benoit dead."

What?

Chris Benoit dead.

Is this some cruel joke? Who would say such a thing? Like I'm sure most of you reading this did, I went to some other sites looking for info. It was everywhere. Chris, his wife Nancy and his son Daniel were all dead. No details. Raw would be a three hour tribute show to him. No poker game. A few of us were fans and we couldn't go through with it. I went over to the mall to go buy a tape because I wanted to record the Benoit tribute show. It started at 9pm here in Canada running through till 12am. I barely touched the remote the whole time. I nearly cried when I heard Chavo and Edge telling their stories in particular. I was rocked. Devastated. I decided after watching the show that I'd jump on the computer and write about what this guy meant to me just as I had for Eddie Guerrero a year and a half earlier.

I checked the internet first. That's when it first came out. Chris Benoit likely killed his wife, his son and then himself in his own home.

What?

Chris Benoit committed a double murder-homicide.

It still makes me cringe.

How can you really describe what to think about what has happened to a once revered figure like Chris Benoit? It's hard for me to do. I don't really know what to say or how to say it. All I know is that over the last couple of days it has rocked my world more than I ever could have thought. To the wrestling business, and to somebody like Chris Benoit, I'm a nobody in the big picture. Just like you. One fan. One guy that will watch a wrestling show, that may go to a wrestling show and that may spend some money on a wrestling show be it a PPV or merchandise or something of that ilk. Yet why do I feel so much pain from learning that Chris Benoit murdered his wife, his son and then himself? It's because I felt a connection to this man as a fan of a business that I have loved for over 20 years of my life.

I met Chris Benoit on a couple different occasions. The last time was in August of 2004 in London , Ontario the night after he lost the World Title to Randy Orton at Summerslam. I had my nephew with me, who was 10 years old at the time, and we spent the afternoon outside in the parking lot area snapping photos and getting autographs with wrestlers. I can sit here and say I went there for him, but even as a grown man it's a cool experience to be able to say thank you to the wrestlers for performing as they do. I remember at the same time that Benoit showed up, Stacy Keibler showed up at the other side of the parking lot and a mass of people went over there. Benoit gets out of his car shirtless and he's got his son with him. It was not Daniel, it was his older son. I noticed he was in a suit. My nephew yelled out to the boy, "Your dad is cool!" Chris chuckled and gave that smirk we all know, as did his son. I asked Chris how his neck was because he took a crazy bump in the match with Orton the night before. He said he was okay and that it was just another night in the wrestling business. He gave my nephew his autograph, then told us to enjoy the show. The autograph sat on my nephew's dresser, along with a photo of Benoit after he won the World Title that I had bought for him, until last night. Now whenever I think of this moment I'll think of that smirk he gave and it sends chills up my body.

Chris Benoit to me wasn't just another wrestler. He was the epitome of what was good about the wrestling business. In a business and a company filled with over the top theatrics he was one of the guys that treated it like a sport. Of course it wasn't real, but he made it feel real. Why was I still watching despite being an adult man who had few close friends that still watched? Because of guys like Chris Benoit. When I got free tickets to Smackdown a month ago I barely wanted to go. Then my friend said, "Benoit will be there, he's worth it to go." And he's right. I remember remarking to him during the opening tag (Benoit & Hardy vs. MVP & Miz) that you can see how crisp Benoit works. It was an art form that he had perfected. We left before the main event ended to beat traffic, which is something I disagreed about because the match was a dark match featuring Edge & MVP teaming up with Batista & Benoit. We knew they'd be mailing it in, but it was still Benoit in there. I didn't want to go. In hindsight I'm glad we did.

Late last year I was doing some cleaning around the house and I figured it was time to get rid of some of the wrestling tapes. I wasn't watching as much as I used to, so it was time to get rid of some things. My collection was pretty huge. I don't know how many tapes and DVDs there were exactly, but I would guess around 150 or so. I threw some out, I gave some away and I sold some. I was left with about 20 of them. Some of them are great PPVs, some are DVDs and there are only a few compilation tapes left. I kept compilation tapes of Shawn Michaels, Rey Mysterio, Steve Austin and Chris Benoit. Four of Benoit, in fact. One of them was the first comp tape I ever had, which was 6 hours of Chris Benoit performing in Japan. I got that in 1995. Back then you had to know a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy. Websites might have existed, but I didn't know of it. I remember sitting in my friend Craig's basement as we watched this tape. We barely knew the Pegasus Kid's real name. We just knew we were fans of him. He was unlike the wrestlers we were watching in the WWF at the time. We had to see more. Eventually we did. Three of my favorite memories as a wrestling fan involved the ovation Benoit received after the Angle/Benoit match at the 2003 Rumble, his win at the 2004 Rumble and the title win at WrestleMania XX. Now? It's all tainted. I can't ever watch them again.

I've written about wrestling on the internet on and off for eight years. Throughout that period the most common question is who are your favorite wrestlers? For me the top three has always been Michaels, Austin and Benoit in any order. Those were my guys. I've seen more of Benoit than any wrestler in my lifetime because the other two had gaps in their career where they didn't wrestle. Benoit missed a year, but otherwise he was always in the ring as one of the best ever. I admired him for his ability to stay so good for so long. Back on June 9th I started a "Chris Benoit Appreciation" thread in the forums because he had just turned 40 and I thought we should honor the guy for that. I mentioned how great he's been for so long that sometimes we forget it. Oh, how I wish we could really forget it.

I was talking to a friend about it today and we both remarked that we probably saw more of Chris Benoit in our lives than any athlete, musician or actor over the years. I watched tapes of this guy. I watched him on my TV screen every week for the decade that he was performing for us here in North America. I had watched some of his best matches so many times that I could call the move before it even happened. I couldn't tell you how to do a math problem involving integers because I forgot it, but I could tell you about the time Chris Benoit leaped off the top rope through a table during a TLC match on Smackdown in May of 2001. I don't know why I remember things from wrestling so well. I guess because it's a passion it is something I want to remember.

Now these are memories I want to forget. The sooner the better. Now it feels like I've wasted years of my life supporting a man that ended up being a wife and child murderer. It makes me sick to my stomach.

The reason I love this wrestling business is because it is fantasy. The escapism that it provides us is the reason many of us, especially older fans like myself, still watch. I can watch WWE for two hours on a Monday night and totally forget about the argument I had with some guy at work that caused me a lot of stress that day. Sometimes though, the fantasy becomes all too real just as it has in this instance.

The worst thing to come of this is that a little boy, an innocent child, will never grow up. He'll never graduate from school. He'll never live his life the way all of us are afforded that luxury because of what society gives us. And why? Because his father smothered him to death after he killed the boy's mother. I don't get it. Why would a man who, from all counts, was of sound mind do such a thing? It makes me want to throw up.

I'm afraid we'll never really know. A lot of theories will come out. Psychological experts will spout from the mouth about patters from studies, but they'll be opinions. Facts will be hard to come by. I'm sure the media will use steroids as a reason because that sells papers. God forbid we talk about people dying because of head injuries, let's show Paris F'N Hilton walking out a jail because she's too stupid to take a cab or a limo. I hate the media. I despise it sometimes, but that's not here nor there. Not enough people will talk about the head injuries that wrestlers suffer or the grueling schedule they're forced to work. The wrestlers in WWE talk about performing 250 days a year as a badge of honor. Other sports don't do that. They're right. The problem is other sports don't lose 60 wrestlers under the age of 45 in the last decade. Wrestling does. Something needs to be done. Will it? I don't know. I just hope that something changes. Complacency isn't the answer. Change is the answer.

Now the overwhelming questions are as follows: What's next? What happens now?

The name of Chris Benoit will be wiped out of the WWE history books. There will be no Hall of Fame induction. You won't see his face and you won't see his matches. You won't hear announcers or wrestlers speak of him. If a fan brings a sign to a show with his name on it they will take it away. If they chant his name they will drown out the noise. In 10-15 years the kids who become teenage wrestling fans are only going to know him because they read about him on the internet as a killer. They won't know him as one of the best workers ever. They won't know him as somebody that inspired a lot of wrestlers to get into the business. I think that's the right thing to do. If somebody told you this 48 hours ago there's no way you'd think that. But now it's a reality. A reality that we have to deal with somehow. So much for a fantasy business.

I think Vince McMahon deserves a lot of credit for how he's handled things in this very difficult situation, as my close friend Cash has pointed out. It hasn't been easy, but he's been a rock for the company during a time when I'm sure he's finding it extremely hard to function. People will blame him for what happened. What needs to be remembered is he's not a double murderer. Chris Benoit is. Vince was his boss and maybe even his friend, but anybody that blames Vince for this is at fault. The person to blame is Chris Benoit. The double murderer.

To me Chris Benoit is no longer one of my favorite wrestlers. He's the double murderer. He's the man who erased a lifetime of memories for an act that was absolutely inexcusable. When I see that name it makes me cringe and I know that it always will. It pains me to just write that, much less to think it. It hurts. It hurts a lot, but that's how I feel and I don't think that's going to change. To Nancy and Daniel, I hope they rest in peace. To Chris, I have nothing more to say except that I will do everything in my power to forget that you ever existed. That's the only thing you deserve.

I don't know where to go from here. I don't know if I'm going to be watching wrestling this week. I doubt it. Next week? Not sure. Maybe I'll read the results. Maybe I'll tape it. I don't know if I have it in me to watch anymore. I don't know how the wrestlers that looked up to this guy are going to be able to perform. As hard as it is on us, think about them. Then I think about his two other kids. They're supposed to live the rest of their life while people talk behind their backs about their crazy double murderer father. I hope they have the strength to get through this. I think about his parents and his other family members. I think about his close friends inside and outside the business. As shocking as this is to us - the people that didn't know him personally - can you imagine how difficult it is for them? I feel for them. I don't know how they can go on from this.

This wasn't written to be some fantastic column that gets people talking. I don't know what it is, really. It's just me - a fan of this business - writing my disorganized thoughts about what is the most shocking thing to happen in my lifetime as a wrestling fan. I'm not editing it. I don't even know if it's organized. I don't care. I'm too shaken to worry about things like that. I don't know if I'll watch wrestling again. I thought I could never go back to watching a business that brought me so much joy for over 20 years of my life. Now I'm not sure. I think it would be a disservice to the people within the business to give up on it because one guy lost his mind. I don't know if I'll watch again. It might hurt too much. The more I think about it, though, the more I think that I'll probably come back to it. I don't know when. I don't even know why right. I just know that the business has been there for me and I'll be there for it.

Thanks for reading and please take care of yourselves as well as your loved ones.


http://rajah.com/base/node/8374

[Sextent]

I think Vince McMahon has something to do with it... Vince had a very bad relationship with Bret Hart (Bret even beat him in the locker room). Then, Bret's brother, Owen Hart, died when the ropes support suspending him all the way up from the top of the arena suddenly snapped, which dropped him all the way down to the ring.

Then years later. Eddie Guerrero died all of a sudden in his hotel room.

And now, it's Eddie's best friend, Chris Benoit.