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Chris Benoit double-murder suicide: Ten year anniversary.


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Next week marks the 10 year anniversary of the Chris Benoit double-murder and suicide. Thinking back to the time for this sends chills down my spine.

RAW airs live in the early hours UK time so I set my tape off and went to bed but it didn’t record for some reason. I go online the next day to find out what happened on RAW and learnt that Chris Benoit, Nancy Benoit and Daniel Benoit passed away.

As the details of what happened came out, my sadness turned to shock and horror that Chris Benoit killed his wife and son, then himself. Fuck.

Chris Benoit was one of my favourite wrestlers for a long time. My user name here was The Crippler and I won a signed photo of Benoit, it was on my wall framed. You’ll notice the repeated use of “was”. I’ve only watched a few Benoit matches since then.

What do posters think ten years on?

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No question this tragedy changed wrestling forever. The way concussions are viewed, protocols, wellness policies.  It seems the locker room is a lot different now also. Some complain all these guys do is play video games but I love it, it seems like a lot better work atmosphere, the guys and women all seem to be having the time of their lives. 

You can certainly debate the overall product.  They went way overboard with what would be called the "PG ERA" but it was understandable to want to change the industry's perception and they also have sponsors to keep happy. I don't mind seeing more families in the audience either, all the kids, they needed to cater to a new generation.  

Now we've drifted a little bit back to the center where you'll see more adult related content but still no blood, etc.  which I think is maybe the one unfortunate result because it's rendered things like cage matches useless.  

End of the day, creative has enough leeway to make things interesting despite the PG rating;  creative just sucks and if you gave them TV14 to play with the shows would still be very hit and miss. 

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I have an autographed picture with Benoit in an envelope in a desk drawer that has seen the light of day once in the past ten years. I also met Eddie, Malenko, and Saturn the same day. It was their first signing appearance after going to the WWF; at the Rt. 18 Flea Market in East Brunswick, NJ. 

Benoit was my favorite wrestler. Technical wrestlers like Benoit, Malenko, and Bret were my preference. I don't go out of my way to watch Benoit matches anymore. I still have my copy of his Hard Knocks dvd.

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I still have my Hard Knocks DVD, and up until the murders, I thought it was the best DVD they had put together. The documentary was really good, ended on a feel good moment, and the matches were superb. Then all of this happened and I don't even know where it is now. I can't bring myself to watch a Benoit match out of choice - if he's on a PPV or show I'm watching on the Network, then I'll let it play, but it just feels so wrong watching his matches in hindsight. Every chairshot, every swandive headbutt, every bad bump he takes, I wonder if that was a contributing factor to what happened that weekend in 2007. It just makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable.

The ONLY saving grace about all of that is what came in the years following regarding the concussions and how much more of a stern stance WWE took to the Wellness Policy. Eddie's death made those guidelines, but Benoit's meltdown forced them to crack down on a hell of a lot of things that have benefited a new generation of WWE talent. It's really fucking sad that it took the death of a woman and a child, and the suicide of a mentally ill man, to make all of that happen, but this is the world we live in.

On a sidenote, the texts Benoit sent some people, like Chavo, that weekend still creep me out to this day.

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The Raw tribute show is still one of the most baffling things Vince has ever done. Enough information had come out by that time that he should have known better, and some of the sit-downs are chilling because the guys clearly have an idea of what took place. 

It's strange, I can watch his ring work without trouble, but any promos or angles with him are too weird to sit through. 

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I got the news coming back from the beach, as my friends and I were playing hooky that day.  I was wordless for hours. I thought he was the greatest, then I found out he was a fallible, horrible human being.  

------

Now, as an admin... This is a very, VERY sensitive subject. Re-read your draft and use common sense before you post.  Think about what you're saying and tread extremely carefully here.  

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Same here. It's far too complex to wrap my brain around. I mean, I watched my dad die from complications with encephalitis and his brain was just gone by that point. He couldn't speak, would make motions with his arms in his hospital bed like he thought he was fishing, etc. I knew what was causing him to be so far gone, entirely removed from the person he was, and I still can't comprehend it.

I think about people like Chris Benoit or the slew of NFL players who have killed themselves the same way. I know what caused it, but it's still hard to fathom how the brain could be rewritten like that to murder your family. And then I think about his surviving son and, yeah, this is too hard to keep writing about.

If there's any positive to come from this it's showing just how far someone with brain damage could go. I don't think any of us ever imagined until that happened that someone would suffer brain damage from chair shots and other bumps that would cause repeated concussions that would drive them to kill. I would prefer for us to go back and continue living in oblivion that this could happen, but now that we're here, all I can hope for is that other lives are saved by some of the preventative measures that have been taken lately.

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1 hour ago, Craig H said:

it's still hard to fathom how the brain could be rewritten like that to murder your family

I don't know, man.  By all accounts, he was a pretty fucked up dude the whole time.  The brain damage exasperated that but it's not like he was Pollyanna to start with.

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2 hours ago, Craig H said:

I think about people like Chris Benoit or the slew of NFL players who have killed themselves the same way. I know what caused it, but it's still hard to fathom how the brain could be rewritten like that to murder your family. And then I think about his surviving son and, yeah, this is too hard to keep writing about.

If there's any positive to come from this it's showing just how far someone with brain damage could go. I don't think any of us ever imagined until that happened that someone would suffer brain damage from chair shots and other bumps that would cause repeated concussions that would drive them to kill. I would prefer for us to go back and continue living in oblivion that this could happen, but now that we're here, all I can hope for is that other lives are saved by some of the preventative measures that have been taken lately.

Totally agreed, and my view on the situation has changed a lot over the last 10 years with all the new research on CTE. He may have had some sociopathic tendencies as many wrestlers do, but he wasn't plotting the murder of his family for years. That was brought about by physical changes to his brain due to his line of work, and trying to shift the blame entirely to the man himself is simply cognitive dissonance.

The hardest Benoit matches to watch are the last couple years of his career where he has a permanent 1000 yard stare. He works his matches well through muscle memory, but he's so far gone in every other aspect. He needed help for a long time before this tragedy, and it sucks that this is what it took to wake everyone up to that fact.

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Unless it's been archived somewhere I really wish for a flashback we could see the original thread when all this went down.  It was pages upon pages showing the shock/sadness of them dying, then all kinds of reactions once it came out what happened.  Unless that's found I'm considering closer to the date to read the Observer issues from that time.

I remember the exact moments of it all.  Flipping on Raw I was in disbelief seeing news my favorite wrestler and his family was dead.  The speeches, the flashback matches, it was something I had to watch as I tried to process what happened.  Leaving home from my friend's house it was almost too much thinking about who could have done it.  I was already hearing rumors about it being either some random guy or Kevin Sullivan in a fit of revenge.  So when I got home and found out it was Chris it threw me for one helluva loop.  For the next month or so all I could check out was everything that was going on.  It was just a really unsettling time for quite awhile.  I'm surprised it didn't drive me away from wrestling for good.  Soon after the events I trashed his shirt and DVD, didn't want that in my house anymore.  The WM20 ending might as well have never existed, but seeing him with Nancy and Daniel is still eerie.

In the ten years since I might have seen three matches of his at most and not by choice.  I also have realized how much I fear for those who feel the need to make wrestling more "legitimate" by destroying themselves.  I hope Shibata's okay, but if he feels a need to headbutt a dude the way he did then I can't support that.  For that I refuse to watch him against Okada no matter how good it was.  And I'll be mortified if Bryan wrestles again, he shouldn't be anywhere near a ring.  But credit to WWE for making progress in looking out for their talent even if there's been exceptions along the way.

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19 minutes ago, Go2Sleep said:

Totally agreed, and my view on the situation has changed a lot over the last 10 years with all the new research on CTE. He may have had some sociopathic tendencies as many wrestlers do, but he wasn't plotting the murder of his family for years. That was brought about by physical changes to his brain due to his line of work, and trying to shift the blame entirely to the man himself is simply cognitive dissonance.

The hardest Benoit matches to watch are the last couple years of his career where he has a permanent 1000 yard stare. He works his matches well through muscle memory, but he's so far gone in every other aspect. He needed help for a long time before this tragedy, and it sucks that this is what it took to wake everyone up to that fact.

The worst for me is his match with Eddie at One Night Stand, because you have the addition of Eddie absolutely gorged with PEDs.

 

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Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

What bothered me then were the people that tried to somehow justify the murders, as well as the people in the little indy I freelanced with at the time openly mourning him. On one show about a week after it happened, I witnessed a Benoit tribute spot, including a "point to heaven" gesture afterwards, and was stunned beyond belief. I know it happened on bigger shows (didn't MVP do that too?), but it made my blood run cold.

What bothers me now is how little anyone seems to have learned from the circumstances surrounding the murders (or, for that matter, Misawa's death). With what we know now about CTE, as well as concussions and the long-term effects on the brain, how in the world do we still see people defend things like the Shibata headbutts, or what Daniel Bryan did to expedite his career ending as well as his apparent desire to continue his own self-destruction, and not get intensely worried for the long-term health of the people involved? It almost seems like people think "welp, we eliminated chairs to the head, that'll solve it".

Granted, the problem is the same in football and most contact sports, so it's not something exclusive to wrestling, but for me, it's troubling.

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17 hours ago, Ace said:

The worst for me is his match with Eddie at One Night Stand, because you have the addition of Eddie absolutely gorged with PEDs.

 

Eddie looked absolutely miserable in that match. It reminded me of Hardcore Holly's description of Eddie during his title reign. He'd basically drag himself into the arena, lay on the trainer's table hours before the show to get worked on. Pound some energy drinks and then go out and put on a 4 star match where the fans don't know how hurt he is and then he'd come back and collapse on the trainer's table again before going back to the hotel. Rinse and repeat.

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I wrote this in my review of the show, but the Shibata headbutt in the Okada match airing last night -- of all nights -- on US TV was pretty fucked up. 

Me and a buddy went to see One Night Stand at a local theater and when he saw Eddy he said "Is he on the sauce again?"

 

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I've watched tons of benoit matches the last few years....I'm rewatching the entirety of the monday night wars in real time.

it reminds me of why benoit was one of the best in the world at that point.

that said, everything that went down 10 years ago was horrific. i probably will never understand how something like that can happe. just absolutely bizarre and terrifying.

wasn't benoit's surviving son getting in to pro wrestling? that dude's got a tough career in front of him.

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1 hour ago, twiztor said:

wasn't benoit's surviving son getting in to pro wrestling? that dude's got a tough career in front of him.

Not sure if hes actively trying for a career, but he did post a pic of himself standing inside the WWE ring before a house show in Edmonton last night, so he's not distancing himself from wrestling.

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There was word going around that David Benoit was going to train at Lance Storm's school. I don't know if anything ever came of it. I personally wouldn't if I were in his shoes, but more power to him if it's something he decides to persue.

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I sometimes wonder what would have happened if he didn't kill himself. Odds are his defense would have argued he had diminished capacity and would have been able to get him life without parole or if that didn't work he'd be on Georgia's death row right now on appeal. Either way it's just the "why". Not the reasons how. Not the brain damage he had or was he juiced to the gills on HGH and testosterone among other things. I think a lot of us just wish there was a why this happened.

A suicide note...a video...just something to explain what was going through that mind that weekend. Honestly, in this day and age I am surprised that non of the more gory crime scene photos and videos have ever leaked out. Someone must have paid good money to keep those under lock and key.

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5 hours ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

Has anyone who was in WWE at the time discussed how it was interacting with Benoit those last few weeks or months leading up to the tragedy? Was he acting any different, etc..  It's still crazy to think of how much brain damage he had 

Hardcore Holly and Jericho talked about their interactions with Benoit in the days, months and years prior to the tragedy. Seems like Eddie and Johnny Grunge's deaths really hit him hard. I think it was Jericho who said that Benoit would always keep an action figure of Eddie in his car.

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