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Chris Benoit double-murder suicide: Ten year anniversary.


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On 6/16/2017 at 2:57 PM, Technico Support said:

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.

This times a million. Way to many people telling themselves their hero wasn't a terrible human being it was all the concussions fault when in reality he didn't just snap. It was premeditated and the creepy texts leading up to it prove that. 

I'm not trying to give the concussions a complete pass they definitely didn't help but they are not the completely to blame. 

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1 hour ago, Zartan said:

This times a million. Way to many people telling themselves their hero wasn't a terrible human being it was all the concussions fault when in reality he didn't just snap. It was premeditated and the creepy texts leading up to it prove that. 

I'm not trying to give the concussions a complete pass they definitely didn't help but they are not the completely to blame. 

This is ridiculous and completely ignorant of all the research and case studies of CTE in the last 10+ years. Do you really think all these lurking psychopaths congregating in activities rife with sub-concussive head trauma is just an amazing coincidence?

A 25-year-old NFL player in good standing with the community and with no history of violence killed his girlfriend and himself no more than 5 minutes from my house. Hand-waving degenerative brain disease and putting the onus on the individual instead of admitting that it's a legitimate risk of the sport is the real cognitive dissonance.

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With all the variables, its doesn't exculpate his responsibilty, either morally or (likely) legally. But it might explain his actions, and hopefully he served as a warning or some sort of example. Why didn't Vince ban the flying headbutt after all this I haven't a clue.

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3 hours ago, Kuetsar said:

With all the variables, its doesn't exculpate his responsibilty, either morally or (likely) legally. But it might explain his actions, and hopefully he served as a warning or some sort of example. Why didn't Vince ban the flying headbutt after all this I haven't a clue.

Harley Race never killed no family.

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12 hours ago, Mick32 said:

Benoit was an amazing wrestler. 

I've tried to watch Benoit once in the past ten years. I couldn't do it. Fuck that guy. 

Was he though?

This a question I've asked a number of times over the last decade and the more time goes on the more I wonder if Benoit wasn't simply an above average wrestler is a sea on Attitude Era bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I thought he was the best in the world at the time too but looking back his best matches all came with better workers - Guerrero, Angle and Jericho. I can't think of any matches of the top of my head where Benoit was the standout guy for anything other that his stiffness and his proto Suplex City layout.

He came hot on the heels of Bret Hart being a God among men as far as workers go in North America and right before the UFC took hold with real combat sports. He also had the cred from Japan right as Puro was getting a lot of traction with the internet community. Combine this with the perception that he was being groomed for a top spot but always held down under the glass ceiling in WCW and you get this mini Daniel Bryan kind of support network going.

Now I'm sure part of this is sourness on what happened being combined with a total lack of watching Benoit in recent times but the closer we get to this date the more I think about him and the more I think he was seriously over rated and probably achieved about as much as he possibly could in terms of career titles and accolades. 

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On 6/17/2017 at 0:43 PM, The Green Meanie said:

Regal's interview still haunts me to this day.

I watched William Regal's interview on the Benoit RAW show for the first time last Friday (it's actually the only thing I've ever seen from it). Wow.

18 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The episode of Talk is Jericho with Nancy's sister, Sandra, is both a fascinating and horrifying listen.

Yes, it is.

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18 hours ago, Go2Sleep said:

This is ridiculous and completely ignorant of all the research and case studies of CTE in the last 10+ years. Do you really think all these lurking psychopaths congregating in activities rife with sub-concussive head trauma is just an amazing coincidence?

A 25-year-old NFL player in good standing with the community and with no history of violence killed his girlfriend and himself no more than 5 minutes from my house. Hand-waving degenerative brain disease and putting the onus on the individual instead of admitting that it's a legitimate risk of the sport is the real cognitive dissonance.

I don't think anybody's saying it's just one thing or just another thing.  My original response was to someone saying something about Benoit's brain being rewired by CTE to kill his family.  I really believe it's a combination of CTE, tons of steroid use, and whatever mental baggage Benoit brought to the table that was obviously made worse by this insane industry.  But I don't think CTE made him refer to a guy crying over  a recent death as "a little bitch" and I don't think CTE made him the locker room bully that some eventually admitted he was.  

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I fully believe that brain damage was a factor, but there are people that kill their families that don't have CTE, its not an automatic excuse/reason for what he did. CTE has a lot of different effects on a person but I don't think a person's actions can generally be blamed on just one thing, steroids are known to make people aggressive as well and all reports show he was a pretty intense person in the first place. I don't really see any benefit in trying to figure out what percentage of what caused him to do what he did, although I think everyone can agree that finding ways to limit CTE is good and steroids can be bad if abused.

I still can and do watch his matches if they come up in a show I am already watching, and I do still think he was a great wrestler, his matches hold up well for me. But I generally separate the person from the art when I watch wrestling, otherwise I wouldn't be able to watch much of any wrestling since very few wrestlers (especially in the 'old days') were angels. Just depends on what level of devil they are, and while Benoit out-ranks the rest I still can watch his matches without any real issue.

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8 hours ago, L_W_P said:

Was he though?

This a question I've asked a number of times over the last decade and the more time goes on the more I wonder if Benoit wasn't simply an above average wrestler is a sea on Attitude Era bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I thought he was the best in the world at the time too but looking back his best matches all came with better workers - Guerrero, Angle and Jericho. I can't think of any matches of the top of my head where Benoit was the standout guy for anything other that his stiffness and his proto Suplex City layout.

He came hot on the heels of Bret Hart being a God among men as far as workers go in North America and right before the UFC took hold with real combat sports. He also had the cred from Japan right as Puro was getting a lot of traction with the internet community. Combine this with the perception that he was being groomed for a top spot but always held down under the glass ceiling in WCW and you get this mini Daniel Bryan kind of support network going.

Now I'm sure part of this is sourness on what happened being combined with a total lack of watching Benoit in recent times but the closer we get to this date the more I think about him and the more I think he was seriously over rated and probably achieved about as much as he possibly could in terms of career titles and accolades. 

If you worshiped at the very narrow and hugely prevalent altar of workrate then Benoit was (and in many ways, still is) your lord and savior. He hits those marks as well as anyone ever. It's just that wrestling is so much more than that, and some of that, Benoit was at least capable at (and others less so).

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11 hours ago, RolandTHTG said:

Harley Race never killed no family.

Harley's been telling people to stop doing the spot for years. I think even predating Benoit's death. Just due to the neck damage alone (as seen with Harley, Dynamite, Benoit, Bryan, Honma)

 

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4 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I don't think anybody's saying it's just one thing or just another thing.  My original response was to someone saying something about Benoit's brain being rewired by CTE to kill his family.  I really believe it's a combination of CTE, tons of steroid use, and whatever mental baggage Benoit brought to the table that was obviously made worse by this insane industry.  But I don't think CTE made him refer to a guy crying over  a recent death as "a little bitch" and I don't think CTE made him the locker room bully that some eventually admitted he was.  

Benoit obviously wasn't a role model before hand, but there's still a pretty big gap between stealing someone's wife, being a JBL-level locker room bully, and killing your family. Will brain damage affect everyone with violent and self-destructive tendencies? No, but it's happened enough times now that there isn't any serious debate on whether or not it's a legit possibility.

If people want to hate Benoit, that's fine. I don't feel compelled to defend his character, but he's dead, and the attitude that he was uniquely terrible seems dangerously close to "this could never happen again."

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On 6/18/2017 at 3:45 PM, Go2Sleep said:

This is ridiculous and completely ignorant of all the research and case studies of CTE in the last 10+ years. Do you really think all these lurking psychopaths congregating in activities rife with sub-concussive head trauma is just an amazing coincidence?

A 25-year-old NFL player in good standing with the community and with no history of violence killed his girlfriend and himself no more than 5 minutes from my house. Hand-waving degenerative brain disease and putting the onus on the individual instead of admitting that it's a legitimate risk of the sport is the real cognitive dissonance.

Not discounting CTE just saying it tends to get the full blame when it was obviously many factors. He was strung out on pain killers, juicing hard and drinking to add a few things. 

I mean, he idolized Dynamite Kid... 

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14 hours ago, L_W_P said:

Was he though?

This a question I've asked a number of times over the last decade and the more time goes on the more I wonder if Benoit wasn't simply an above average wrestler is a sea on Attitude Era bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I thought he was the best in the world at the time too but looking back his best matches all came with better workers - Guerrero, Angle and Jericho. I can't think of any matches of the top of my head where Benoit was the standout guy for anything other that his stiffness and his proto Suplex City layout.

He came hot on the heels of Bret Hart being a God among men as far as workers go in North America and right before the UFC took hold with real combat sports. He also had the cred from Japan right as Puro was getting a lot of traction with the internet community. Combine this with the perception that he was being groomed for a top spot but always held down under the glass ceiling in WCW and you get this mini Daniel Bryan kind of support network going.

Now I'm sure part of this is sourness on what happened being combined with a total lack of watching Benoit in recent times but the closer we get to this date the more I think about him and the more I think he was seriously over rated and probably achieved about as much as he possibly could in terms of career titles and accolades. 

Please don't make me defend Benoit, but that motherfucker could wrestle. The year he won the BOTSJ alone is as good or better than anything you'll see today. 

But, again, fuck that guy. In addition to the murders, it seems like every new Benoit story I hear these days is about him being an asshole, a bully or whatever.  

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After his death, I said that I wouldn't have a problem watching a Benoit match.  My rationale was that I could separate the wrestler from the horrible crap he did outside the ring.  And... if you refused to watch matches with any wrestler that had been outed as a terrible human being/adulterer/drug addict/steroid user/deadbeat dad/whatever, you wouldn't be watching much wrestling.

I still kinda feel that way, but, be that as it may, I haven't watched a Benoit match since his death.  I have seen a couple matches from MVP's New Japan run where he was in Benoit tribute mode and doing Benoit spots and taunts, and it's... creepy.  I'm not so sensitive that I get weirded out by someone doing the crossface or a diving headbutt,  I am kinda bothered by MVP suddenly using Benoit 's rolling german suplex spot.

That RAW tribute show is... something.  I have no idea what Vince was thinking going ahead with that unless he thought he could somehow use his influence to bury the story and real cause of death.

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I'm an outlier. I don't have an issue watching Benoit matches as I separate the individual from his final actions (which having cared for my 85 year old grandfather with dementia I can totally understand the mindset that Benoit was probably going through - fits of violence was not out of the norm in my experience of being attacked and punched repeatedly by a man that raised me).

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Man, I can't believe it's been 10 years. I remember it so vividly, especially the sinking feeling when I first heard details. That was very nearly the end of my wrestling fandom. I didn't watch another first-run WWE show for another two years, until a friend organized a party around the Raw hosted by Shaq. I tried sticking with Ring of Honor, but Nigel throwing around headbutts and Davey Richards suddenly wearing long tights and a vest while teasing Benoit spots turned me off to that, too. I only really got back into wrestling in 2011 when I moved across the street from a huge fan, and we'd get together for pay-per-views. 

The changes since were necessary and for the better. I hate to think what could have become of Daniel Bryan if WWE still had a lax attitude toward concussions. It also happened for REALLY cynical reasons -- I credit Linda's awful political aspirations as much, if not more than the Benoit murders -- but I'm glad WWE transitioned to PG. I cringe looking back at the Attitude Era, and honestly, some of the Ruthless Aggression era was even more embarrassing with its sleaziness. The show has a tendency to be really boring today, but I attribute that more to bad writing than I do PG. I have a son now who's too young for wrestling, but it's nice to think that in say, four or five years, I can watch with him without fear of shit like Katie Vick and Vince vs. God. 

As for watching Benoit matches, I haven't actively sought them out, but I have seen a few. I've also watched highlights of O.J. Simpson at USC, including the Game of the Century vs. UCLA in its entirety. I listen to Michael Jackson's music. Chinatown is one of my favorite movies. I don't know if that's right or wrong, to be honest. I would certainly never glorify any of them. 

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I don't know if it makes sense but I have a bigger problem with people aping his moves and mannerisms than actually watching his matches. If he pops up in a segment or a match during a show I'm watching, it doesn't bother me. But I think it's kinda shitty for people to emulate him after what he did.

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54 minutes ago, The Natural said:

I couldn't believe when Shawn Michaels used the Crossface against Randy Orton at Survivor Series 2007 figuring the move would never be used again.

Years ago he had an interview in WWE magazine and they addressed that.  He said that while it was horrible what happened he wanted to "take the move back" so it wasn't associated with him.  To his credit after awhile the shock of it wore off for me and I became fine with him using it.  The move itself was long associated with Benoit, but I feel enough time's passed where seeing it isn't a big deal anymore.  And with others using the move it doesn't feel odd to me.

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