Chris Benoit: One Year Later - Part 1
It was in June 2007 when the world of professional wrestling changed forever. Chris Benoit murdered his wife Nancy, his son Daniel, and finally killed himself on an early summer weekend. While deaths in professional wrestling have become all too common in the last 15 years, the circumstances surrounding what happened are what shocked so many.
What made this different was Benoit took two others into the abyss of death with him.
Benoit was not a gregarious and jolly person, he was a quiet individual who through sheer hard work and talent became one of the top superstars in World Wrestling Entertainment. With one action, the legacy of Benoit was ruined. More importantly, three lives were lost – and why?
In the past year many questions have been asked by media, fans and even politicians. While these questions will never be fully answered, the WWE has made changes to how they conduct their drug-testing policy as well as more thoroughly examining concussions. For one wrestling journalist, that just isn’t enough.
Finally, a niche industry has sprung up of Chris Benoit books. A pair of Benoit-related books have already shown up in bookstores with two more to come out in the fall of 2008. In order to fully understand where we are, it’s only right to look at where we were.
Where It All Began
Scott Keith has a very unique perspective on Chris Benoit. As an author and freelance writer for many years, he’s written a great deal on the career of Chris Benoit for a number of websites and now his personal blog. He is also, like Benoit, a Canadian. But there is something about Keith that makes him unique among all the people interviewed for this story.
Keith saw Benoit’s debut match for Stampede Wrestling up in Calgary back in 1987. Over the next twenty years, Keith would follow Benoit’s career as he went from Calgary to Japan and then to the United States with Extreme Championship Wrestling and World Championship Wrestling.
What separated Benoit from so many other wrestlers, as Keith and other fans will attest to, was his hard work in the ring.
Qumar Zaman, a wrestling fan for 20 years, said about Benoit: “I think Benoit was able to captivate more and more fans with his hard work and desire. If you put in the effort, win or lose, the fans will get behind you. And that was the case for Benoit. He gave 100 percent in every match and showed a great arsenal of moves that wowed the audience. The more that the fans saw this, the more they got behind him.”
Keith and Zaman were able to follow Benoit’s career throughout. No matter how hard he worked or how much the fans began to embrace him as a real favorite, he was never able to capture a world heavyweight title, the top prize for any wrestling company. Four years into his WWE career and 17 years into his professional wrestling career, Benoit finally achieved his dream by winning the title at Wrestlemania 20 in Madison Square Garden, the mecca of wrestling. Just four years after celebrating his championship victory with his friend Eddie Guerrero, wife Nancy, and son Daniel, all four had tragically died.
The Cause
Chris Benoit’s wrestling career was never easy, but the amount of tragedy and physical pain led directly to the murder/suicides.
*Going back to 1999, his friend and a fellow wrestler Owen Hart accidentally fell to his death from 50 feet at Kemper Arena in Kansas City at a WWE (then called WWF) Pay-Per-View.
*Benoit required neck surgery in the summer of 2001 and was out for almost a year in recovery.
*Nancy Benoit filed for divorce in the months in the summer of 2003 due to irreconcilable differences. She rescinded later in the summer.
*One of his best friends, Eddie Guerrero, died on Nov. 13, 2005 due to an enlarged heart. According to those close to Benoit and various reports, this is what may have set Benoit over the edge.
*On Feb. 16, 2006, one of Chris Benoit’s neighbors and fellow wrestler Johnny Grunge died due to complications of sleep apnea.
*Benoit took a sabbatical from wrestling for most of the spring and summer of 2006, citing a want to heal nagging shoulder injuries.
The Effect
Over the course of one weekend, June 22 until June 24 2007, Chris Benoit murdered his wife Nancy and son Daniel and then he committed suicide. There is no one cause, but the effect is very clear. Three people are dead and an entire industry was shaken to its very core. The WWE was forced to defend itself. The media began a frenzy.
“I was particularly disturbed, especially by the mainstream media and in particular with CNN,” Zaman said of the coverage. “I followed the news through CNN whenever I could, and the first instance of his death was assumed steroid use. To jump to such a conclusion was irresponsible and unfair. Sure, there were many wrestlers who succumbed to steroid abuse, but how could you substantiate such a thought when investigators had not completed their case? Why make the assumption when nothing was known?
“Then, another thing irritated me. The AP just bunched together the deaths of Owen Hart, Eddie Guerrero and Benoit into this humongous list of current and former pro wrestlers that have died over the last 15 years. The list was long and there was a lot of blame put toward the WWE. Sure, they could have easily prevented the death of Owen Hart, but they aren’t fully responsible for the lives of past wrestlers who have left the profession. To place the blame on Vince McMahon and WWE was cruel, and showed me why Vince and the WWE feel that the media has a vendetta against them. How could Vince be held responsible for the death of some mid-card wrestler who once fought in the WWE for a year or two, then retired? ”
As a member of the media, Jonathan Hood of Chicago’s ESPN Radio 1000 can provide a unique perspective. He is a life-long wrestling fan and once hosted a wrestling chat on show for another Chicago station, 670-AM “The Score,” on a weekly basis. Hood still writes about wrestling in his column “Wrestling Ringpost“.
Hood believes that the coverage was fair, and that certain media members like Larry King not knowing a lot about professional wrestling really isn’t a surprise. He was also able to inform the management at the station and talk a little bit about it on his show.
Lumping all the media together would also be unfair, as Scott Keith makes clear in his assertions about how the Canadian media handled the story.
“It was front-page news up here and he was treated more as a legitimate sports star than the circus freak that the American press treated him as,” Keith said. “I’d say the coverage was more ‘gentle’, for lack of a better word, with the press asking more “How could this happen to a decent guy like Benoit” rather than ‘STEROIDS ARE THE DEVIL’S WORK!’ like CNN seemed to jump right into the day after. But then this is sadly the second mainstream wrestling death [referring to Owen Hart’s death] that made the front pages in Canada in less than a decade, so they had some practice.”
read part two here
read part three here
Tags: Chris Benoit, CNN, Daniel Benoit, death, Eddie Guerrero, Extreme Championship Wrestling, Johnny Grunge, Jonathan Hood, murder, Nancy Benoit, Owen Hart, professional wrestling, Scott Kieth, Stampede Wrestling, steroids, suicide, Vince McMahon, World Championship Wrestling, Wrestlemania 20, Wrestling Ringpost, WWE
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