6/30/07--The Life and Death of Chris Benoit

I sort of cringe these days when someone will ask me if I'm a wrestling fan.  That wasn't always the case.  I used to say yes with a certain pride in my voice--being the fan of a "fringe sport" made you feel a certain sense of inclusion, as if you were privy to something that the masses in general were not.  But that was back in the days of wrestling the way it USED to be....the way it was when my maternal grandparents turned me into a fan during my summer visits to South Carolina.

It was a long time ago.

Years later, somewhere along the line, I got "smarted up" to the wrestling business.
Oh sure, everyone always told me that it was "fake".....which I always thought was an interesting way of describing the fact that the endings were pre-determined.  Because once I got closer to the industry...more "inside" as a fan, I found out things that I your average person could never understand.  Like for instance:

1) Not all the punches are pulled.  Sometimes a wrestler will just stand there, knowing that he's going to get hit, take a punch--because it adds to the "authenticity" of the match.
2) Yeah, they learn how to fall.  Its probably a good idea when you are doing it 10 times a match and you work 300 times-plus a year.
3) The blood?  Its real.  Its not "chicken blood" or some other ridiculous thing like that.
It usually is obtained one of two ways---"the hard way" which means you ALLOW your opponent (almost always a veteran of the sport who has some prior experience at this sort of thing) to punch you on an area of your face, maybe around your eyebrow....until the blood starts to flow---or, and this is the one that really creeps out non-wrestling fans, you "gig"....or "blade".  The wrestler will take that shot from the dreaded "foreign object" and then take the tip of the razor blade that he has hidden in the tape wrapped around his fingers....and scrape his forehead until the blood comes out.  No.....really.  That's how they do it.  I know it sounds totally barbaric.  But the old wrestling adage used to be:  "Red makes green".  Blood means money.

And that's just a few of the things I learned.  Trust me, there are more.  As I continued to be smartened up, my old friend Pete Lederberg told me that "the closer you get to wrestling's true inside....the more repelled you become."  Another wrestling insider countered by saying that, on the contrary, the more a fan learns about wrestling, the more they are drawn to the true darkness, the deception, the seediness of it.  The proverbial moth to the flame.

Which brings me to Chris Benoit, his wife Nancy, and their son Daniel.

I'm sure you read about the Benoit family, the murder-suicide and the unquestioned senselessness of it all.  I've been a wrestling fan since around 1971 and I've never felt the sickness in my stomach that I felt on Monday evening when the story first broke.
I sat by my computer watching the updates coming fast and furious, and here I was, hoping that the story of their deaths either wasn't true....or, if it was....some sort of tragic accident.  A gas leak.  Maybe even a home invasion.  How often do you hope that someone's death was a random robbery?  I did all of this because of the looming sense of dread that I felt that somehow this would end up being just what it turned out to be, a murder-suicide.  And then I knew that all of those old questions would be thrust upon me:  Hey, weren't you a wrestling fan?  What's up with the guy who killed his wife?
Hey, why did that wrestler murder his own son??

And then of course, the media frenzy started, with those geniuses at ESPN immediately trying to pinpoint steriods as a likely contributing factor.  ROID RAGE.....the talking heads tried to lay the blame for the incident on STEROIDS!!  STEROIDS!!   Why?
Well, because it makes for really nice headlines and then they get to act like their all really concerned about wrestlers and athletes.  Excuse me while I puke.

The next to nothing that I know about steroids does include this:  A roid rage does not last over the course of 3 days.  There's the momentary craziness....then it passes.
I just cannot fathom a man in the midst of a roid rage placing bibles by his dead wife's body and then going to watch a PPV with the son that he is planning on killing.


Let me give you some insight into the life of a wrestler that you may not realize.  A wrestler who is employed by the WWE is usually on the road 20 to 25 days a month.
And that's probably being generous.  Multiple that over the course of a year and you are talking about a person being on the road over the course of a year anywhere from 250 to 300 days a year.  Its not the glamorous life that some might think.  You generally are required to be at the arena hours before the card is scheduled to begin and its a long, boring day.  You come out when its finally time for your match and you get the incredible rush of adrenaline that anyone would get as they soak in the adoration of the crowd.
You compete in the physically exhausting match, walk out, once again to the adoration of the crowd--and the undeniable rush that it brings--and return to the dressing room.
If you work near the top of the card, chances are the dressing room is nearly empty and you dress and leave alone.  You make your way back to your hotel where you are faced with a couple of choices.  That rush you felt from the crowd, that one that got you so high, has not completely subsided.....so you have to decide to either go downstairs to the hotel bar--where there will undoubtedly be some of "the boys" drinking themselves into a stupor that goes with coming down from the rush and probably a mixture of fans and "arena rats"....those particularly pathetic women who feel some sense of importance in having sex--of all types and peculiarities--with a wrestler.  That of course could lead to all sorts of things like venereal disease and pregnancies....but for now, let's skip over those and get back to the other choice a wrestler has back in that hotel room.  The other choice the wrestler has is to sit in the hotel room and try to "come down" from that rush.
Sometimes it might be by drinking some beer....sometimes a bottle of wine (there's one very famous wrestler--married and with kids--who came down by going back to his hotel room and....get this....READING.  Trust me.....that guywas like a freak of nature) and sometimes with a little pharmaceutical help.  The wrestler might take a sleeping pill, or maybe a muscle relaxant...or maybe both....sometimes with some wine.  Sometimes they begin to take a pill called a "soma", which is a muscle relaxant.  And eventually the rush subsides and they are able to sleep.  Until the next day.
The next day begins and the wrestler has to get himself up and usually off to the airport to catch a flight to the next city.  If he is really, really lucky the next city is within driving distance--ya know, maybe 500 miles or less--and if he is even luckier, he can hitch a ride with one of the other "boys" to the next city.  But if he's not lucky, its off to the airport and onto another town for another show.  He gets to the arena, and he's still feeling a little out of it from that soma he took the night before.  So to perk himself up a little bit, he takes the opposite....maybe (if you're naive) its something as innocent as a caffeine tablet.  Maybe its something sold over the counter to truckers, to give them that boost for those long drives at night.  Or maybe its NOT something sold over the counter.  Maybe its something that is not available at your local 7-11.  Maybe its something that is not even available at your local pharmacy.  But hey, it works and it does the trick, because a few minutes after the wrestler takes it....he's sharp as a tack and ready to go out and perform for the crowd.  The one that won't get there for another couple of hours.  And this cycle keeps going on, day after day after day.  And eventually, that one soma and that one glass of wine turn into two....and then three.
And that little pick-me-up that you needed in the morning turns into a bigger pick-me-up.  And all of a sudden you have a Louie Spiccoli on your hands.  He was a wrestler of some note who died--at aged 27--in his sleep from an overdose of soma.

That's part of the glamorous life of a wrestler on the road.  Oh, and then there's the rare time you spend actually AT home.  Those couple of days out of a month when you come back and are expected to re-enter the "real world".  Your wife is the same woman you left at home, and probably doesn't realize some of the weird things that have been happening on the road.....the drugs, the drinking, the women, the sex....and probably doesn't understand why she is being treated differently.  Your children probably only know you as the person they see on the television--and that's only if you're high enough on the card to GET on television.  It can make those visits home REALLY, REALLY complicated.


Which brings us back again, to Chris Benoit and the life and home that he and Nancy Benoit had tried to create for themselves and their young son, Daniel.  Life, in a cruel twist of fate, had given Chris and Nancy a special needs child and there had been some rather vocal disagreements as to the manner and method of treatment and care for Daniel.  Its not an easy situation in a perfect relationship....and this, quite obviously, was not a perfect relationship.  The situation was exacerbated by the schedule that Chris kept on the road.  And so, the conflict began to set its course for the terrible events that took place over the weekend that began on June 22, 2007.


Chris Benoit was like a lot of kids in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  He loved to watch wrestling.  When he was growing up, his idol was the Dynamite Kid.  The man known as DK was one of pro wrestling first and greatest high fliers, a man given to performing what would later be referred to as "high risk manuevers", which thrilled and amazed the audience in the arenas and at home....but which took an incredible toll on the body and mind of the Kid, who's real name was Tom Billington.  Young Chris began training at the legendary home of Stu Hart in Calgary as a teenager and his training would eventually take him to the dojo of New Japan wrestling.  I know this because, in December of 1987 I went to Japan with two friends of mine---so hooked on pro wrestling at the time that I actually went to go and watch PRO WRESTLING---and met a young Chris Benoit.  He was a pleasant young guy, friendly enough, but even then it was apparent that Chris Benoit's goal in life--his single minded purpose if you will--was to become the greatest wrestler in the world.

Along the way during that pursuit, he began working for World Championship Wrestling, which was based out of Atlanta, Georgia.  During the mid-90's, Benoit was regarded as one of the really good performers "in the ring", but perhaps lacking in that certain quality that makes one person a "star" and another a mid-card performer.  One of the matchmakers at this point in time, or "bookers" (the person who creates the storylines that are played out in pro wrestling) was a man named Kevin Sullivan.  Sullivan was a longtime performer who was, politely put, passed his prime.  But Sullivan was still, as he always had been, a hell of a talker.  He could get on a microphone and sell a feud to the audience.  Sullivan decided that Benoit would be a perfect foil.  Sullivan would do the talking, and the younger Benoit would use his ability in the ring to take the bumps and falls and sell the matches.  It sounded perfect.  And then Sullivan had another idea.
He decided to further the storyline to have his real life wife Nancy Sullivan leave him (within the storyline) and run off with Benoit.  It made an interesting storyline even more interesting.  I mean, REALLY interesting.  Sullivan even had Nancy travel with Chris in order to "sell" the storyline to the average wrestling fan.  So naturally, what ends up happening?  Chris and Nancy fall in love during this timeframe.....for real....and Nancy leaves Sullivan....for real....for Benoit.  People inside wrestling liked to say that Kevin Sullivan booked his own divorce.  Living proof of the old adage:  "only in wrestling".

Move forward almost 10 years to Wrestlemania XX.  The most improbably and unlikely of things occurs.  Chris Benoit follows the trail blazed only a couple of months before by his real life best friend Eddie Guerraro and wins the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) World Heavyweight Championship.  There is an emotional celebration in the ring as an openly weeping Benoit, having finally achieved the goal he set as a youngster all those years before in Edmonton, is presented with his championship belt and is joined in the ring by his wife and young child who jump into his arms and hug him with the rarest of things in the crazy world of pro wrestling---genuine emotion.

I remember the event distinctly...because I happen to be watching it at a friends house.
We had heard it through the pro wrestling grapevine that Benoit was going to get the strap, but none of the crowd of wrestling buddies gathered that night really believed that owner//promoter Vince McMahon would actually give the title of world champion to...ya know...the guy who really was the best wrester in the world.  I know, I know...it sounds ridiculous.  But that's the crazy world of pro wrestling.  Anyway, at the moment when the bell rang and we all realized that Benoit had in fact won the world's title, my friends and I--all of us jaded longtime wrestling fans---popped out of our seats like a bunch of wrestling fans who weren't wise to the ways of the industry.  Marks, they call them.  We were high fiving each other, in a state of disbelief that Benoit had finally achieved his life long dream.  It was one of the last really special moments I had as a wrestling fan.  Or ever will.

That's because, according to the police reports...sometime on June 22, last week.....Chris Benoit....that great guy that all of us were rooting for that night three years ago....murdered his wife Nancy.  He then bound her hands and feet and placed bibles around her limp body.  Sometimes later the next day, he choked his young son to death.
Some people have speculated that perhaps the murder of his wife was an act of rage...of violence gone out of control...and that, upon coming to his senses he realized what he had done and what he would be facing....and what his special needs son would be facing without his mother and father there to guide him.  Maybe in his own warped way of thinking, Chris Benoit felt that he was killing his own son out of love.  I don't know and neither does anyone else--its just the subject of speculation.  But after he did that, Chris texted messaged some friends....messages that were seen as being odd enough that officials of the WWE--and trust me, these aren't the kind of people who get concerned about something real easy--were concerned enough to send the police to the Benoit home.  They discovered the bodies of Nancy and Daniel in their respective rooms....and then they went into the exercise room and found Chris, who had hung himself by a pulley on a piece of weightlifting apparatus.

There was no note.  There was nothing to explain why Chris Benoit....that nice young kid I had met in the winter of 1987 in Japan....the kid who had finally got to the top of the mountain in his profession....had somehow lost his mind and killed his family before ending his own life.  No clues.  Nothing that screamed out to investigating officers.
And so a lifetime of struggling against the odds...of being "too small" to be a headliner, of not being a good enough interview....of being "too good not to push but being someone who won't make us a lot of money".....of all that good feeling that came out of me and my friends on that night in 2004 as we jumped up and cheered that Chris Benoit had finally gotten his moment in the sun....all of that was wiped out by a weekend of madness.  And so Nancy Benoit and Daniel Benoit are gone....murdered by the one man that both of them loved more than anyone....who they trusted more than anyone.

And that night in 2004 now just seems like a night that those friends of mine and I probably could've just spent watching old wrestling tapes.....and remembering how it used to be....when I was a kid during the summers in South Carolina....listening to my grandmother cursing at the bad guys on television.  It was a long, long time ago.



Later,
Jeff