Last night I went to bed fearing the worst about Chris Benoit’s death. I had heard the rumors and I knew police were investigating it as a muder-suicide. However, I was holding out hope that they’d find something, anything, that would prove them wrong.
Well, apparently they were right. You can see the million stories on the web.
I had a fight with a friend over it this morning as well. It’s easy to judge people that you don’t know as steroid monsters because they happen to be wrestlers. It’s also easy to ignore facts that come out after a case like this because they don’t match up who you know the person to be. That’s why the papers are littered with quotes from people who either attack or deny right after something like this happens. I didn’t understand that until now.
I idolized Chris Benoit before last night. He was a genuine guy with the utmost respect for the industry. His matches were awesome and, most importantly, in a time when so many people in the industry get in trouble for drugs, alcohol or other personal problems, he seemed above it. His dedication to the business and his respect for everyone involved in the business — from promoter to wrestler to your normal every day fan — was beyond reproach.
If there was one guy in the wrestling industry you’d want to be like, it would have been Chris Benoit.
And now, he’s dead in a mindless tragedy that destroyed a family and left thousands of people like myself asking, “What the hell?”
I can’t defend his actions. I don’t know what happened in that house. I don’t know what demons were lurking or what lead to the events or ultimately what caused anything to happen the way it did. In fact, I don’t think anyone will ever know.
All I can tell you is that one of my heroes, one of the guys you’d be proud if your kid grew up to be like, is dead and somehow went from Superman to Hannibal Lector overnight. That’s what it feels like. And no one saw it coming. There’s no comic book ending here (”he was possessed by the spirit of Lex Luthor who …”), this is the reality I face right now. My hero wasn’t who I thought he was and that hurts.
I’m the first person to call a scumbag a scumbag. There are people in the industry that are so scummy and so slimy that if this happened to them you wouldn’t blink an eye because that is the road you expected for them. But this, this is so out of left field that I don’t know what to do, what to think, or most importantly, what to remember out of a life that had so much good but ended in the worst possible way.
And that’s the dilemma we’re all going to face as we deal with this.
Jim