Chris Benoit

A little while ago I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine. I had brought up my belief that there's something very wrong with our society. We have this strange obsession with these monsters that live and breathe amongst us. We constantly talk about them instead of the victims, we have their names and stories burned into our memories instead of the lives of their victims. Then we inadvertently reward this behavior, by giving them endless media attention and straight-up Netflix documentaries. From "Don't f*ck with cats" to "American Murder", etc. Worst of all in my opinion we talk about them while they're still breathing. It's one thing to talk about monsters in a historic sense especially with say the worst of the worst Hitler, Mussolini, Genghis Khan, etc etc. They're long gone. But I refuse to speak their names or put the names of monsters that are still alive, in my articles in any way shape or form. I am a firm believer if we as a society refuse to learn these monsters names instead of fawning over them, we take away their power and truly show that we shun their horrendous behavior. Think, when you were in grade school and a very effective but non confrontational way to stand up to a bully was to let them know you refuse to get bullied by them and you won't give them the satisfaction of a response. We need to apply that same principal so we don't keep unintentionally breeding these monsters.

So what about Chris?

Now you may be asking, isn't it hypocritical to be talking about Chris? Well, in my opinion there's a difference. Chris took his own life that day, we'll never know why Chris did what he did and all we can do is speculate till the end of time. Also there are some very important conversations that come up while discussing Chris and remembering what he did will actually help save a ton of lives if we choose to learn from this atrocity. From drug abuse, to concussions and their affect on the human brain, the stigmas of mental health and asking for help when we need it, and even depression.

Very brief recap as to what happened

Before I forget I won't go too far into detail as to exactly what had happened since there are hundreds of articles/videos you can look into discussing the manner. Very simply Chris had murdered his wife Nancy and their very young son Daniel. Then took his own life.

So who was Chris

People seem to forget who Chris Benoit was, prior to that fateful night in 2007, every single wrestler who knew Chris knew he was the hardest worker in the industry and all around a great guy up until that day. Chris was friends with just about everyone in the industry. Above all else was closest to the Guerrero family. He and Eddie were great friends until Eddie's sudden passing, so much so people did say he just never was the same after hearing the news Eddie had passed. He and Nancy had a fantastic relationship and he had actually saved her from an abusive relationship.

Given all of that people legitimately thought Chris and his family were actually murdered once the news was announced he was dead. Some conspiracies to this day still have certain people believing he was murdered and framed. That's how out of character this was for him. Many people and fans were living in denial, there's no way Chris would have done this. And to be completely honest I don't blame them for initially thinking that. Let's take Nancy/Daniel's deaths out of the equation for a half a second here. Let's just say Chris committed suicide suddenly. Once again denial in the stages of grief is very strong. So please don't judge those who refused to believe Chris was capable of something so atrocious. However, sadly that's happened way more times than we can count in other true crimes like this one.

So what changed??

On the surface everything was fine. Inside the ring Chris was doing Chris, on the road he was fine. And sure Nancy and Chris certainly had their problems, some that were documented but again never once did Chris say threaten her life or anything like that.

Brain damage

Well let's start off with the most striking fact. We all know that the wrestling industry, especially back then is absolutely brutal. Chris was working well over 200 days a year traveling across the country, getting hit in the head and worst of all in the back of the with steel chairs multiple times throughout his matches. Then of course back then, you never took time off. You'd never get routine checks to make sure you were fine. Unless it was clear as day you were hurt, like say Brian Pillman (which is a story for another day). You continued to wrestle. Then Chris was known for his headbutts off the top rope. You add all of that together you, get a brain 85 year old Alzheimer's patient.. Chris was barely 40 when he took his life. His brain was so damaged literally all 4 lobes and his brainstem had signs of severe damage. So that's #1.

Drug/alcohol abuse

During the toxicology report it was discovered Chris's blood had 3 different drugs. Hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and Xanax. Shockingly all 3 were within "normal" levels for therapeutics as apposed to recreational use/abuse. However he did also have a BAC of 0.184, which as we know is more than twice the legal limit. Then add all those drugs together with that elevated alcohol limit. That's not a good concoction.

Depression

As mentioned above when Eddie passed, Chris was different. But again who wouldn't be after suddenly losing your best friend while that person was still in a the prime of their life. And to make matters worse everyone loved Eddie. I don't believe I've ever heard a bad word about Eddie both while he was here and after he was gone. So that didn't help Chris's already unstable brain.

Add that all together, of course that's not going to breed good results. And shame on us for letting it get that bad, if we would have taken care of Chris who knows what would have happened.

What we learned

Talking about this historically, I don't find to be glorifying the situation because we're having intellectual conversations as to what can be done and what has been done to prevent situations like this from ever happening again. Since 2007 the WWE has completely revamped their health and wellness policy for their athletes. Athlete heal and safety has been number one, with the most striking change being no more unprotected chair-shots to the head. And if a wrestler was to hit another wrestler to the head with a chair, they would suffer a severe fine from the WWE and disciplinary actions. Wrestlers are now more than ever being randomly drug tested and being disciplined if they fail those tests.

And before I forget, even branching out to other sports, concussions are taken significantly more serious than ever before. Slowly but surely mental health is taken more and more seriously instead of being stigmatized. We've learned instead from this atrocity instead of applauding it like we did with "Don't f*ck with cats" and "American Murder". Can we please stop giving evil people Netflix documentaries, please?

I wouldn't dare say this is my "favorite" true crime in my opinion that's not right to say about a crime, but it is one that I think about fairly often since it's still relatively fresh in the world of wrestling. CM Punk during a Q&A was actually asked about Chris in this clip I will attach to my article and I believe he answered it perfectly. I especially like the way he mentions "from here on out to further promote him, .. doesn't make any sense.". Hopefully one day as a society we can all think this way. We can acknowledge, we can discuss, but we should not be promoting especially when that person still lives and breathes amongst us.

This is probably the darkest article I've ever written and one of my very few serious ones I've written in a long time. So I just wanted to say once again thank you very much for your time, if you need to change your mood after reading this I have plenty of different articles on many different topics. Feel free to give those other articles a read or two. Also if you'd be so kind, I'd greatly appreciate a heart and if you really feel so inclined tips are always appreciated but by no means required.