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15 years since the Benoit family tragedy


SaitoRyo

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Whenever I catch any clips of Benoit wrestling now (I never choose to watch him, sometimes i put on an old ppv and just let it run or i see a clip on twitter/tik tok) I always notice just how incredibly stiff he was, that's not how professional wrestling should be. He's from that same backwards mentality that the likes of JBL have: bully boy tactics to get get a laugh from the boys in the back. I bet the mid-card/lower-card wrestlers used to dread getting in the ring with him.

I think watching these matches back and knowing what he went on to do, you begin to realize he was always a piece of sh!t 

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1 hour ago, WyattSheepMask said:

I don’t think anyone posting something pro-Benoit in a “he should be in the HOF” sense in this day & age actuality believes/means it. As others have said, they’re just trolling to get the reaction because they’ve got fuck all else going on in their head. Some people are just cunts unfortunately 

While I've no doubt there are trolls out there, there are definitely people who genuinely believe that he should be, unfortunately. I've no idea what drives that level of fandom (and it's not unique to wrestling as @DavidB6937 - just look at how some continue to view Michael Jackson and Donald Trump), but I suppose it's not too dissimilar from the blinkered tribalism that infests all walks of life. They back their side/team regardless of what they have done. 

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There are people who will still make great big goofy leaps in logic to argue that Benoit didn’t do it, was framed, was set up, a victim of a conspiracy etc so I definitely think there are people who believe he should be in the HOF. It seems to me that it’s all based on ‘workrate’. You don’t need to look any further than the mental ‘Kevin Sullivan did it’ tinfoil theories. These idiots would rather believe Sullivan sat in the shadows, biding his time and waiting for the perfect opportunity for revenge, for ten bastard years, than accept the reality of it. Sully obviously didn’t have enough classics at Sumo Hall or perfect his German suplexes so it’s alright to think bad of him. Not Benoit though.

Also have to love how all the tests, the forensics, the autopsies etc confirm the order of the deaths as Nancy, then Daniel, then Chris. Over the span of a whole weekend. Yet there are still wallies who will die on the hill that someone broke in and offed them all because it couldn’t be Benoit. So someone got in, killed Nancy and Daniel in front of Benoit. And then sat around with him for another day, sent texts to other wrestlers and forced him to make calls to the office about changing flight arrangements etc before staging his suicide? The other one is ‘well I don’t think Nancy is blameless’. It’s alright to hogtie her and choke her to death then. It’s absolutely bonkers.

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Do people still believe the mental conspiracy theories though? I mean, actual intelligent people? Not the type who believe in some of the batshit stuff we see being bounced around the internet?

I always assumed the whole situation had been put to bed after the testing and report of the brain specialist who basically pointed to the absolute state that Benoit's brain was in when they found him? "So severely damaged it resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient" was the line that will always stay with me.

Classic CTE symptoms such as changes in mood, depression, aggression, irritability, impulsivity, and anxiety were all reported as being exhibited by Benoit in the weeks and months leading up to the tragedy, which fall in line with what we've since learned about NFL football players like Aaron Hernandez, and the terrible story of Phillip Adams who took six lives then killed himself.

Absolutely harrowing stuff, and while Benoit can't be considered blameless due to him choosing to go down the route of professional wrestling and working the style he did, I'm not sure I'd classify him as a murderer in the same vein as those who typically commit crimes like that. Extenuating circumstances, I reckon.

Thankfully WWE seems a bit more aware of the possibilities and risks posed by concussion than they were then. 

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4 minutes ago, David said:

 

Do people still believe the mental conspiracy theories though? I mean, actual intelligent people? Not the type who believe in some of the batshit stuff we see being bounced around the internet?

 

Mate, we’re talking wrestling fans. We aren’t exactly the sharpest bulb in the shed or the brightest tool on the Christmas tree. 

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7 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Mate, we’re talking wrestling fans. We aren’t exactly the sharpest bulb in the shed or the brightest tool on the Christmas tree. 

What we need is someone going on Rogan's podcast and kicking that convo off after a couple of joints. That would be worth a months free trial of Spotify for sure.

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1 minute ago, David said:

What we need is someone going on Rogan's podcast and kicking that convo off after a couple of joints. That would be worth a months free trial of Spotify for sure.

It’s Philjax’s time to shine. 
 

“Someone at the Sheriffs department is tarnishing the Benoit name”

”Wow, Jamie bring that up”

Smell the ratings, Joe. 

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Photo of Benoit on the screen with Rogan muttering in hushed tones "That's a Scary Dude," and hitting us with shit like "Did you know the frontal cortex is not fully developed until you reach the age of 25? What age was Benoit when this all went down?"

Before finishing up with the classic "My friend Dr Rhonda Patrick...yeah, you know her. She has looked into this CTE stuff and it's absolutely for real. It's no joke."

"We're sponsored today by my friends over at 11-Hydroxy Metabolite..."

It would be amazing.

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Feels like yesterday... 15 years!

Should he be in the HOF? No chance. Its tasteless and disrespectful to the people he killed. 

Was he a prick? One book was enlightening re how sadistic he could be. 

Was he a sufferer of CTE? Yes. Does that give him a free pass? No. And at the same time if your brain is that smashed its hardly a surprise. I suspect roid use really exacerbated this aggressive tendencies. 

Was his style ridiculous? Yes. He was reckless and he idolised Dynamite Kid. Cos that ends well. 

Can I separate the wrestler from the person? Yes. It's nuanced. Same as other people that do shitty things, I can appreciate art whilst condemning the artist. I don't believe his horrific actions are in any way relevant to his in ring work. 

That said, I don't generally watch his stuff as I found him a bit dry for me. I can see he was a solid wrestler  but I was never a huge fan.

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I think Benoit is a case where you really can't separate the art from the artist. It's not "this guy was a prick, but he recorded a good album, and I can enjoy the music without thinking about the life of the person who recorded it". If you accept that it was Benoit's style of wrestling and repeated head trauma that ultimately led to him doing what he did, then I don't think you can watch him taking the bumps and wrestling the style that gave him that head trauma, and divorce it from the end result. 

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15 minutes ago, Michael_3165 said:

Feels like yesterday... 15 years!

Should he be in the HOF? No chance. Its tasteless and disrespectful to the people he killed. 

Was he a prick? One book was enlightening re how sadistic he could be. 

Was he a sufferer of CTE? Yes. Does that give him a free pass? No. And at the same time if your brain is that smashed its hardly a surprise. I suspect roid use really exacerbated this aggressive tendencies. 

Was his style ridiculous? Yes. He was reckless and he idolised Dynamite Kid. Cos that ends well. 

Can I separate the wrestler from the person? Yes. It's nuanced. Same as other people that do shitty things, I can appreciate art whilst condemning the artist. I don't believe his horrific actions are in any way relevant to his in ring work. 

That said, I don't generally watch his stuff as I found him a bit dry for me. I can see he was a solid wrestler  but I was never a huge fan.

Cheers, Garth. 

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21 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I think Benoit is a case where you really can't separate the art from the artist. It's not "this guy was a prick, but he recorded a good album, and I can enjoy the music without thinking about the life of the person who recorded it". If you accept that it was Benoit's style of wrestling and repeated head trauma that ultimately led to him doing what he did, then I don't think you can watch him taking the bumps and wrestling the style that gave him that head trauma, and divorce it from the end result. 

Is it really all that different though? As far as the musician example, I guess it would be like saying that we can separate the art from the artist when it comes to people like Keith Moon and Vince Neil, for example, who both killed people, but can't do so with Benoit because the art was what eventually caused the tragedy.

We could ask if Keith Moon and Vince Neil would have become drug-addled booze merchants who eventually were responsible for the death of another person if they hadn't been involved in the music industry? Perhaps, but it could be argued that the music industry and the trappings and lifestyle afforded by it at least partly led to their lifestyle choices and the decision they made to drive while drunk.

37 minutes ago, Michael_3165 said:

Was he a prick? One book was enlightening re how sadistic he could be. 

I know there was books that came out after the fact that claimed that Benoit was a prick and secretly had a dark personality all along, but it's worth remembering that before all that happened he was generally liked by most people and considered to be a relatively quiet, unassuming family man. 

Sure, he was a bit of a weirdo when it came to certain things, was intense as fuck, and there was people who didn't like him, but I don't remember anyone really saying too much about him in a derogatory fashion when he was alive.

It all has a bit of a "now you mention it, he was a bit off..." vibe to it, which we see when the pleasant, friendly guy next door turns out to be a mental axe murderer who buried people in his back garden.

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As Sandra Toffoloni has pointed out, Nancy so often gets forgotten in the whole narrative and it's a shame her career will never be publicly celebrated on a national scale because of what happened to her. 

She has also pointed out that while many wrestlers openly, and proudly, state they have donated to CTE research nobody has apparently donated to domestic violence charities, in essence acknowledging Benoit's plight over Nancy's.

It's absolutely the most infamous incident ever to happen in pro wrestling (and that covers a lot of ground). 16 years ago? Wow.

Edited by Snitsky's back acne
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