So I’m sure you, the reader, know that Chris Benoit is dead. I found out when I flipped on RAW more than an hour into the show just to listen in as it taped and I changed out of my work duds. Dean Malenko was on the screen saying a really low-key goodbye to “a member of the fraternity of the pro-wrestling business.” And he never, during the brief window I heard, mentioned Chris by name. So…I assumed he was talking about Vince McMahon, and wondered how Dean Malenko of all people was picked to use his mic skills to put this over. A few commercials later the show came back with a Benoit montage (so I figured “oh, guess he won at Vengeance”) and then it cut to Cole, JBL and an otherwise empty arena. And I thought: “oh shit.”
Then I went downstairs and had dinner. It was good, and I didn’t think about Chris at all as I ate. I wonder now if I’m not getting really numb to wrestlers dying. As Jason said, it’s not like I knew the guy, but hearing about Eddie shook me up at least for a moment or two.
When I came back up and saw some more of RAW, Vince was in the ring (though not live, as there was an “earlier tonight” graphic) trying to do the classy thing and back out of the pretend death angle in light of the real death. It occurred to me that the WWE can’t buy a break, with Sherri Martell dying exactly as they tried to have a RAW centered on the shock of Vince’s death and Benoit dying exactly as they were trying to eulogize a pretend corpse. Then I felt bad for even thinking that. I think this was also when I found out that Nancy and Daniel were dead, and I got a bad feeling. The opposite of what a Final Fantasy Tactics character would get going into a job. Sorry. I had to make a joke somewhere to preserve the integrity of the site.
I tried to convince myself that maybe a lunatic fan broke into his house, but I sort of knew. I didn’t want to think about it, so I spent the rest of the evening looking for episodes of the Doctor Who season that hasn’t aired here yet on You Tube. I got to sleep without any trouble, and I got through the next work day without thinking about Benoit. Well, that’s not quite true, as I did think: “I guess I have to write something for RAW…would it be appropriate to make jokes about how hard this is hitting The A-Train, who once praised Benoit as being ‘one of the best’ because of how capably he can ride you?”
I felt bad for even wanting to know, but like everyone else I searched the news sites and had it confirmed that he killed his own family and then himself, I learned that his kid had some rare developmental disorder that was stressing the Benoit marriage, that Kevin Sullivan had reporters hunting him down within hours, etc. Once all doubt was removed that this guy I really liked as a performer was responsible for the deaths of three people, I didn’t know what to think. I still don’t.
Lots of worthless political-type questions have been floating around in my head since then. I haven’t watched the whole RAW I taped so I don’t know if they showed any of his matches with Kurt, but no matter what there’s stupid questions there like “why didn’t they, because Kurt is dead to them now?” or “why did they pick one where Chris won when the best one was the Royal Rumble one he lost?” or “why did they pick his best one where he lost, to trick smarks into respecting them?” I asked myself why Filmcans wrote a tribute and didn’t express any interest in posting it at WV. I asked myself why Benoit’s death, not yet known to be a murder suicide, ended the fake Vince death storyline when Sherri Martell’s death wasn’t sufficient. All of these questions are stupid and petty and not worth worrying about. I thought I might be asking them to avoid taking a good look at the tragedy that took place in the Benoit family. Maybe I was afraid to really think about that.
But I don’t think that’s it. I’m not afraid of what really considering what happened to Chris, or rather what Chris did, might reveal. Because I don’t think looking at it will reveal anything. There was obviously a ton going on in Chris’ head that his friends didn’t know about, much less his fans who write about wrestling on the Internet (in constant fear of Brok Leznar, I might add.) I’ve never walked a mile in his boots so I can’t really judge him, but I also know that I can’t conceive of a satisfactory answer to the question: “Why did you kill your wife, your son, and yourself?” So thinking about this isn’t going to lead to a life-changing epiphany for any of us, it’s just going to depress us. Maybe he’s in Benoit Heaven, where his son isn’t developmentally challenged and his wife isn’t constantly being stalked by a “DEVILISH WOMAN” screeching Dusty Rhodes and he has more teeth than he knows what to do with. Then again, he did kill three people. Best not to ponder the future of his immortal soul, then.
So maybe it’s best to try and remember his past, and the things he did to make us quasi-love him. Like the time he was so batshit crazy angry (his character, I mean, wow, this sentence is going into a whole dark area) that Brok Leznar, who looks to be made from about two and a half Benoits worth of pure muscle, ran the fuck away from him and tried to hide. Maybe it’s best if we remember the time he tried to make a cup of coffee faster than he could make Orlando Jordan submit, but he couldn’t quite get the sugar packet open. Maybe it’s best if we remember the Hangin’ Out Gang watching…well, actually that was one of the worst Benoit matches ever so nevermind.
Next week, another RAW will air and I’ll write another rebeak I’m not sure anyone reads. And Benoit won’t be there, just like 90% of the rebeaks I’ve written this year. I guess I can’t say that this is really having much of an effect on me.
