I was really into WCW in their later years, with guys like Benoit, Jericho, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, and yes, even Goldberg working hard for the company. Almost all of them jumped ship to WWF/E, and I followed them. I eventually lost interest when most of the guys I liked languished in the undercard and jobbed to the big “hosses” – the huge men that Vince loved to push, regardless of wrestling talent, charisma, or mic skills. I missed The Rock when he left (however, I still contend he is a fine actor) and Jericho, and it was never the same without Eddie (RIP). The cruiserweights I marked out for, like Hurricane Helms and Paul London and Brian Kendrick, hardly even showed up on TV anymore, in favor of infinite Triple H self-aggrandizement sketches. I bailed out during the ascendence of John Cena to the top of the A-list, and haven’t missed it a bit. But I miss Benoit already, and I hope we don’t find out something horrible about the circumstances of the deaths, since the deaths are horrible enough to begin with.
I agree wholeheartedly. Plus, the splitting of Raw and Smackdown into brands, (stupid, stupid, stupid), the Hardy Boys breaking up and the whole “civil union” debacle left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve tried to get back into wrestling in the past few years, but it’s just not the same.
What sort of family emergency did Benoit had to leave for? It has to have something to do with their deaths, but I guess we’ll find out as the investigation progresses.
I remember that. 
(I think because Jim Beaver posted somewhere that he knew Haley and his family and that Haley wasn’t the type.)
Professional wrestling is such a weird phenomenon, I’ve known everyone from truck drivers to lawyers to preachers who enjoy it. I enjoyed watching it for a time, and like it is with any dramatic art form, the good wrestlers were the ones who made it very easy to suspend disbelief (something necessary to enjoy any form of drama.) Benoit’s in-ring technical approach to it really did that very well, his matches were always exciting and physical. They were a big contrast to guys like Steve Austin who pretty much repeated the same 2-3 moves over and over again for 20 minutes then pinned his opponent (in Steve’s defense, he used to be pretty legitimate when he wasn’t so popular, but he was so riddled with injuries by the time of his popularity he could barely move around the ring.)
A lot of wrestlers have really seedy personal lives, you hear about them getting arrested after shows for drunken behavior, going in and out of drug rehab, beating their spouses and et cetera. But you never really heard any of that about Benoit, he always came off as a respectable guy in a profession where a lot of people have questionable morality. If he did kill his wife and son, I can’t imagine why, but it was extremely out of character from what we know about him. Which just sort of shows that you never really can know someone just from the public image they project.
When I heard the news a few hours ago, I searched MSNBC and FoxNews, but didn’t find anything. A Google search found a news story by what appeared to be and Edmonton newspaper’s website. I followed a link from that page to another news story about a ~6 yo Afghan boy that was tried to be used as a suicide bomber by Taliban terrorists. That news article sounded very fake to me. So I’m still hoping that this is a bit.
It’s on the front pages of CNN, SportsIllustrated and ESPN, as well as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. If it’s a hoax, it’s been very, very well done. I’m betting it’s not – though wwe.com’s coverage is a bit weird. They have a LOT of stuff up about it, including a fairly big headline reading “DOUBLE MURDER-SUICIDE.”
It’s not a hoax, not even the WWE would hoax something like this…they even blew the whole McMahon “death angle” on RAW to report it. This is a tragedy, a very real tragedy that took the lives of three people.
His son wasn’t a baby, he was seven years old
Carbon Monoxide is just CO
The thing about murder suicides that freak me out is the kids. I mean when you are a kid you think your parents are your protectors, what could possibly be going through your mind if you realized your dad who raised you your whole life was suddenly trying to kill you? Assuming he became aware of it, as if it was Carbon Monoxide poisoning he probably did not.
:smack: Okay, CO.
Can anyone link me to a wrestling, or even just a sports, board? If anyone’s sharing info, I’d like to be in the loop.
Not that I’m privy to any of the facts in this case (far from it), but just wanted to say - If a person returns home to find his family already dead by another’s hand (or indeed by some other cause - for example, a nasty accident that might look like murder), it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that said person would kill himself (perhaps even using the same murder weapon, if still present) out of grief and shock, is it?
I’d just like to mention that when I first read this thread I for some reason thought it was about Daniel Lanois the record producer and songwriter. It was a long day.
But I did have a wrestling-watching period, and I remember Chris Benoit. This is very sad. Thoughts to his family and friends.
Apparently they found Daniel’s body in his bedroom. I pray this means he was asleep. But, the first reports said that they “weren’t shot” and referred to the weapon as an “instrument of death”, not a gun. You would think being shot is more merciful, since it can kill you instantly.
A lethal injection?
Mangetout writes:
> Not that I’m privy to any of the facts in this case (far from it), but just wanted to
> say - If a person returns home to find his family already dead by another’s hand
> (or indeed by some other cause - for example, a nasty accident that might look
> like murder), it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that said person would kill
> himself (perhaps even using the same murder weapon, if still present) out of
> grief and shock, is it?
Has that ever happened? I’m not a criminologist, so I don’t have access to criminal records, but I don’t recall anything like that ever happening. Grief doesn’t cause a person to immediately want to commit suicide. It works on people over months and years to do so perhaps, but I don’t recall ever hearing of a case where a person committed suicide immediately on hearing bad news.
When police investigate a case, the first theories that come to them are based on the typical sorts of crimes that have occurred before. The fact is that most murders are people killing someone they already know. People killing strangers are a minority of murders. Of course that only establishes a theory of the murder, not a proof of it. To establish exactly what happened will require the study of all the physical evidence.
I don’t understand why whenever a person kills a member of their family (or sometimes several members of their family), other people react with “Oh, my, this is a tragedy beyond all previous proportions.” Sorry, but people killing members of their families has always been a substantial segment of murders. It’s not any more common now than ever. I know that this is tragic for everyone involved, but there’s nothing new about this type of murder.
You may be right - it might be that works of fiction (e.g Romeo & Juliet) have lent false weight to the idea.
I first heard when I turned on RAW about 10:30. As an on-again/off-again wrestling fan since the 1970s, I’ve heard of Chris Benoit nearly all his career. I first got to see him wrestle in the intimate confines of the Madhouse of Extreme (Elk’s Lodge, Queens, NY). The man was phenomenal to watch. When I checked the news during the show, they were just saying homicide, and I was very, very saddened. This morning I got the update that murder-suicide was suspected, and I became angry and very disappointed. Benoit was a pleasure to watch in the ring. Wrestlers like Benoit (and his best friends in wrestling, Dean Malenko and the late, great Eddie Guerrero) were the type I most enjoyed. But while I can look back on Guerrero’s career with longing and sadness, if the news is true, I will never be able to watch a Benoit match again. A horrible, horrible ending to whom I thought was a great performer.
The McMahon ‘death’ angle was blown long before, like when he pubicly spoke with analysts and investors.
I know they’re still “investigating” the possibility that it was a double murder/suicide, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Benoit was the one who killed his family. It’s just as possible it was his wife, as it was with Phil Hartman. I’m not pointing any fingers, I’m just saying it’s possible.