7 Times WWE Was Plunged Into Chaos

22 June 2007 is a day that changed not just WWE, but professional wrestling forever.

After Chris Benoit no-showed the weekend's Vengeance: Night of Champions pay-per-view for unexplained reasons, WWE were first to break the tragic news that their employee, as well as his wife Nancy and son Daniel, had been found dead at their home. Entirely unaware of the specific circumstances of the incident, the company, at an absolute loss, suspended all storylines for the post-PPV episode of Raw, and instead devoted it to Benoit's memory.

As the transmission reached its conclusion, reports suggesting the wrestler had killed his family, before taking his own life, emerged. WWE had unwittingly spent three hours paying tribute to a murderer. On the ECW broadcast the following night, an ashen-faced Vince McMahon made moves to distance the company from Benoit, saying they would not mention his name again. It was, he said, "the first step of the healing process."

But many more wounds would soon be opened up by a mainstream media placing greater scrutiny on WWE - and its practices - than ever before. McMahon was grilled on The Today Show days after the incident, during which he vacillated on whether steroids could have played a role in the murder-suicide, citing his confused message as a "reaction to the hysteria of the media".

Nevertheless, WWE instigated wide-sweeping changes almost overnight, eager to prevent such a reputation-destroying tragedy every occurring again. Unprotected chairshots to the head were outlawed, passing a medical became mandatory for all new signings, and the Wellness Policy introduced following Eddie Guerrero's similarly untimely passing two years earlier was hugely tightened - and strictly enforced. Benoit's legacy, meanwhile, was entirely eradicated from WWE's archive.