WWE Trades Ruthless Aggression For PG | Wrestling Timelines
June 25, 2007 | Double-Murder Suicide
On June 25, 2007, upon a welfare check request made by WWE, police officers enter the Fayetteville, Georgia residence of Chris Benoit. The bodies of Chris, his wife Nancy, and son Daniel are found. Nancy and Daniel had been killed by Benoit, by asphyxiation and strangulation respectively. Benoit later hanged himself on his lat pulldown machine, dying by suicide.
The 2000s was plagued by a brutal wave of premature wrestling deaths. Several name stars died as a result of heart attacks or arteriosclerotic heart disease brought on by substance abuse issues against the hard-living backdrop of an unregulated pro wrestling industry. WWE had faced frequent if not hugely intense scrutiny. This was different.
One such wrestler was Eddie Guerrero, a heavy steroid user who passed away on November 13, 2005, from acute heart failure. Benoit was his closest friend, and was ravaged by grief. He was never the same man. This profound grief is cited as a symptom of Benoit’s mental decline. Benoit was also predisposed to bullying to a sadistic extent; while his name was rarely mentioned alongside the likes of Hardcore Holly, probably because Benoit was such a rave-reviewed fan favourite, Benoit enthusiastically participated in the backstage practice of “hazing”.
After an initial “roid rage” moral panic, it was later revealed that Benoit’s brain resembled that of an Alzheimer’s patient. He had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Benoit mastered the craft across years and years of brutal, full-impact pro wrestling. His diving headbutt signature move was abandoned by its creator, Harley Race, because it was a dangerous betrayal of the “work”; Benoit executed it countless times. Benoit took the most vile unprotected chair shots ever, sometimes to the back of the head. The general practice of bumping is terrible for the head, and even the less deranged Benoit matches were defined by his all-out commitment to realism. The word “cocktail” is often used to describe Benoit’s unconscionable, evil final acts because there is no single motive that anybody will ever be able to rationalise.
WWE faces intense and prolonged media backlash over a period of several months, but even the most disturbing, shocking, and fascinating stories go away eventually; such is the nature of the rolling digital news cycle. The stigma does not follow. WWE, to the general public - and to the corporate institutions that shapes its finances - has become known as a lowbrow circus travelling from graveyard to graveyard. The perception of pro wrestling was always sleazy and fake.
Now, reeking of death, it is even harder to monetise.