Jingus

Hogan never main evented a PPV during the Russo era, I think he only worked four of 'em. Two of the appearances were those infuriating "lay down and job" deals, and the other two were midcard matches where he squashed Kidman for ten minutes straight.

JDW's right about there being no magic bullet. But the closest thing we have to an obvious cause is one which practically nobody talks about: the common psychological and situational traits of most family annihilators. There's an established pattern with many of these crimes, which pop up again and again and again: a man and a woman are married for years. Both of them are stubborn and passionate people. Typically, there's a history of domestic issues between the two of them, often violent outbursts followed by reconciliations. Over time, the man becomes more and more paranoid and controlling. Eventually, he degenerates so far into his delusions that he decides his only choice is to kill his wife. Afterwards, he decides that he can't bear the thought of his kids growing up as the offspring of a murderer and his victim, so he kills the kids too in what he considers to be a mercy killing. Then, despondent and alone, he finally kills himself. This exact pattern has happened a lot with cases of familicide, and the Benoit case was a textbook example. He fits the textbook pattern so well that it's pretty obvious we shouldn't even begin to blame wrestling as the primary cause of this crime. Yes, it's entirely possible or probable that the drugs and brain damage played a factor in his worsening mental state. But the vast majority of family annihilators who follow this exact textbook pattern are not concussed pill-popping juiceheads. In fact, either alcoholism or binge drinking tends to be the most common influencing factor upon the murderer. The thing is, CTE isn't really a specific disease. It's a catch-all term used to describe a wide variety of different levels of brain damage. It's kind of like when physicists refer to a force called "dark energy"; they hate not having a specific definition for anything they don't quite comprehend, so they slap one label on a whole category of poorly-understood phenomena. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy basically refers to any sort of cumulative brain damage which has slowly built up over time, caused by repeated concussions. Sports doctors and researchers have only begun to study it in-depth over the last decade, and there's still a hell of a lot we don't know about how it works.

Which, once again, is completely meaningless since we live in a world where guns exist. All of the "Benoit is too tough to be killed" theories depend on some kind of ridiculous scenario where we should've expected just one shrimpy attacker who was not very competent and completely unarmed. Like I said before, it's typical wrestler chest-thumping where they think they're all a bunch of invincible warriors who couldn't possibly be threatened by civilians.

Such a timestamp would be very helpful. I do honestly like Bryan's audio shows; I think he's sort of a dimestore version of Kevin Smith, in that he can sit down with his friends and talk about practically anything and it's usually entertaining. But I listen to these shows in the first place for the wrestling coverage, and don't give much of a shit about all the time he wastes on various tangents. But how does it physically work that he could lock Eric inside? Unless it's one of those security doors which needs a key to open from either side, but most locked doors aren't built like that. In general, you need a key to get in from outside, but on the inside all you have to do is turn a latch. So Bischoff should've easily been able to let himself out, no matter what key Sting had.

The thing about "break into the house and kill everyone inside" scenarios is while they're uncommon, they do still happen. I know that very well, because it happened to my family a dozen years back. My dad married a woman who had a crazy ex-husband, and he tried to do exactly that. Fortunately it turns out that my dad's practically bulletproof, and long story short he's fine now and the attacker is in federal maximum security prison for the rest of his life. But it changed this kind of crazy incident from "something which only happens on TV" to "something which has proven to be absolutely real, once I held my father's bloodstained hand as he lay in a bullet-ridden coma". And it wasn't close to being a murder-suicide scenario, since the egotistical attacker definitely wasn't gonna kill himself; and his plan was to actually fake a murder-suicide between my dad and his wife. So that kind of scarring life experience definitely puts me in the camp of those who hear "who's gonna break into Chris Benoit's house and kill him?" and angrily snap that such a claim is fucking bullshit and such things do happen.

No, the point was that someone Sting locked this office door from the outside in a manner which Bischoff supposedly couldn't unlock from the inside. Which, if you've ever seen a door in your life, is one hell of an insult to our intelligences even by TNA standards.

No, he mentioned the key on the Sunday WOL. Predictably, he no-sold being corrected. But he did go on to bring up two good points: 1.how the hell do you lock someone into their own office from the outside? And, 2.why the hell was Sting bothering to lock up Bischoff in the first place, as if he were afraid that Eric would single-handedly interfere in the main event, somehow get past the lumberjacks and the steel cage, and beat up Kurt Angle by himself?

Maybe, but that's still no reason to go looking for some kind of conspiracy or dirty hidden secret. From what I read, the chances of this being caused by cocaine are so astronomically unlikely that it's nearly impossible. As for what the real cause is: well, as long as it's not some contagious disease, who cares? There's all kinds of legitimate reasons why someone might be unwilling to talk about this sort of thing publicly. I don't think we've got some kind of tabloid-style "right" to demand that all wrestlers must discuss their confidential medical records with us just to satisfy our curiosity on things like this, when it's not affecting anybody else.

Well, upon further research, it appears you might be right. But I'm still not completely sold. The condition is so rare that there's apparently only been two or three documented cases of it as being possibly triggered by cocaine, ever. And even in those cases, doctors still aren't sure exactly how the coke might've caused the specific chemical imbalance which is the catalyst for a paralyzing attack. Basically, they're still not certain that the cocaine was even a factor. It's an inherited syndrome, not just anyone can get it. It's usually much more associated with potassium deficiencies due to prolonged strenuous activity or exercise, not any kind of outside chemical. And in most of these cases, the symptoms go far beyond simple facial paralysis. It extends to general loss of muscle control, overall weakness, that sort of thing. If you get this condition, you generally shouldn't be able to even walk, much less just put on a mask and go wrestle. Odd that none of that came up when I first looked at this stuff. None of the articles or Wiki pages or anything else I read about either cocaine side effects or facial paralysis even mentioned any of this sort of thing. I mean, to the extent of Googling "cocaine" plus "facial paralysis" and reading the first twenty hits and coming up with jack squat.

And that doesn't begin to count the number of invasion-murders you'd get from drug or gang vendettas, domestic violence, serial killings, and various other random motivations for someone to break into a house and kill everyone inside.

Since when is facial paralysis a side effect of cocaine abuse? I've known plenty of cokeheads, and never heard that. Doing a bit of online research now, I don't see any website listing that as a known symptom. The only thing which is even close is that some researchers suspect that heavy drug use (including cocaine, but also several other drugs) among pregnant mothers can result in the baby being born with a face-paralyzing disease called Moebius Syndrome, but there's nothing even remotely similar for grown adults involving cocaine being linked to paralysis of the face. So whoever started that rumor about Sarita doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about, medically speaking. There are several embarrassing or dangerous diseases which can cause facial paralysis, stuff like herpes or leprosy or brain tumors, but you certainly wouldn't see such a quick recovery with those like in this case. So who knows exactly what caused it? Maybe it's something fairly harmless but she just doesn't feel like sharing her intimate medical information with the whole world.

What else could it be? I can't think of any other cause which could be sordid or embarrassing enough that she'd bother lying about it. The only thing I could come up with would be if she recently had some cosmetic surgery on her face, but that's so common among women in wrestling that there's no real stigma attached to it.

My first thought was also carbon monoxide or some kind of slow-acting food poisoning, considering the vague news blurb we'd heard about Benoit saying his wife and kid were sick. Murder-suicide didn't even enter my mind until it was actually announced. Hell, I'd heard more about Nancy's fiery temper and violent tendencies and past indiscretions than I'd heard about Chris's.

It was in early 2005. Batista interfered to give Ross the win. I still vividly remember watching that match, because it came during a period when I was trying to convince my non-wrestling-fan parents that being a play-by-play announcer might be a valid career path. And while I'm trying to tell this to my stepdad, this match airs. Kinda hard to sell my argument when the most respected of modern wrestling announcers is being shoot beaten into a bloody pulp.

That's not logic, that's the typical wrestler egotism of thinking that wrestlers are the toughest people on the planet. And forgetting that this is a world where guns exist, too. Another thing: how did the WWE know it was a murder-suicide even before the cops were telling anyone else about that fact? Immediately jumping to that conclusion is a hell of a leap, no matter how weird Benoit had been acting. Did they have some kind of unknown source of information, a leak in the police department, or something like that?

Yeah, I know, that's the one strongest piece of proof from someone who has nothing to gain by lying. But it could still easily have involved the source pulling something out of their ass, or the source disagreeing with the company's hope that Benoit wasn't the perpetrator. It's proof that one unnamed guy claimed he knew, not that the entire WWE office were clued into the facts. Actually, they're almost complete opposites. At Over The Edge, Vince froze. He didn't know what to do, so he essentially took no action and allowed the show to continue as planned. He was afraid of the financial repercussions if he cancelled the show. With the tribute show, he took the other choice and did indeed cancel the show, turning away all the fans and airing mostly a bunch of old clips. That was the only video tape, yeah, but there's no real sign that it's a fake. And OBL admitted to it in several audio tapes as well, most of which were verified. And there was that other tape showing him in person with two of the 9/11 hijackers and apparently helping to plan the attacks, which strengthens the case even more. Yeah. Vince is usually a pretty predictable guy, and generally doesn't do anything unless it 1.makes him money, or 2.strokes his ego. Deliberately broadcasting a tribute show to a psychopathic murderer fits in neither one of those categories. From the WWE's point of view, what's the upside in doing the tribute if they knew Benoit did it? There seems to be nothing to gain, and everything to lose. It's so out of character for Vince to knowingly take such a stupid risk. This isn't like one of those boneheaded pipe dreams he gets about projects which were doomed to fail, this is paying a glowing tribute to a guy who (they allegedly knew) would soon be giving the WWE the worst press it's ever had.

What other name should they call it? The Bling Belt? The name sticks whether it actually spins now or not. I hoped that this angle would finally push them into getting rid of that goddamn hideous thing and bringing back a more classic style of championship belt, but alas the opportunity seems to have passed.

That is a horrible comparison. There's tons of proof that Bin Laden was involved in 9/11, starting with the fact that he gleefully took credit for it. The two cases aren't remotely alike. That's still playing guessing-games. What does "who was going to break into Chris Benoit's house" mean? A stranger breaking into a house and killing a whole family is actually more common than a guy going crazy and killing his own family. There are many more examples of the former than the latter. It's not unreasonable to think that the company might have believed, upon hearing that it looked like people had been murdered, that an outside party might've done it. Hell, look at the Maryse stalker thing now. Celebrities do get murdered at a higher rate than your average civilian. And to be very clear, I'm not saying that they didn't know. They very well might have. What I'm saying is that I still haven't heard anything which convinces me that they knew. And knowing the people involved, it doesn't make any sense that they'd deliberately produce a tribute show to a man they knew to be a despicable murderer.

Not quite, but all this stuff is third-hand information at best. The validity is questionable. "Meltzer reported that he heard from some anonymous dude that he heard from some other anonymous dude that they knew" is the weakest of alleged proof. That's "they might've possibly known", and it's not anywhere near "they definitely knew".

Those are the closest you've got to real evidence, and they're still hearsay at best. This is still in the realm of "they might've known" and nowhere near "they certainly knew".

It's still circumstantial. Regal seemed like he suspected something was up, but he was still willing to go on camera and praise his work ethic. What with living in the same city and knowing Benoit for so long and the whole "let's watch Kawada matches" incident, he was more in the know than most. But that's still not proof, certainly not the kind of evidence which would be accepted as such in a court of law. EDIT: and just to be clear, I'm not saying that the WWE definitely didn't know. They might have. But I haven't seen much which suggests that they certainly knew, in a beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt fashion.

Still kinda flimsy. That's hearsay, not proof. The WWE is enough of a PC corporation in modern times that I find it hard to believe that they'd willingly air an entire tribute show to a guy they knew murdered his wife and child. Not for any moral issues, but just for the inevitable PR and financial backlash which they'd know would be absolutely gigantic.

What's the hard evidence in support of this? Aside from Mushnick-style theorizing, I mean. I don't recall ever reading any concrete proof which definitively showed that they 100% knew that Benoit was the killer.

In theory that could happen, but how likely is it that Punk would honestly crash the party without letting his boss-in-training HHH know about it first? It's much more probable that the whole thing was planned to some extent. The WWE is pretty notorious for being very strict on its employees when it comes to making public appearances, with everything having to be okayed by the office first. And walking about the biggest fan convention in the world with the title belt and a bullhorn would certainly fall into that category, especially when he's interrupting their own official panel.

And he videotaped it: