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They'll point to the equivocating in the press conference, where the medical examiner stresses that they don't know exactly how much testerone Benoit was injecting, how frequently and for how long he took it and for what purposes he was taking it for. Yeah, yeah, Loss is right, the Nancy Grace's of the world aren't dumb enough to fall for that.

Bix is right though, he was supposed to have gone off the gas when the Wellness policy was introduced and is one of the people who seem to have stayed off. I still find the timing very ironic and if they had a much stricter, better enforced drug policy they would probably have more top stars around who were healthy and ready for the role of World champion.

Wow, one of WWE's top stars suffers a major muscle tear and the news is announced on the same day Benoit's toxicology reports are released. What are the odds of that?

Loss, of course it's not very smart, but TNA is run by desperate incompetent individuals who can't make their own stars, so they have to sign every drug addict WWE casts off, even if there is a high risk of them dying on their watch or no showing their PPV events or being extremely difficult to work with. That won't change while Jeff Jarrett, who likes his crack pipe, and his cronies run the show. Hmm, I wonder how long it will be until Sabu returns to the Impact zone?

True, but there are plenty of people in the business like that who change their tune or shut up when Vince offers them work.

Yeah, I agree with everyone here that this was a fun, fast paced TV match that did a good job of leaving people with the feeling of wanting to see these guys go at it again in a longer match.

Overall I thought this was a lively, satisfying match. Markoff worked really hard, keeping up a fast pace throughout the match. His strikes looked stiff and he used the foreign object gimmick well. Both men did a good job of bumping and selling for the others simple offense to make it look suitably brutal and nasty. I thought there was another Markoff match on Frank Jewett's Best of Japan 1969 DVD where he tagged with Bobo Brazil against Giant Baba and Kintaro Oki?

To be fair, that's true for almost everyone in the industry. I do like how Ted DiBiase asks Dave Meltzer what he would have WWE do, like Dave hasn't been answering that question for the last 15 years. On a similar note I also liked how Ken Kennedy implied that Eddie Guerrero's death was solely due to his drug abuse in WCW like he magically became much more bulkier when he returned to WWE in 2002 than he had ever been before.

Just like ROH staple BJ Whitmer gets crowd pops for his technical SKILLZ I suppose?

From the file marked Jim Ross really is a vile human being, he used Nancy and Daniel Benoit's funeral as a platform to try to deflect attention away from the steroid issue again. Here's the direct quote: "This is not a steroid issue. That horse has got to be put in the barn and unsaddled. It's not a steroid issue. It's a domestic issue. But more than anything, it's a tragedy because a mother and little boy are dead."

Don't forget Bix that Mero was married to Sable, perhaps the most universally loathed woman in backstage WWE history. In the misogynistic minds of many wrestlers what could be worse than being completely upstaged by your talentless spouse?

Hmm, I do wonder if that site is some elaborate piss take or an effort to con Benoit marks out of their money (see the "Donate" button), though the naivety and stupidity of some wrestling fans will never cease to amaze me, so who knows.

Wade Keller mentioned in passing that Marc Mero was supposed to be on the show, but was replaced by Ted DiBiase. It may just be a coincidence - that Mero simply decided to take another media gig, but I wouldn't be surprised if WWE used whatever leverage they had to get him bumped from the show. I think Bret's problem is that he makes the incorrect assumption that the drug testing today, particularly as it regards steroids and recreational drugs, is as tough today as it was back in 1992 when the WWF made a genuine effort to clean the business up. I'm not sure who on the panel you'd expect to challenge that statement when everyone on the show was either currently employed by WWE, wants to be employed by WWE or still feels beholden to WWE for some reason. There's another reason too why no-one spoke up though - denial. I wouldn't be surprised that many of the people on the panel believed DiBiase's statement to be true, because the only deaths where steroid use have been listed on the death certificate as a contributory cause of death is Davey Boy Smith and Eddie Guerrero, both of whom abused many other substances during their wrestling careers.

Yeah, I see that I agree with the consensus here that this was a great TV match - really hot and action packed without giving away too much before the PPV. You rarely see heel psychology or the tag formula worked as well as this today, which is really a shame.

Actually, I don't think that would flip his lid, as in his WrestleMania cover story he openly admitted that UFC could never dream of filling a stadium that big, but then said that it was a bit of a moot point as UFC can charge much higher ticket prices for their major shows than WWE can even dream of charging for a WrestleMania.

Sek's right. This is an excerpt from Wade Keller's cover story on the Benoit double murder/suicide that backs up his opinion: With regards to Chris Jericho, I'm not surprised he's having a hard time coming to terms with his feelings at the moment. I mean I'd probably feel pretty conflicted too if I was planning to return to work for the company that was complicit in the drug abuse of two of my best friends that helped lead to their early deaths.

Dave Meltzer also posted about this on the WrestlingClassics.com message board:

I'd argue that Necro's probably made more money going down the death match route and making himself a cult favourite than he would have done otherwise. I mean sek, you called him "the most indy-est looking indy guy I've ever seen, he's like the Little Spike Dudley of the 80s WWF Hillbilly family", which pretty much rules out WWE ever being interested in him and that's the only place you can make significant money in the business today.

I expect New Japan will ignore TNA's usage of the belt, because they will be interested in using Kurt Angle again when Inoki's vanity promotion inevitably goes bankrupt. Angle putting over whomever is the IWGP champion when he's free to work for New Japan again would be a natural match to book. The talent exchange deal was pretty meaningless anyway. TNA never did anything with the New Japan talent they had access to and the only TNA talent New Japan booked was Kurt Angle. The deal was so sacrosanct that TNA had talked with All Japan and Pro Wrestling NOAH earlier this year about exchanging talent with them also. Unsurprisingly those talks have failed to go anyway meaningful either, though Chris Sabin has worked a tour for All Japan.

This probably shouldn't go here, but with regards to the Observer awards I could really see Couture or Liddell winning the box office award. If Couture keeps winning (big if) he could even win the Wrestler Of The Year award.

Was this really the time for Joe Babinsack to do a boring blow by blow review of those drug addled cripples Misawa and Kobashi dropping each other on their heads four years ago? Some people really have their blinkers on that drugs aren't a major problem in Japan too. Another case in point from an anonymous American wrestler: The only thing Arashi did wrong was get caught. How can a wrestler believe, of all people, that broken down aging veterans like Keiji Mutoh (the person who fired Arashi) don't need to take large quantities of painkillers just to function, let alone still wrestle over 100 times a year?

John, did Dave explain or allude to how Nancy got the neck injury that required surgery? At the time the story was reported it seemed a bit strange that a female manager that was rarely involved in physical angles would require similar surgery to what long time wrestlers have been requiring recently. Now it sadly seems all the more suspicious.

Mark Jindrak currently lives in Mexico City, as he works full time CMLL, but I believe he still lived in Atlanta between April 2004 and July 2005 when the drugs in question were prescribed.

The only problem is that the New York Daily News did not report that GHB was found in Benoit's home. Their source did mention that Chris had used it in the past and was allegedly still using it as recently as two years ago, but if GHB addiction was Chris' biggest problem surely Dave Meltzer or Bryan Alvarez would have been told about this and reported it?

This point really ties back to Kevin's comments about how Benoit's wrestling style was ultimately a dead end and counterproductive. Benoit, aided and abetted by the equally crazy Kurt Angle, killed the importance of dangerous suplexes by overusing them in their matches as a short cut to popping the crowd. Instead of Benoit needing one German suplex to get a reaction, it became three and then three turned to six, seven, eight, nine or ten. I suppose their criticism of hardcore fandom is also valid, as at the time almost no-one derided the style for upping the ante too much and instead marvelled at the spectacle of it all. I'm starting to think that the so called Smackdown Six will become WWE's version of the Von Erichs.