Self-contained Chris Benoit and GWE Talk

[Loss]

Just creating this thread for people to post whatever they want to say about Chris Benoit and GWE in here. I think it may be best to keep all of that talk limited to this thread just so it doesn't color everything, but I do think having a place for people to talk on this topic is important.

[Beast]

I ranked him.

 

I don't totally get the "he's a murderer so I DQ'ed him" thought process. If you look at his work, he definitely ranks in the top 100.

 

I'd also put OJ in a top 100 football player ranking.

[peachchaos]

My apprehension here has always been, "He was a wrestler who murdered another wrestler and himself due to consequences directly related to the style of wrestling he performed".

 

No single event or performer has single handedly crushed my enjoyment of wrestling like the Summer of 2007.

[Matt D]

It didn't really matter one way or the other. I had no desire to revisit him. Without the ability to revisit him, I couldn't rank him.

[Eegah]

People can rank him, and obviously did but I dont have any reason to go back and watch him or judge him as a performer. There are plenty of awful things throughtout wrestling history but that is one that was so spotlighted and completely tragic that I can not seperate the performer and the man in that particular instance.

[Childs]

Benoit's rank on this list won't capture how good he was or wasn't, and there's no way around that. I have no problem watching his matches and recognizing him as a great wrestler. But many people feel differently and that's fine. It strikes me as an issue where debate isn't really necessary, because I have no desire to persuade anyone.

[The Man in Blak]

I personally found it really difficult to see a way that I could revisit Benoit's work and end up with a positive outcome. I didn't completely rule him out and I ended up watching some of his matches in the process of examining other workers...but there were so many other candidates, styles and eras to explore as a part of the GWE journey that it wasn't hard to find other priorities for focus. No judgment from me if you had him on your ballot, though.

 

It strikes me as an issue where debate isn't really necessary, because I have no desire to persuade anyone.

Agreed.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think part of this comes down to where you were as a fan in 2007.

 

I was completely out of it, not since late 1995 had my fandom ever been at a lower point. The introduction of the spinner belt, the increasingly generic product and so on, all served to kill my fandom dead around mid-to-late 2005. I remember watching the Rey and Eddie feud, and Eddie dying, I limped on into 2006 although I was no longer watching RAW and SD religiously. I recall catching Flair's rant on Carlito in early 2007. That was one of the last times I sat through a whole RAW. But really I had been done a good bit before that.

 

By the time the Benoit stuff happened I was barely even checking news sites let alone watching. Wrestling felt so far away from anything I cared about. I registered it happened, but I wasn't posting anywhere, I wasn't reading anywhere, and the most effect it would have had at that time was to make me want to shun the product even more. Not only was Eddie gone, but Benoit was whitewashed from history for reasons too horrible to think about. But not being around meant I didn't live through the shared emotion of it all. I felt very distant from it all. When I started getting involved with wrestling again in 2009, it was as an old-school-only sort of fan. And that brought me here eventually.

 

And I think that's why it has no real effect on how I think about him. My timeline as a guy who followed "current wrestling" had kind of ended by the time it happened. I reckon if it had happened just a year or so before, when I was a lot more invested in what was going on, I might feel differently about ranking him.

[mprice]

I can say I ranked him and ranked him highly. Though it did screw up my wrestling fandom for a while, I am able to look at his work and find out how much I could get into his matches. The first 7 years of my love of wrestling was based off of his matches so I have to say that maybe it didn't change as much for me as I thought it would.

[Matt D]

I was barely watching at all in 2007, Parv. It really wasn't a big deal for me after 2004 when I got back from England, and especially after January, 2006 when I moved to DC. The death happened within a few weeks of me moving in with my wife to be, so I was weaning off even more.

 

When i started getting involved in wrestling again in 2009, it was primarily old school stuff, especially nostalgia WWF, and it was WWECW too since it was so different than what i was expecting and so engaging.

 

It has a huge affect on me. It changed almost entirely how I look at wrestling.

[JRGoldman]

I decided that although I can watch Benoit matches without much apprehension, I did not feel capable of giving him a ranking that I would feel comfortable with. He would either be too high for me to be emotionally happy with what my list says about me or too low for the quality of work he produced. It was easier for me to just leave him off. In the end I didn't end up feeling my list wasn't representative because of his absence. I'm happy I left him off.

[Jimmy Redman]

I ranked him based on work and didn't give a thought to anything else.

[Ricky Jackson]

I had him in the 60s. I'd like to think if the murders never happened he would've ended up in the same spot, since tons of other guys I used to like from Benoit's era have dropped massively in my eyes, like Angle for instance. I've barely watched any Benoit since 07, and next to none outside of a drunken night with friends about 5 years ago where I threw on the Benoit DVD to appease a request

[donsem43]

I'm more interest on just the number of ballots that he ends up on more than where he finishes.

[fxnj]

What I don't get is the seeming double standard of people struggling so much to comfortably rank Benoit whilst being so enthusiastic about Carlos Colon. Colon strikes me as just as, if not more, awkward to watch since he orchestrated Brody's death entirely in cold blood for petty political reasons and, thus, was just an evil scumbag without the same brain damage Benoit had. If the issue is that it was his matches that destroyed him then I don't see why people wouldn't have a rough time with Misawa for wrestling a style that even more directly led to his death.

[Childs]

You're stating as fact that Colon orchestrated Brody's death? That seems irresponsible.

[Matt D]

You get it.

 

Colon is something of a historical relic. Benoit was hugely personal to almost all of us, the symbolic hero of the community, the person who we were furious at WCW for because they wouldn't acknowledge his fucking TV title reign.

 

I can't speak for Misawa as in many ways he's a relic for me too but I imagine for others it's the combination of the personal, the years of religious celebration of the style that led to things, and the unspeakable details of the murders(and how much more detail we have relative to whatever Colon may or may not have done) that sets Benoit apart from him.

 

It's one thing to not agree with it, but it's another not to "get" it.

[joeg]

This is pro wrestling. If we were to only vote for pro wrestlers who were good people it would be a quick nomination process and a very short list.

[EricR]

This really isn't about being a good person. There are assholes, and then there are people who murder their children. It's not like he just took a couple shits in a couple gym bags.

[TheU_2001]

I mentioned in a different thread, that it's hard to watch his matches. He was once one of my all-time favorites, and I actually met him at Axxess for Mania 19, and got a pic and autograph. However, since the tragic events on that day in 2007, it's been tough to watch his stuff. I'm married and have kids, and I can't imagine someone doing that to their spouse or children. Plus, watching him do the things he did in his matches, is like watching his brain get turned into what it go turned into. It's sad really. So those are the reasons I didn't rate him in my ballot.

[Childs]

You get it.

 

Colon is something of a historical relic. Benoit was hugely personal to almost all of us, the symbolic hero of the community, the person who we were furious at WCW for because they wouldn't acknowledge his fucking TV title reign.

 

I can't speak for Misawa as in many ways he's a relic for me too but I imagine for others it's the combination of the personal, the years of religious celebration of the style that led to things, and the unspeakable details of the murders(and how much more detail we have relative to whatever Colon may or may not have done) that sets Benoit apart from him.

 

It's one thing to not agree with it, but it's another not to "get" it.

 

Misawa worked himself to death, which is tragic but in no way evil. Benoit killed his wife and child. It seems frankly absurd to link them.

[Matt D]

There are three or four different threads here. That guy tried to link them all and I was responding accordingly. I can understand why someone might link Benoit's style based brain damage with Misawa's style based physical damage but it's a lot to unpack and tying it to Colon in the same one paragraph post complicated matters.

[Childs]

There are three or four different threads here. That guy tried to link them all and I was responding accordingly. I can understand why someone might link Benoit's style based brain damage with Misawa's style based physical damage but it's a lot to unpack and tying it to Colon in the same one paragraph post complicated matters.

 

Yeah, I wasn't going after you at all. I was just belatedly responding to that part of what he said.

[The Thread Killer]

What I don't get is the seeming double standard of people struggling so much to comfortably rank Benoit whilst being so enthusiastic about Carlos Colon. Colon strikes me as just as, if not more, awkward to watch since he orchestrated Brody's death entirely in cold blood for petty political reasons and, thus, was just an evil scumbag without the same brain damage Benoit had. If the issue is that it was his matches that destroyed him then I don't see why people wouldn't have a rough time with Misawa for wrestling a style that even more directly led to his death.

That is an absolutely ridiculous statement which has virtually no basis in reality.

 

Misawa ignored his doctor's advice, and died in the ring due to an unavoidable injury.

 

Colon (in partnership with Victor Jovica) at worst, is alleged to have pressured his employee Jose Gonzales (who he most likely did not know was homicidal due to mental illness brought on by the recent death of his 6 year old daughter) into "dealing with" Bruiser Brody. There is virtually no proof that Colon had any idea whatsoever that Gonzalez would kill Brody, and Brody's family and friends don't claim that Colon or Jovica had anything to do with it. Any allegations to the contrary are pure speculation with no foundation in fact.

 

Chris Benoit murdered his wife and son.

 

How you can draw any sort of comparison between those three incidents and claim they are in any way similar is quite frankly, baffling. All three incidents involve death, I suppose. That's about it.

[The Thread Killer]

One thing that has always bothered me is wrestling fans who smugly state "I can still watch Chris Benoit's matches objectively" as if that is some sort of accomplishment, or that it makes them in some way superior to people who chose not to.

 

Chris Benoit brutally murdered his own wife and son. This is a fact. As much as I love Pro Wrestling, I can't take any enjoyment from anything done by a person who murdered a child. It makes me uncomfortable, and to be perfectly blunt, I don't really give a shit where he might rank on a list of other wrestlers. What he did makes him a person I don't want to look at or give any attention to.

 

He's not on my list because he is unworthy of any form of respect or discussion, in my opinion. He gave up his claim to any sort of acclaim when he murdered his family.