Chris, Nancy, & Daniel Benoit found dead

[NintendoLogic]

It was a response to this.

 

Chris Nowinski talking to Bill Simmons this week claimed that Benoit's colleagues had told him after his death that his memory had slipped so much that he had stopped planning his matches ahead of time and started calling all his matches by the fly instead.

Am I the only one seeing the irony ?

 

So do you think that ECW match were Benoit had the tantrum in was scripted or called in the ring?

 

I have no idea what you're refering to, I never watched WWECW. I'm saying how ironic is this that Chris Benoit of all people was supposed to pre-planned his matches beforehand in WWE because WWE produced guys can't work a lick, and that his memory slipping means he actually had to work like he always did, on the fly. Benoit supposedly trashed the notes DDP brought him for their PPV match in WCW, and at this point of his career, he's working on the fly because *his memory slipped*... Man.

 

Sorry for the confusion.

 

I've never heard anything about Benoit scripting his matches in response to the limitations of WWE workers. Is there any documentation of this?

[smkelly]

The amount of road agents.

Their spoken language is scripted.

There is only one way to work in the WWE.

[NintendoLogic]

He certainly was more restricted in what he could and couldn't do in the WWE. But I seriously doubt he was having his matches laid out Pat Patterson-style. Again, guys like Undertaker were pointing to DDP scripting his matches as evidence that the WCW guys couldn't work.

[flyonthewall2983]

I don't really blame WWE as they were in a tough spot and had to scramble to fill time.

This quote is in relation to the controversial show aired the night everything was coming out. Part of me believes the blowback WWE received from this (not the actual incident itself) is karma for some things they did in the aftermath of Eddie's death. Specifically the night Orton trashed the car on Smackdown!. A good runner-up would be the uber-creepy angle where Edge and Vickie were "married".

 

The timing of it all is the biggest give-away for my theory. This forced what was an otherwise canned show to think on it's feet, with hours to spare when the news started to break.

 

But as for the actual show itself, I'll always give credit to them for doing the classy thing despite (and later to their peril) not being 100% certain of the facts. Vince opening the show in the ring of the empty arena was quite moving.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I. A good runner-up would be the uber-creepy angle where Edge and Vickie were "married".

Why was that "uber-creepy"? I thought it was a classic "heel marries/ dates authority figure/ powerful woman heel". I loved Eddie as much as the next fan, but the idea that his widow who's now an actress can't participate in storylines because of her "sainted real marriage" is silly.

 

Would it be creepy if she actually remarried? Or would it only be creepy if she actually married someone in wrestling, separating her from the thousands of people who meet spouse number two at work?

[Bix]

But as for the actual show itself, I'll always give credit to them for doing the classy thing despite (and later to their peril) not being 100% certain of the facts. Vince opening the show in the ring of the empty arena was quite moving.

They (Vince and some other top execs) did know. They still did the show in spite of that.

 

The prevailing theories:

 

1. They absolutely refused to believe it.

2. They thought Nancy actually did it because the most famous celebrity murder-suicide was committed by the wife (Brynn Hartman). This is backed up by them billing the show as a tribute to all three but not featuring her at all, to the point Lawler chimed in late in the show to mention her, as well as Mike Benoit saying Jerry McDevitt Came to him saying they knew she really did it.

3. They wanted to do a tribute show to pop the ratings (Mike Benoit's theory, which I think has at least some merit)

[flyonthewall2983]

I. A good runner-up would be the uber-creepy angle where Edge and Vickie were "married".

Why was that "uber-creepy"? I thought it was a classic "heel marries/ dates authority figure/ powerful woman heel". I loved Eddie as much as the next fan, but the idea that his widow who's now an actress can't participate in storylines because of her "sainted real marriage" is silly.

 

Would it be creepy if she actually remarried? Or would it only be creepy if she actually married someone in wrestling, separating her from the thousands of people who meet spouse number two at work?

 

You bring up several good points, and I guess in hindsight it wasn't so bad but at the time it just felt wrong. It felt to me, like they were trying to erase Eddie from history. They made up for it when Vickie did the frog splash at WM last year, and when Cena mentioned him in that promo on Raw a few weeks back.

 

And as for the prevailing theories, Bix, I'll go with number one. Number two seems pretty believable too, and I'd be lying if I said that possible angle wasn't floating around my head, however briefly. I'll say it again, the timing was what really made the show look as bad as it did to those who attacked it for being salacious. And given the timing, everyone must have been thrown into the first stage of grief, denial.

 

As for it being a ratings ploy, again because of the timing I can't see it. My overwhelming feeling was this caught everybody in the headlights, and they just did what felt natural. If what felt natural included trying to boost ratings by talking about him, then so be it. Emptying the arena and showing clips from the DVD and entire previous matches was the only thing different, I'm sure done in part because of the criticism of the two other shows they did like this. Also, It wasn't really national news until the following day, ending up being a top story on all the cable networks by the end of the week.

 

I'm not defending all they did to deflect the negative attention this story was bringing to bear, but I still feel the show was done with good intention.

[kjh]

What comes naturally to them is to protect the business at all costs, which often involves some form of cover up or lying. <_>

[Tawren]

Well, one reason they did the full-on tribute show of just Benoit match videos instead of an Owen Hart-style show of current roster members doing tribute matches was that they had parodied their tribute shows the week previous for the Vince's death storyline, complete with the 'wrestler talks about the deceased in front of black curtains' and 'announcers talk in Owen Voice' and other such stuff. An Owen Hart/Eddie Guerrero-style tribute show would have come off as probably less offensive (still quite offensive) than the empty arena with 3 hours of Benoit matches, but that is also their own fault.

 

I think it was Phil Schneider (might have been someone else) on DVDVR who posted about how the Vince tribute show was a horrible idea for the reason that they can't really do that style of tribute show anymore. It certainly fucked them that week.

 

Not that I'm excusing the Benoit tribute in any way! Fuck that guy, and doing any form of tribute show of any kind when they, at the very least, knew it involved some form of murder/suicide is fucked up beyond belief. Just providing some more context.

[smkelly]

My motive behind the question I will soon ask is in no way to defend the WWE, but more out of curiosity of how things work behind the scenes.

 

The question I pose is this: Would the WWE (Vince) have been fined by the USA Network for cancelling the show on such short notice?

 

If yes, then how much of a fine?

 

I'm thinking that there would have been advertisers that would have been mad, and I assume repercussions of some magnitude would have occurred.

[Dooley]

Based on how the rest of TV works, I'm assuming (note the word) if they had just run the last week's episode or any "best of" they had in the can, the worst thing that would have happened is that they might have to run some make-goods for sponsors.

[Victator]

and when Cena mentioned him in that promo on Raw a few weeks back.

While forgetting Eddy beat his brains in with a sweet car roof Frog Splash. [:

[Al]

As far as the tribute show (and I can't believe this came up again after a four year old quote), WWE came up with the easiest thing to do for television and let it ride. They made a mistake but I think in corporate they had bigger fish to fry. One thing I've seen from Raw the last several years is that with their massive production, they really don't like to improvise. A tribute show was their first (obvious) reaction. I thimk when the details became apparent in the afternoon they just said "fuck it."

 

I'll say this about Benoit with the benefit of hindsight. The big question to me has never really been the WWE cover up conspiracies or timelines. My interest has always been the mental state of Benoit at the time of the murders. Was he mentally competent, and if not what was the nature of that disease? Was it organic, the concussions, the steroids?

 

Others can debate the latter. Knowing what I know now about mental illness, Benoit is as much a victim as a murderer. His brain was likely fried, and it's really a tragic end all around. Not trying to excuse the murders, but this type of crime is not the sort of thing a person does with a clear head. That's probably obvious, but it's worth stating.

[Jingus]

They (Vince and some other top execs) did know. They still did the show in spite of that.

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.

[Bix]

They (Vince and some other top execs) did know. They still did the show in spite of that.

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.

 

There's a report about the 911 call made when Chris's mom went into hysterics after Scott Zerr (a journalist friend of Chris who was going to ghostwrite his WWE book) told her and his dad that the family was dead and it was a murder-suicide committed by Chris. A local reporter said on MSNBC that she found out from a cop while on her way to the crime scene. Dave Meltzer heard it from someone who heard it from a top WWE exec. All hours before the show.

[Jingus]

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.

[Loss]

Regal's comments on Benoit.

[Jingus]

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.

[flyonthewall2983]

Because he thought it might have went down as it did isn't reflective of what everybody felt.

[Dylan Waco]

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.

This is how investigative reporting works. There is no way to prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt. There almost never is on any subject.

[Bix]

Timeline I wrote up on another board during a previous argument about this:

 

Between what Michael Benoit told Irv Muchnick, what Dave Meltzer reported, and message board posts from that night, it looks like this:

 

5:30 PM ET: WWE Canada President Carl DeMarco calls Benoit's parents.  His mother, Margaret home alone, answers.  DeMarco says “I considered Chris one of my best friends…” only to get a response of “Why are you telling me this?” before realizing they hadn't been notified and saying he'd call back.  DeMarco calls the detective in charge of the notifications, who called Benoit's mother.  DeMarco then called Scott Zerr, an Edmonton report of friend of Chris who was helping with his autobiography, and told him to go to the parents' house and lend his support.  Margaret calls her husband/Chris's father Michael and tells him to come home.

 

Around 6:00 PM ET: The deaths are reported on WWE.com.

 

6:05 PM ET: Dave Meltzer receives a call from a WWE source who tells him that Chris was the killer.

 

6:36 PM ET: Constable Rob Morris of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was dispatched to the Benoit home. He assisted Emergency Medical Services in “a complaint of a distraught female [who] was just informed that her son, who lives in the United States, had passed away.” His report documents that he “called Detective TURNER to confirm details. Detective TURNER had already spoken with Chris’s Mother, Margaret BENOIT, and informed her of Chris’s passing. The incident was being investigated as an alleged murder-suicide.”

 

6:45 PM ET: Michael gets home.  Zerr meets him in the driveway and tells him he was told by WWE that Chris killed Nancy and Daniel before killing himself.

 

Between 6:00 and 7:00 PM ET: Police tell a local reporter that Chris was the killer.  The reporter mentioned this the next day on MSNBC.

 

Presumably some point before 8:00 PM ET: JBL asked Regal if he thought Chris had anything to do with killing Daniel right before Regal taped his tribute, rattling Regal (who knew that Chris had been losing it to some degree) enough to make sure he didn't praise Chris as a person.  Chavo Guerrero, who (along with Scott Armstrong) got the text messages from Chris, tapes a tribute that goes overboard in talking about how he trusted his kids with Chris and makes it clear he knew what happened.

 

8:00 PM ET: Raw goes on the air on the East Coast.

 

10:00 PM ET: The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that it's a murder-suicide.

 

10:30 PM ET: Rich Tate reports that Chris was the killer.

 

11:00 PM ET: WAGA TV reports that Chris was the killer as Raw goes on the air on the West Coast.

 

Around 12:00 AM ET: WWE.com reported that Chris was the killer.

[tigerpride]

Regal's comments on Benoit.

That was because right before he did his tribute, JBL said: You don't think he killed his kid do you?

 

Why did they even air Regal's comments about Benoit?

 

Also, I've been to the Benoit house. He lived far off the beaten path, pretty far from the city limits of Atlanta.

[Jingus]

6:05 PM ET: Dave Meltzer receives a call from a WWE source who tells him that Chris was the killer.

 

6:45 PM ET: Michael gets home.  Zerr meets him in the driveway and tells him he was told by WWE that Chris killed Nancy and Daniel before killing himself.

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".

[Bix]

I didn't know that US court standards for evidence were required on fake fighting message boards.

[Jingus]

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".