Chris, Nancy, & Daniel Benoit found dead

[Mad Dog]

It's not based in logic though. You can be as tough as you want and have all the shoot fight cred you want. Doesn't mean you can do shit when my 5 foot helpless wife puts a bullet in you. Being tough doesn't make you bullet or knife proof.

[Victator]

Nash thought somebody had shot Benoit because he could not imagine anybody taking him with a knife.

 

Has anything really come out about Benoit's pre wrestling life as far as his mental health is concerned? That seems like a big missing clue to the puzzle. The thing that separates typical roid head pill popper from guy who kills his family.

[Mad Dog]

The concussions gave him dementia. There's a Bill Simmonks podcast from the spring where Chris Nowitski talks extensively about repeated concussions and the effects on future behavior. There are several NFL players that have done similar things to what Benoit did.

[Mad Dog]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traum..._encephalopathy

 

This is what Benoit is suspected to have been suffering from.

[Victator]

Yeah I know about that. But there are tons of athletes with brain damage, do roids and pop pills. I find the idea Benoit was not a bit fucked in the head to begin with difficult to believe.

[jdw]

Jingus: I suspect how most of us view things are impacted by personal / close experiances. I can see how the one above impacts yours, while muder-suicide pops into mine due to things close to me.

 

I think in your father's case it's close to what I mentioned earlier: most murders in homes are family/friend/lover related. Ex-husband / Ex-boyfriend... that falls within that range. Sick fuck striking out at his ex and her new life.

[Mad Dog]

Yeah I know about that. But there are tons of athletes with brain damage, do roids and pop pills. I find the idea Benoit was not a bit fucked in the head to begin with difficult to believe.

Why?

 

He had the brain of an 85 year old with advanced dementia due to repeated concussions. He was fucking insane by the time he killed his family. Doesn't matter what he was like before, that person had been destroyed one flying head butt at a time over the course of 20 years.

[Victator]

How do you explain all the guys with just as severe brain damage who aren't murderers?

[jdw]

I think we all wanted to find a magic bullet single theory on why Chris did what he did. It's unlikely any one single thing was the cause. Concussions? Probably played a role. Years of massive drug abuse and addiction? Probably played a role. That he was a nutter, and likely long had been? Probably played a role.

 

John

[Mad Dog]

How do you explain all the guys with just as severe brain damage who aren't murderers?

Just because you have brain damage doesn't mean you're going to kill your family. The same reason that not every depressed person doesn't kill themselves and why every person with a mental breakdown isn't smearing feces on the wall. Other guys with similar conditions to Benoit have done violent things. In fact, brains that closely matched his condition all had violent instances or ends to their lives. But just because he suffered brain damage and did what he did doesn't mean someone else suffering the same conditions would do the same thing. There are a lot of variables that come into play with insanity.

[Jingus]

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.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traum..._encephalopathy

 

This is what Benoit is suspected to have been suffering from.

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.

[Victator]

That is why I wonder about his life before wrestling. Not that he was a raving lunatic but maybe there were signs and the concussions and drugs created a perfect storm. But the only people who know for sure are his parents and understandably they would not want to go into it.

[smkelly]

For all records, Benoit was an avid wrestling fan as a youth. Avid is putting it lightly too. I mean, Jericho seemed by all respects to be as equally obsessed with pro wrestling as a youth, Benoit just took the way in the door quicker because he had already been experimenting with steroids before he started training at the Dungeon.

 

I haven't heard much "diagnosis" of his past by his parents, though. The word 'quiet' comes to mind.

[cm funk]

I think my first instinct once it was reported that the whole family was dead was that they had either been executed or it had been a robbery/home invasion/kidnapping attempt gone wrong. It didn't seem out of the question that Benoit could have gotten himself involved with the criminal underworld and had a hit put on him.....it happened to Dino Bravo....or been a target for robbery. Looking back that was kind of crazy to think since it had already been reported that he had contacted WWE a few times and was home with his sick family....but it was crazy to try and make sense about what was happening.

 

Then people started speculating and stuff like gas leak, carbon poisoning, or food poisoning sounded totally plausible to me and I think I'd pretty much convinced myself that it had to be something like that until the news started to filter out that Benoit had suicided himself

 

Like so many on the internet the guy had been one of my absolute favorite wrestlers for years, so I was definitely looking for an explanation that jived with the idealized version of him that was out there

[cm funk]

I think we all wanted to find a magic bullet single theory on why Chris did what he did. It's unlikely any one single thing was the cause. Concussions? Probably played a role. Years of massive drug abuse and addiction? Probably played a role. That he was a nutter, and likely long had been? Probably played a role.

 

John

All of that, plus Eddie (among others) dying and a general dissatisfaction with the business. Somewhere inside himself he had to know that the business he'd dedicated his entire life to had killed so many of his friends and was going to kill him too at the rate he was going. Eddie's death is definitely what pushed him into full blown crazy territory according to everybody who knew him, and there were just so many warning signs that were ignored because its wrestling and crazy is the norm

 

There's no way of knowing, but if Eddie doesn't die I don't think this ever happens, or at least not when it did

[Bob Morris]

Catching up on several topics:

 

* When I first heard the news, I was in shock that it happened and wasn't really thinking about "how did it happen?" Then when more evidence was reported and it painted the picture of how it happened, I felt shock again, not in terms of "Benoit isn't the kind of guy who would do this!" but in terms of"why would Benoit do such a thing?"

 

Then I became more concerned about the "why" part not because I was looking to excuse Benoit, but because I wanted to know what people were missing, overlooking or ignoring, so that such a situation didn't happen to somebody else in the future. No, you won't prevent all such cases, but knowing those details of what led Benoit to his actions is a way to take steps towarding preventing some of those similar situations from happening.

 

* I think the larger point of WWE doing what it did is this: The company has this mindset that it's going to air first-run programming no matter what and that it will take a LOT for them to cancel a televised show or PPV outright. I agree with Loss that WWE acts too defensive when questions about things, rather than once in a while taking a step back and saying "maybe we could have done things differently but chalk it up to hindsight." Instead, we get "we did nothing wrong, quit blaming us."

 

* Ring of Hell makes the argument that Benoit had mental issues growing up, such as him talking so much about Dynamite Kid that Benoit's friends get turned off and don't want to socialize with him. Of course, when Benoit was younger, people didn't know as much about mental issues as they do today. Even now, the brain is the most misunderstood organ in the human body and doctors differ all the time in their assessments of patients with mental issues.

 

I can think of one example: Following the shooting that injured Gabrielle Giffords and killed and injured other people, our local school superintendent talked about a case in a previous district he worked for, in which a teenage boy wrote a list of people he wanted to kill. He was immediately taken to an emergency room, the doctor on duty determined he needed help with his mental issues and recommended he be taken to another facility. They had to wait for transportation, so he was kept under watch. Then the next doctor on duty took over, looked at the kid, said there was nothing wrong with him, so they released him. The superintendent said he carefully monitored for the rest of the school year and the kid didn't do anything, but still, you have two doctors with different opinions and, from what I gather, the family of the kid is in denial there is anything wrong with him.

 

So I suspect when Benoit was growing up, he may very well have had mental issues but nobody knew. His friends probably just thought he was annoying, not truly fucked up in the head. And I suspect his parents didn't think much about it at that time.

 

That's not to say what Benoit experienced in wrestling didn't have an impact on his mental state, but I don't think it's the entire story, either.

[artDDP]

I was getting off work that day and got a text message from my friend, Chris, that read, "Chris Benoit killed himself and his family."

 

I laughed and walked out to the parking lot. After a few minutes I thought that my friend didn't have that kind of sense of humor so I wrote back with, "What?"

 

He told me it was on every channel by that point. When I got home, just before the Raw tribute aired on the west coast I saw the Benoit story on every cable news channel. I was shocked, needless to say, but I didn't go into crazy Benoit rationalization mode. I loved the guy and owned his "Toothless Agression" T-shirt but I was ready to accept that he did something horrible.

 

Does it make me a monster that I have no problem watching his matches?

[Mad Dog]

I don't think so. I think people trying to excuse what he did or the crazy theories to make him look better are worse. Being able to disconnect the performer from the real life person isn't a bad thing. You almost have to do it for wrestling. I mean we watch old stuff knowing half the guys were dead by 45 due to the lifestyle.

 

I personally haven't watched a Benoit match since it happened. And honestly, I really stopped watching wrestling until earlier this year. It had a large impact on my love for wrestling for a long time. I'm still not the fan I was but I'm starting to grab some of that passion again.

[Loss]

I haven't had a problem watching Benoit matches, but it took a while. I don't begrudge anyone who had no issue with it. It's not really a moral issue at all. It's an issue of personal comfort.

[artDDP]

I bought the Benoit 2-disc set last year at a used video store here. While watching it I forgot for a moment that it was done in 2004 when his childhood friend says near the beginning, "Knowing Chris like I do I'm not surprised he did what he did." He was referring to him winning the title at WrestleMania, but for a moment I did feel a little uneasy.

[cm funk]

I would have felt uneasy walking up to the register with that

[kjh]

* Ring of Hell makes the argument that Benoit had mental issues growing up, such as him talking so much about Dynamite Kid that Benoit's friends get turned off and don't want to socialize with him. Of course, when Benoit was younger, people didn't know as much about mental issues as they do today. Even now, the brain is the most misunderstood organ in the human body and doctors differ all the time in their assessments of patients with mental issues.

So I suspect when Benoit was growing up, he may very well have had mental issues but nobody knew. His friends probably just thought he was annoying, not truly fucked up in the head. And I suspect his parents didn't think much about it at that time.

 

That's not to say what Benoit experienced in wrestling didn't have an impact on his mental state, but I don't think it's the entire story, either.

I thought that argument in Ring Of Hell was really flaky. I wouldn't equate being awkward around other children and being obsessed with working out and wrestling from an early age to being "truly fucked up in the head". It makes him sound autistic, but other than that he had a very normal, boring upbringing. All the really disturbing behaviour cited in Ring Of Hell happened after he had broken into the business and got worse over time. I think there's a lot stronger evidence that wrestling impacted his mental state (through the concussions, steroids, pain pills, deaths, etc) than there is that he was always really "fucked up in the head".

[Jingus]

I would have felt uneasy walking up to the register with that

It's a used video store. They probably have big fat sweaty guys pawing through the racks every week in an endless search for hentai porn and serial killer documentaries. Trust me, the Benoit DVD is probably not even the weirdest thing that cashier sold that day.

[artDDP]

I would have felt uneasy walking up to the register with that

It's a used video store. They probably have big fat sweaty guys pawing through the racks every week in an endless search for hentai porn and serial killer documentaries. Trust me, the Benoit DVD is probably not even the weirdest thing that cashier sold that day.

 

Lol! Dimple Records here in Sacramento actually caters more to an underground rock fan; most of the employees are goths or hipsters. They just happen to get a shit-ton of wrestling DVDs. But, yeah, it was probably not the weirdest thing they sold that day.

[Kronos]

I bought the Benoit 2-disc set last year at a used video store here. While watching it I forgot for a moment that it was done in 2004 when his childhood friend says near the beginning, "Knowing Chris like I do I'm not surprised he did what he did." He was referring to him winning the title at WrestleMania, but for a moment I did feel a little uneasy.

I remember buying it in late 2006, I think. One of the things I remember liking about it was how much he seemed like a normal, if slightly geeky, guy who just loved what he did and brought a lot of people pleasure. In many ways, it was the same thing I loved about Foley.

 

So weird to consider now.

 

For awhile, I was able to watch his matches and differentiate between the work and the man. But a year or so ago, I suddenly just couldn't anymore. Now I feel terribly uncomfortable and often fast forward his parts of PPVs (and I never look up his matches on youtube).