Chris, Nancy, & Daniel Benoit found dead

[Bix]

It didn't help that the interviewing itself was kind of awful. Maybe I should reach out to her for a podcast?

 

I didn't read the teacher to Chris stuff the way you did, since she was making a larger point about how he really had no interests outside of wrestling to the point she had to try to steer him towards various types of entertainment. The Kevin thing...maybe.

 

And she's not really hiding that Chris and Nancy were supporting her.

 

In case anyone's wondering, the Nancy & Daniel Benoit Foundation isn't rated by Charity Navigator because it's not required to file a certain form that I THINK is due to its small size (taking in less than $25,000/year): http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?...p;ein=260683522

[mookeighana]

First of all, I know it's very, very hard to talk about the murder of someone that is close to you and this interview with Sandra was very bold and honest which could not have been easy to do. It very kind of her to speak so openly and hopefully it goes towards setting the record straight on a few points like the Fragile X and the Track Marks.

 

My brother-in-law (Benoit) made every show, he went to every production meeting, never missed a call, never missed a flight and always drove himself or made travel arrangements. Chris wasn’t schizophrenic. Someone with schizophrenia wouldn’t be able to do all that. He had a serious drug problem, used a lot of steroids and was certainly not alone in that at the time. The paranoia was a direct result of the abuse of steroids. The last 2 weeks I spent with Chris, we used to go to the gym and go tanning together. At some point, he began acting weird and I wondered what was wrong with him. He would find 30 different routes to drive to the gym which he never did before. This is not schizophrenia! This was a result of combining steroids with pain medication and, later on, alcohol.

I am not a mental health expert on Schizophrenia so I can't say whether she's right or wrong about the limitations of someone affected by that disorder (i.e. the "he was well organized so he couldn't have been sick"). That said, while it may have not been Schizophrenia, the description of his sudden behavior changes and intense paranoia do sound (to me) like some kind of mental illness which might go beyond steroid abuse.

[kjh]

I was wondering where the schizophrenia question came from, given that's one theory behind the deaths I've never heard of before.

[Dooley]

I understand why Mike Benoit would want a physical REASON for what his son did; and utilizing Concussion Syndrome to explain away Chris’ actions would provide that.

I found this statement interesting as she seems to think invoking CTE is "explaining away" while she's pretty much doing the same thing by pointing the finger directly at steroids.

[kjh]

I think the thought process is that steroid usage is a personal choice, brain damage isn't.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

I understand why Mike Benoit would want a physical REASON for what his son did; and utilizing Concussion Syndrome to explain away Chris’ actions would provide that.

I found this statement interesting as she seems to think invoking CTE is "explaining away" while she's pretty much doing the same thing by pointing the finger directly at steroids.

 

That's not her argument necessarily. She's saying Benoit mixed a lot of drugs with steroids and probably blacked out when he brutally murdered his wife. He woke up shocked and debated whether he'd show up at the PPV. Instead, he killed his son for some odd reason, possibly because he didn't trust Nancy's sister to have the kid (especially if they were supporting her to some extent). I don't know. What I do know, however, is she's not the first one to espouse that hypothesis. René Dupree does too, who had similar experiences with blacking out by mixing alcohol, steroids, and pain killers, and waking up to some carnage he caused but having no memory of such. That's totally plausible, especially since I got the impression from Muchnick's book that Nancy was very vocal against Benoit's steroid use and that Benoit would interpret that as nagging.

 

Honestly, I find the CTE explanation, though plausible, still weak. Think of it this way. If Benoit had some degree of logical thought processing - and there is no evidence whatsoever that he didn't and that he couldn't discern from right and wrong (this is evident by his suicide) which would be the basis for an insanity plea had he gone to trial - how does CTE explain the murder/suicide? To me, it's obviously a means to explain away the actions of a guy who was held in the highest professional regard, and it's a comforting thing to those who don't want to think he was a murderer in waiting. And the fact is there is no indication he had such a disposition, despite Randazzo grasping at straws in his book to show that Benoit had some murderous tendency by calling someone a "gay bitch" - a phrase that could offend the sensibilities of the NYT crowd but is not unique in any sense in some macho subculture like pro-wrestling.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

I think the thought process is that steroid usage is a personal choice, brain damage isn't.

Yes, and that's an odd argument from any angle. Steroid use was as much a personal choice as willfully taking outrageous bumps that he knowingly brought on concussions. Since Benoit's murder/suicide, there has been a tendency to use him as a martyr that the grind of pro-wrestling can bring on, and that image has been remarkably successful in a profession that wouldn't change no matter how many deaths came about. I suspect there is a post-hoc fallacy in this as well that is brought on by the confusing of Benoit's suicide.

 

Consider Mike Awesome's suicide and the suicide of several NFL players arguably and convincingly induced by a history of concussions. For someone to make the argument that Benoit's rampage was primarily induced by CTE, you'd have to show that Benoit had intention to commit suicide prior to killing Nancy Benoit. As someone who has examined many cases of suicide, it is true that (a) suicide cases are rarely rational prior to committing the act (though this is an aside, I think Chris' decision was built in rationality), and ( there is a contradiction to (a) in the sense that some suicide cases carry on their actions like normal up until the point of suicide (e.g. paying bills, seeing doctors for steroids in this case, and buying groceries for the week). ( is more critical to examine. I don't have data to support this, but I would imagine that suicide cases typically don't buy groceries for the week and pay their bills. So when police and coroners deem one to have committed suicide, their families are often left confused if they were taking care of their daily living prior to committing the deed. So the family thinks the person was murdered instead. Maybe it is murder in some cases. I don't know. But it does seem logical to assume that people the government claim committed suicide wouldn't carry out long-term plans like paying bills and groceries.

 

Whatever the case, I don't think on Friday morning when Benoit paid a visit to Astin that Chris planned on killing Nancy. There were bottles of consumed wine that weren't found in Benoit's toxicology report. Within that time frame, it's safe to assume he consumed those either on Saturday or Friday. Maybe he consumed that and something else over both days. Whatever the case, wine mixed with steroids and pain pills can easily make one black out and do something they wind up regretting. It's a sad and tragic case for everyone involved and points to why guys who make a healthy living whilst doing a dangerous style have no business wrestling professionally at the age of 40.

[Jimmy Redman]

I don't think CTE is an excuse or is necessarily an attempt to explain away a good wrestler.

 

I hardly need to point out the brain scans performed on murderers thing, or the NFL suicides.

 

It doesn't excuse them or mean that they didn't make their own choices to do what they did, but it suggests that there is something on a physical, neurological level that contributed to their brain misfiring in such a way that they were capable of killing someone in cold blood. There's a neurological explanation for most of what we do as humans. That doesn't mean we don't have free will. That doesn't mean someone who does something horrible has no control over it. They most definitely do.

 

On the topic of Benoit though, I think if anything it is a mixture of both. The way Nancy was killed suggests that he was in a pretty violent rage and/or had blacked out, as you say. The fact that he killed Daniel, and then himself, quite a time later suggests something else entirely.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

First of all, I know it's very, very hard to talk about the murder of someone that is close to you and this interview with Sandra was very bold and honest which could not have been easy to do. It very kind of her to speak so openly and hopefully it goes towards setting the record straight on a few points like the Fragile X and the Track Marks.

 

My brother-in-law (Benoit) made every show, he went to every production meeting, never missed a call, never missed a flight and always drove himself or made travel arrangements. Chris wasn’t schizophrenic. Someone with schizophrenia wouldn’t be able to do all that. He had a serious drug problem, used a lot of steroids and was certainly not alone in that at the time. The paranoia was a direct result of the abuse of steroids. The last 2 weeks I spent with Chris, we used to go to the gym and go tanning together. At some point, he began acting weird and I wondered what was wrong with him. He would find 30 different routes to drive to the gym which he never did before. This is not schizophrenia! This was a result of combining steroids with pain medication and, later on, alcohol.

I am not a mental health expert on Schizophrenia so I can't say whether she's right or wrong about the limitations of someone affected by that disorder (i.e. the "he was well organized so he couldn't have been sick"). That said, while it may have not been Schizophrenia, the description of his sudden behavior changes and intense paranoia do sound (to me) like some kind of mental illness which might go beyond steroid abuse.

 

Going through Irving Muchnick's book, Benoit definitely had signs of paranoid schizophrenia but probably not enough for a diagnosis since there is no documentary evidence that he had auditory hallucinations. However, he'd have his airport driver go to his home using different routes out of paranoia that someone was following his family. But schizophrenia is very difficult to hide. He could have been in the prodromal stage. There are many indications that he was experiencing social withdrawal, which is one sign of the prodromal stage of schizophrenia, though certainly WWE's political environment didn't help matters. That environment can make most people go insane. Just think of Brock Lesnar's political dealings in 2003 and why he decided to quit in 2004.

 

Family members of patients with schizophrenia have identified several behaviors that indicated to them that something was wrong with their relative. Although the prodromal signs differ from patient to patient, nearly all family members of schizophrenia patients indicate that their relative experienced social withdrawal. Following, you will find 10 examples of behaviors that relatives of schizophrenia patients noticed in their family member during the prodromal stage of schizophrenia.

 

Read more: Stages of schizophrenia -Schizophrenia- The Course of Schizophrenia- http://www.health.am/psy/more/stages-of-sc.../#ixzz2XfdAjHxJ

[Guest Nell Santucci]

The fact that he killed Daniel, and then himself, quite a time later suggests something else entirely.

I disagree that it points to CTE necessarily. Benoit was a very weird guy with a warrior ethos of sorts, so his perspective would have been different. He was known to be overly protective and even neurotic about Daniel, if primary sources on his time in WWE are to be believed. It's not a stretch to presuppose he killed Daniel to either protect him from kidnappers (which he truly believed in his paranoid state induced by CTE) and/or to protect him from shame of his misdeeds. That he committed suicide in such a self loathing manner indicates he was set on punishing himself on his own terms. Chris Jericho's account of Benoit's personality indicates that mindset as well. The guy's neck was dangling on 225 pounds of weights, meaning he knowingly suffered profoundly when he decided to off himself.

[cm funk]

Benoit wasn't schizo, he was psychotic. Brain damage, two decades of drug abuse, and the death of some of his closest friends drove him insane. There were obviously some underlying issues with him, but I doubt he had major undiagnosed mental problems

[Guest stanley]

This was a facsininating read. To go back and capture all of the emotions that wrestling fans went thru on our darkest day as fans. Fascinating because it captured all emotions in a timeline. Shock,grief,disbelife,denial(for some)blame andconfusion.kudos to you guys for waiting to wait for the facts come out.

[Guest stanley]

So do most still watch his matches?

[Zoo Enthusiast]

I don't seek them out, nor do I skip them. If they had decided to edit out any mention of his name on the Network (like they did on the MITB set that came out last summer) I wouldn't bat an eye.

[Guest stanley]

Yeah I'm the same. Either way is fine. I enjoy his wrestling and will watch it,but can get buy without it. Though I am not complaining that they appear to be slowly integrating him back.

[flyonthewall2983]

I won't be too bothered watching him in the ring. Interviews and out-of-ring segments might be a different issue, but it won't amount to much other than a fleeting discomfort. Watching Nancy will be much more sad, and maybe upsetting but again it would be fleeting.

[Guest stanley]

I hope they don't show any post match celebrations.

[Mr. B.B. Rogers]

So do most still watch his matches?

I can watch his matches, although diving headbutts & chairshots make me uneasy. Other than that, I have no trouble watching him in the ring. However, I tried to watch the "Hard Knocks" DVD and found that nigh impossible to get through.

[cm funk]

I don't have a problem watching his matches. It's been almost 7 years now. I avoided them for a bit, but I'm fine with it now. I was a big Benoit fan back in the day, and I can still appreciate him as a performer. I never think, "I want to watch a Chris Benoit match!" but when he's involved in something I'm watching it's fine. Hearing the people who knew him talk about him and try to process what he did themselves kinda makes me realize how screwed up he was. I dont make judgements of a man based on the worst or the best of his actions. What he did was horrific, but it's not the entirety of his existence. That was a very weird and bad time to be a wrestling fan, we all had to do some soul searching, and like a lot of us I held Benoit with the highest regard and respect prior to that

 

As messed up as this will sound, in some ways it may have helped the sport. That it took a man mudering his wife and his child and himself to clean up the sport is beyond messed up. It was doom and gloom for a while and there were very legitimate questions being asked about the future of the sport. In terms of protecting the health of their athletes WWE is in a much better place now than it was in 2007. There was a lot of lipservice given to cleaning it up after Eddie died, but it didn't really fully take hold until after Benoit. Obviously still a lot of room for improvement (amazing that the guys haven't unionized yet, still, in 2014) and the drug policy is still kinda "don't get caught" when it comes to steriods/hgh.....but in terms of the concussion testing and physicals they're about as good as you'll find in american pro sports. Athletic commissions are a complete joke, and UFC kinda gets screwed over by them. I'm sure UFC would like to do all their own testings and not have to deal with the various completely clueless commissions, and when they do shows in other countries they do their own testing and more guys end up getting popped. WWE is lucky that they aren't really considered "sport" now and the athletic commissions don't try to involve themselves like they used to

[Migs]

Wondering now if the skipping around in early ECW shows on the Network is to avoid showing Nancy.

[Guest The Jiz]

I don't have a problem watching his matches. It's been almost 7 years now. I avoided them for a bit, but I'm fine with it now. I was a big Benoit fan back in the day, and I can still appreciate him as a performer. I never think, "I want to watch a Chris Benoit match!" but when he's involved in something I'm watching it's fine. Hearing the people who knew him talk about him and try to process what he did themselves kinda makes me realize how screwed up he was. I dont make judgements of a man based on the worst or the best of his actions. What he did was horrific, but it's not the entirety of his existence. That was a very weird and bad time to be a wrestling fan, we all had to do some soul searching, and like a lot of us I held Benoit with the highest regard and respect prior to that

 

As messed up as this will sound, in some ways it may have helped the sport. That it took a man mudering his wife and his child and himself to clean up the sport is beyond messed up. It was doom and gloom for a while and there were very legitimate questions being asked about the future of the sport. In terms of protecting the health of their athletes WWE is in a much better place now than it was in 2007. There was a lot of lipservice given to cleaning it up after Eddie died, but it didn't really fully take hold until after Benoit. Obviously still a lot of room for improvement (amazing that the guys haven't unionized yet, still, in 2014) and the drug policy is still kinda "don't get caught" when it comes to steriods/hgh.....but in terms of the concussion testing and physicals they're about as good as you'll find in american pro sports. Athletic commissions are a complete joke, and UFC kinda gets screwed over by them. I'm sure UFC would like to do all their own testings and not have to deal with the various completely clueless commissions, and when they do shows in other countries they do their own testing and more guys end up getting popped. WWE is lucky that they aren't really considered "sport" now and the athletic commissions don't try to involve themselves like they used to

 

This, I have no doubt and would dare anyone to pretend nothing changed. MVP's life was saved by the Wellness test. People with concussions are protected, maybe overly so. Think that if that was the standard, Bret Hart's career would not have ended in 1999. I don't know about the pain killer abuse, but it's doubtful anyone is popping 100 pills per day as in the Benoit era. Guys like Randy Orton, who used to easily be 230 pounds, are now down to about 200. With the main event "downsizing," people like Daniel Bryan are more easily pushed because they're not so outsized. That could correlate with a better working product overall, since roided up guys are less agile than non-roided up guys. It's just now with the influence of people like Benoit and his generation, the banning of steroids can be done in a marketable way in ways that 1992-96 couldn't pull off. So it's a total improvement all around. And guys with naturally big muscles have a better chance of standing out anyway, making the product's division of labor more stark, as opposed to specializing in "one type."

[909]

Wondering now if the skipping around in early ECW shows on the Network is to avoid showing Nancy.

I checked out Spring Stampede 97 and Nancy was Benoit's manager. So, I doubt it.

[kjh]

I'm sure UFC would like to do all their own testings and not have to deal with the various completely clueless commissions, and when they do shows in other countries they do their own testing and more guys end up getting popped. WWE is lucky that they aren't really considered "sport" now and the athletic commissions don't try to involve themselves like they used to

 

No-one is stopping UFC from doing their own in-house enhanced randomised drug testing, but they don't want to pay for it. They like the status quo where they can brag about their athletes being tested by the Government, while placing the heat on the ACs for anything that goes wrong.

[peachchaos]

If a Benoit match comes on, I just treat it like he's the ultimate heel and cheer his opponent to no end.

 

But really, it's easier to just skip it than to sit there in the dread.

 

I feel much better about seeing Nancy. She was amazing and her career deserves some recognition.

[cm funk]

 

I'm sure UFC would like to do all their own testings and not have to deal with the various completely clueless commissions, and when they do shows in other countries they do their own testing and more guys end up getting popped. WWE is lucky that they aren't really considered "sport" now and the athletic commissions don't try to involve themselves like they used to

 

No-one is stopping UFC from doing their own in-house enhanced randomised drug testing, but they don't want to pay for it. They like the status quo where they can brag about their athletes being tested by the Government, while placing the heat on the ACs for anything that goes wrong.

 

 

 

In most interviews Dana White has a genuine disdain for ACs, to the point where I have to take him seriously. Obviously they have certain commissions that they are on friendly terms with (Nevada, Cali) but I think he's sincere when he says he says he wishes UFC could control everything themselves. He's more pissed about the shoddy officiating and judging they get handed, and about the money these various states take out of their pockets, but he ranted about the shitty inconsistent drug testing more than enough.

 

White also professes to be against THT exceptions, which it's hard to take on face value. They being doing enough dodgy stuff in recent years (booking guys like 'Reem and Barnett in certain states where they won't be tested more stringently as a result of their past failures/bannings, the whole GSP testing fiasco, etc.) that obviously nobody in the sport is blind to the huge problem there is, but that's not just UFC, it's all of sports. You can put the most stringent testing in place and athletes will find a way to beat it. I think if it were up to Dana he'd want a cleaner sport, but it's not a realistic goal