So, "Ring of Hell"...

[Johnny Sorrow]

It read to me more like his Pillman stuff was an addition to the review, but not stated as such. Pretty much Dave saying what he had to say, and then emphasizing it with his extensive knowledge of Pillman.

[Bob Morris]

On one hand, Dave has a valid point about the desire to being the best doesn't instantly equate to being a mark for oneself. On the other hand, Dave should have been digging into comparisons between Benoit and other wrestlers who were driven to be the best.

 

I don't think Randazzo ever intended to declare that Benoit's desire to be the best meant he was going to kill his family. Instead, Randazzo paints Benoit as being overly obssessed... the bit he pulled from Chris Jericho's about Benoit subjecting himself to 500 Hindu squats for a mistake made during a match that Jericho described as one that nobody watching was any wiser to, clearly illustrates that Benoit was too worried about making mistakes, even ones that most wrestlers would consider trivial.

 

I don't recall stories like that said about Ric Flair, who was also a wrestler always portrayed as driven to being the best. But he was also a wrestler that worked a "safer" style and didn't suffer from serious injuries as a direct result of his wrestling style. His most serious injury was the broken back he suffered in that plane crash back in the mid 1970s.

 

It's true that Flair was "living the lifestyle" he portrayed in his wrestling character, and Flair certainly was not without his faults. But he generally worked a "safe" style and strived not only to protect his opponent, but himself.

 

Like I said previously and in my review, Randazzo's book is not about telling a story that is completely true. It's about illustrating a point... some stories he pulled are true, some may or may not be true, some are exaggerated versions of the truth and some are strictly rumor or have no truth to them at all. But they still illustrate the point about the nature of the business.

[kjh]

I don't recall stories like that said about Ric Flair, who was also a wrestler always portrayed as driven to being the best.

Maybe not, but Flair himself had a terrible time coming to terms with the fact that he was no longer being treated as the best by management and an even worse time of it when he realised he was indeed no longer the best, going into a deep depression and losing all of his self confidence.

[Loss]

I think Meltzer really nailed what drove Flair in his write up in the WON a couple of months back, when he said for Flair, wrestling was a chance to continue the high school lifestyle he enjoyed so much where he was popular, a good athlete, dressed well, threw great parties, and always got the girls. Flair had Benoit drive, but got into wrestling for totally different reasons.

[Jingus]

Like I said previously and in my review, Randazzo's book is not about telling a story that is completely true. It's about illustrating a point... some stories he pulled are true, some may or may not be true, some are exaggerated versions of the truth and some are strictly rumor or have no truth to them at all. But they still illustrate the point about the nature of the business.

That's... nonsense. This is supposed to be a factual, nonfiction book. Hence, inaccuracies are bad. Telling stories which didn't happen that way or never happened at all don't illustrate a damn thing.

[goodhelmet]

I usually trust Meltzer's word. However, he is just another guy with sources. I am not saying the book isn't filled with inaccuracies. I don't know. It just may be that the sources Randazzo used are different than the one's Dave uses. His "review" seemed more like an opportunity to exonerate Pillman of any bad pub than it was to debunk the book. It reads more like "I knew Pillman so trust my word more than the guy who talked to other guys who knew Pillman".

[sek69]

I got that vibe as well. I could tell from Dave's review of the Pillman DVD that he felt pretty strongly about Brian (and maybe a little of "maybe I could have done something more" as well) and that almost all of his issues with Ring of Hell seem to stem from him catching feelings over anyone even suggesting mean things about him.

 

Also it kind of alarms me that Dave dismissing so quickly the fact that Benoit idolized one of the biggest psychopaths in wrestling history. It's not as if he didn't meet him until much later and not know what a tremendous asshole Dynamite was. It's one thing to find out your hero is a jerk. It's quite another to find that out and continue to hold him in high regard as if nothing happened. For a guy who usually is fast to point out the twisted mindset that seems to thrive in pro wrestling, Dave really bends over backwards to drive home his point that completely patterning your career around a guy who not only was a dick but also ended up in a wheelchair has no connection at all with Benoit ending up with brain damage/becoming a family annihilator.

 

It's like he'll fully acknowledge the messed up side of the business in a "lol, wrestling" kind of manner, but once there's a hint of it leading to serious shit he's almost as bad as the Justice for Benoit people.

[S.L.L.]

Like I said previously and in my review, Randazzo's book is not about telling a story that is completely true. It's about illustrating a point... some stories he pulled are true, some may or may not be true, some are exaggerated versions of the truth and some are strictly rumor or have no truth to them at all. But they still illustrate the point about the nature of the business.

That's... nonsense. This is supposed to be a factual, nonfiction book. Hence, inaccuracies are bad. Telling stories which didn't happen that way or never happened at all don't illustrate a damn thing.

 

Except then, you could never write a true "non-fiction" book about wrestling (or politics, crime, or any other secretive or dishonest organization), thus rendering the point moot. If nothing else, Randazzo is honest about the fact that he couldn't possibly get/confirm all the honest facts about what he wrote about, because it's wrestling, and the truth that people tell him one day might be a lie the next depending on a litany of factors. This isn't the be all, end all tale of what happened. It can't be. You'd have to be God or at least have access to Wonder Woman's Golden Lasso of Truth to know with 100% certainty what was really going on. What we have in "Ring of Hell" is Randazzo's best interpretation of the truth, based on his studies and his sources, with his acknowledgment that much of it may or may not be true, and that it's ultimately up to the reader to decide what they'll believe. And while you could argue that without all the facts, he maybe shouldn't have written this book at all, you would then have to argue that no book about Benoit, or wrestling in general, or secretive/dishonest societies in general should ever be written, and that seems silly.

 

Really, one of the many things that the Benoit murders illustrated to me is that most of the anti-WWE/anti-McMahon people out there are all show and no go. They talk tough when HHH and other 'roid monsters get pushed too hard, or when someone like Eddie Guerrero croaks in a hotel room because of McMahon's policies, and they whine and complain about why things are the way they are, and how things need to change. But the second one of the all-time great workers kills his family and himself, and there's any kind of real outside scrutiny of wrestling's problems, they all rally around their fearless leader to defend the biz, because deep down, they'd rather see Daniel Benoit die than see WWE die. This is essentially how Meltzer comes off here. With him, the mark element is compounded by a "boys in the back" element, since he was tight with Pillman and Benoit and other guys in the business, so I'm sure bad things being said about those guys strikes him on a personal level. Still, he's a reporter. He's kinda expected to look at this with some degree of objectivity, especially when he had previously been bitching about all the things wrong with wrestling. He really seems to be exposing his true colors here, and it's pretty embarrassing.

[Bix]

For those registered there, is there an F4WOnline thread about this latest shit and is it as depressing as one would think?

[Bix]

I think Meltzer really nailed what drove Flair in his write up in the WON a couple of months back, when he said for Flair, wrestling was a chance to continue the high school lifestyle he enjoyed so much where he was popular, a good athlete, dressed well, threw great parties, and always got the girls. Flair had Benoit drive, but got into wrestling for totally different reasons.

Plus he's still a remarkably fucked up person who added a new, dangerous spot to his routine (back bodydrop on the floor) right after a suffering a broken bone in his neck (or back, I forget which), has a terrible drinking problem, has terrible anger issues (beat his wife and had that road rage incident for starters), sexually harrasses every woman he meets, molests some of them, runs around hotels and airplanes naked while spinning his penis around, and spent more than he made in a pathetic attempt to live his gimmick. He's not Benoit, but he's still a nut that's dangerous to others. Also, Dave Meltzer basically ignored the more lurid stories about his hero until they became public knowledge in the "Flight From Hell" lawsuit.

 

Also it kind of alarms me that Dave dismissing so quickly the fact that Benoit idolized one of the biggest psychopaths in wrestling history. It's not as if he didn't meet him until much later and not know what a tremendous asshole Dynamite was. It's one thing to find out your hero is a jerk. It's quite another to find that out and continue to hold him in high regard as if nothing happened. For a guy who usually is fast to point out the twisted mindset that seems to thrive in pro wrestling, Dave really bends over backwards to drive home his point that completely patterning your career around a guy who not only was a dick but also ended up in a wheelchair has no connection at all with Benoit ending up with brain damage/becoming a family annihilator.

 

It's like he'll fully acknowledge the messed up side of the business in a "lol, wrestling" kind of manner, but once there's a hint of it leading to serious shit he's almost as bad as the Justice for Benoit people.

Really, one of the many things that the Benoit murders illustrated to me is that most of the anti-WWE/anti-McMahon people out there are all show and no go. They talk tough when HHH and other 'roid monsters get pushed too hard, or when someone like Eddie Guerrero croaks in a hotel room because of McMahon's policies, and they whine and complain about why things are the way they are, and how things need to change. But the second one of the all-time great workers kills his family and himself, and there's any kind of real outside scrutiny of wrestling's problems, they all rally around their fearless leader to defend the biz, because deep down, they'd rather see Daniel Benoit die than see WWE die. This is essentially how Meltzer comes off here. With him, the mark element is compounded by a "boys in the back" element, since he was tight with Pillman and Benoit and other guys in the business, so I'm sure bad things being said about those guys strikes him on a personal level. Still, he's a reporter. He's kinda expected to look at this with some degree of objectivity, especially when he had previously been bitching about all the things wrong with wrestling. He really seems to be exposing his true colors here, and it's pretty embarrassing.

It's not just alarming, it's insulting that he thinks so little of his readers that he tries to feed them this stuff. I seem to remember him being pretty outspoken about Benoit's recklessness in '01 for doing all of the dangerous stuff he did on a broken neck, and now he compares it to Jim Carrey and Jack Nicholson being driven. It's would be one thing if he used a specific example of something mildly comprable, like an actor losing a dangerous amount of weight quickly for a role, method acting something dangerous, or Jackie Chan's more stupid stunts, but he didn't. He just said "THESE GUYS WERE DRIVEN HOW IS THAT DIFFERENT!!?!?!?!" He's still circling the wagons to protect his image of Chris Benoit, great worker, model employee, and dude who talked to him, in spite of all of the gruesome detail he went into while describing how Benoit lost his mind, beat his wife, killed his wife and son, and then tortured himself to death. We already saw some of this when he sort of dismissed the brain research after initially pushing for it (misunderstanding the explanation of the damage in a way that only Vince McMahon and the dumbest message board posters did) while ranting about his grandmothers' Alzheimers. He talked a good game last summer, and then he pissed all over it when the actual wrestling matches became an issue in Benoit's spiral.

[kjh]

For those registered there, is there an F4WOnline thread about this latest shit and is it as depressing as one would think?

The Ring Of Hell thread has been bumped and the level of discourse is probably what you would expect. Outside of Famous Mortimer defending the book and criticising Lance Storm's review of it as wagon circling, most people are lapping up Dave's article and are using it as an opportunity to call you names.

[Bix]

Could you C&P Mort's posts? I'm curious to see what he said.

[kjh]

The relevant posts:

 

I've yet to read Dave's most recent review of it, but I thought the book was pretty decent. Had its problems, but it also had a heck of a lot that I thought was interesting and important. I'm not just running into threads and defending Bix, honest.

Is that the burying he gave it on the audio show, after reading four chapters?

EDIT: I see there's a review in that thread. Never mind. Although his view at both points appears to be identical, which gives me the clue he'd made his mind up long before he ever opened the book. The "I could go into far more detail about things I hated in this book but I fear to do so might actually create enough interest for you to buy this book, which I whole-heartedly encourage you not to do" is utter bollocks though. Pointing out something's flaws and being specific about it doesn't often increase sales, another indicator Storm's being at best evasive himself.

If your opinion is in the same arena as Lance's, which is wagon-circling at its finest, then probably very little. I thought its ideas for changing things for the better were good, if obvious, and it had a lot of information I'd not read elsewhere. Did you not like any of the book?

Read the edit above. The review he gave it is just "it's terrible, don't buy it". I don't think the Times Literary Supplement will be offering him work any time soon.

I think it was, it went way over normal criticism of the book. And your comment over the quality of the review being reflected in the quality of the book...so a badly-written book only deserves a badly-written review? What does that achieve?

 

I've read through the thread and you seem to have enjoyed it. I'd guess our opinions on it are largely similar - my main criticism of the book is the way it was written rather than the things it said.

 

Anyway, after reading the thread, the question was asked a few times, what did Randazzo get wrong? It's been sorta peripherally answered, but what stories does he tell that are definitely, provably wrong? I'm not a pro-book nut, but I'd be interested to know what's so far off it affects peoples' view of the book as a whole.

Which doesn't answer the question, something you were extremely annoyed with Bix for doing earlier in this thread. What does he get wrong? And I'm not on about spelling or repetitive phrases, as I'm sure you know.

So before this week, when the review came out, what were your criticisms based on?

 

Saying that, as I'll no doubt just get another one line response quoted from another post, I thought Dave's review was excellent. I've no idea if his "this never happened" should be more believable than Randazzo's "this happened" in some cases, but on the balance of probabilities I'd give it to Dave.

[Bix]

As far as Dave's accuracy vs Randazzo's accuracy, it's really a ridiculous argument. Both get info from wrestlers and management (current and former). Both have been accused by people in the business to be wrong, sometimes in generalities and sometimes with specifics, the latter of which includes cases where one may be more likely side w/ the accusing wrestlers at times. If they have contradicting stories, then one is wrong, but the only reason to believe Dave over Randazzo is that he's been doing it longer, during which people accused him of the same things, and honestly, Dave Meltzer seems to be worked more easily (sometimes blatantly, when it's being done by Gabe Sapolsky or Konnan, and later by Dean Malenko), ditto for Bryan Alvarez and Wade Keller.

 

The fact that Dave doesn't refute any of the "Benoit was an evil asshole stories" while still trying to lessen their impact is pretty telling, as is the fact that it appears he and the other reporters sat on the Lagana story. Much of what's going on feels like the newsletter sources are angry about the book and Dave is writing up ridiculous criticiisms by comparing broken-necked garbage bumps to Jim Carrey being VERY DRIVEN hoping that his dimmer readers will eat it up while criticizing the book enough to satisfy his sources.

[jdw]

Dave's first review of the article and the letter my MR-5 (or MR-4)?

 

 

John

[Bix]

Hrm? We're talking about the feature in the 7/14/08.

 

BTW, the Matthew Randazzo IV vs V thing is pretty simple: He didn't know that that his great great grandfather had the name until more recently.

[jdw]

I was asking for someone to toss up the *earlier* stuff.

 

On the 4-5 thing, it's a bit odd that the earlier generations lost track of whether Jr. was Jr.-II or Sr., whether III was III or Jr.-II, etc. You tend to know when your dad has the same name as you do.

 

 

John

[Bix]

Gotcha Re: the reviews.

 

I still don't see why the name thing or the reasons for it undermines anything Randazzo did.

[jdw]

On the stuff above, I don't read Dave's section on Pillman as being problematic for what it says. Pretty consistent either with things he wrote at the time, or talked about with folks but didn't print while Brian was among the living. He doesn't make Brian come across "great" in the writing, right down to the comment that a MR# story had the wrong demon (pretty clearly hitting on Brian's drug problems). It really isn't defensive, just point out where he sees MR# wrong about Pillman.

 

Some of them are things that long time fans would have known. The "kicked the shit out of Sid" aspect to the squeege story is one that I would have laughed at. The stuff that the Harts didn't like or respect him when he went through training would have gotten a laugh.

 

So that section doesn't strike is as a problem for what's written.

 

My problem is that in this "revisit" to the book, it looks like 80% of it is spent on Pillman... which Dave indicates is One Freaking Chapter.

 

Perhaps Dave planned on doing a walk through on *every* chapter like that. I think that's not likely. He knows he's not going to keep coming back to this book for pieces in 5-6 issues of the WON. This is the second, and might be the last. So... 80% on Pillman tends to be overkill. What about the rest of the book?

 

If Dave had some reviewing skills, he would have indicated that the Pillman chapter is filled with errors, and give 3 quick examples. One that was a 180 (Pillman thought poorly of by the Harts in training), one where MR# just had a bad source (the one where MR# wrote someone beat up Pillman, but that person told the story to Dave copping Pillman beat him up), and one legendary story from the era that MR# couldn't get fully right (squeege story). Get in, get out, move onto other parts of the book.

 

Then if MR# (or someone on his behalf) says:

 

"Dave said that chapter was full of errors. He only gave 3 examples, and it's a 15 (or whatever) page chapter. That means the rest must have been true."

 

Dave can hit other examples, indicated in writing a review of the whole book he didn't have space to hit everything.

 

That's my primary problem with the Pillman stuff above - it chewed up too much space.

 

As far as what was in the first part of the piece, it's kind of a typical Dave writing around in circles... though I won't go to the "circle the wagon" extreme that some see in it. He's been pretty consistent from almost Day 1 on his "We'll Never Know" belief. I think people sometimes miss the boat on it. It's not that he's shooting down people favorite #1 Reason Benoit Snapped as not having an impact or role. It's more that I see him writing that *all* of it had a role, other than the things that have been proven not to be there (such as Daniel's health).

 

If you did a checklist of all the things that may have played a role, and Dave had these three options to select from:

 

A. The Sole Cause

B. Played A Role

C. Played No Role

 

I think he would check off B to just about everyone one of them.

 

Some people want to find a Single Magic Bullet, either because like Vince & McDevitt they'd like to blame something out of their control or influence, or because they just "need to have an answer" as Dave puts it.

 

Dave's belief is that there isn't a Single Magic Bullet, but instead a shitload of bullets that added up.

 

Of course there's some that want to say "Pro Wrestling is the Magic Bullet that caused this".

 

I suspect he'd acknowledge that a lot of the causes are things that people see a lot of in Pro Wrestling: drugs, roids, head injuries, other injuries, marital issues, etc. Probably even acknowledge that they they appear in Pro Wrestling at vastly higher rates then the Normal for the population.

 

But to go from there to "Pro Wrestling Caused It"... I suspect he sees it as a leap. He probably would be fine adding Pro Wrestling to the list of contributors that got a B above. But wouldn't see it as an A, anymore than he would join Vince & McDevit in thinking it was a C.

 

I'm not terribly far from that same position.

 

John

[jdw]

Gotcha Re: the reviews.

 

I still don't see why the name thing or the reasons for it undermines anything Randazzo did.

It doesn't. Just that he's fucking goofy about his name.

 

Don't claim to be wearing a white wedding dress here, Bix. It's not like you haven't pointed out the goofiness of folks for stuff that's pretty trivial. We all do it, and had it aimed at us.

 

 

John

[Bix]

Gotcha Re: the reviews.

 

I still don't see why the name thing or the reasons for it undermines anything Randazzo did.

It doesn't. Just that he's fucking goofy about his name.

 

Don't claim to be wearing a white wedding dress here, Bix. It's not like you haven't pointed out the goofiness of folks for stuff that's pretty trivial. We all do it, and had it aimed at us.

It's more that it's pretty much the least important thing about the book and you keep going back to it, not the act of joking about it.

 

Wanted to get that out of the way, will now go reply to the previous post...

[Bix]

Skipping the Pillman stuff because as you said, there's nothing wrong with what Dave wrote there for the most part other than the fact that it was too long.

 

As far as what was in the first part of the piece, it's kind of a typical Dave writing around in circles... though I won't go to the "circle the wagon" extreme that some see in it. He's been pretty consistent from almost Day 1 on his "We'll Never Know" belief. I think people sometimes miss the boat on it. It's not that he's shooting down people favorite #1 Reason Benoit Snapped as not having an impact or role. It's more that I see him writing that *all* of it had a role, other than the things that have been proven not to be there (such as Daniel's health).

 

If you did a checklist of all the things that may have played a role, and Dave had these three options to select from:

 

A. The Sole Cause

B. Played A Role

C. Played No Role

 

I think he would check off B to just about everyone one of them.

 

Some people want to find a Single Magic Bullet, either because like Vince & McDevitt they'd like to blame something out of their control or influence, or because they just "need to have an answer" as Dave puts it.

 

Dave's belief is that there isn't a Single Magic Bullet, but instead a shitload of bullets that added up.

The book takes the same stance, that a lot of stuff caused it, but most of the causes other than "Benoit was always crazy" involve the wrestling business. If Benoit wasn't a wrestler, he wouldn't have had his psyche worn down by the dungeon or NJPW dojo, he wouldn't have been abusing every class of drugs of abuse (even if he was predisposed to addiction, he still wouldn't have been on such a wide variety of shit), and he wouldn't have an damaged old man brain to the point that he may not have been legally (and one must stress that it would be legally, not morally) responsible for the murders. Hell, if you want to dig deeper past the mental issues, he wouldn't have had the testicular failure as a marital strain.

 

Of course there's some that want to say "Pro Wrestling is the Magic Bullet that caused this".

 

I suspect he'd acknowledge that a lot of the causes are things that people see a lot of in Pro Wrestling: drugs, roids, head injuries, other injuries, marital issues, etc. Probably even acknowledge that they they appear in Pro Wrestling at vastly higher rates then the Normal for the population.

 

But to go from there to "Pro Wrestling Caused It"... I suspect he sees it as a leap. He probably would be fine adding Pro Wrestling to the list of contributors that got a B above. But wouldn't see it as an A, anymore than he would join Vince & McDevit in thinking it was a C.

 

I'm not terribly far from that same position.

WWE was more afraid of the brain damage reveal than the steroids because it specifically blamed the act of taking bumps in a pro wrestling match. And again, the rest are symptoms of being a wrestler.

 

I look at at this way: If Benoit wasn't a wrestler, he still would've been mentally ill, but he wouldn't be as bad as he ended up.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

I don't know why you guys are giving Dave so much heat on this. He's not defending Benoit, he's just saying that the fact that he was so obsessed with being the best fake fighter shouldn't have been, or wasn't, a dead giveaway that he was a monster. You've been posting on wrestling boards for months talking about how all the wrestlers who said they were surprised at the murders were lying, and that everyone knew that Benoit was a psycho. Meltzer is saying, given his knowledge of the industry (which I'd think is greater than yours even though I know you like to brag about having friends in WWE), that this isn't the case. It may be a sad indictment of the wrestling industry that laughing at a crying referee and calling him a "gay bitch" and going crazy on a disrespectful colleague and forcing him out of the locker room isn't considered out of the ordinary, but I doubt most wrestlers saw it as anything special. So I don't think their surprise at Benoit's actions was anything less than genuine, even if maybe they should have seen some signs that he was off, although there's no way anyone should have known that he would kill his wife and child.

 

Bix, I think your whole crusade against anyone who criticizes Ring of Hell just boils down to the fact that MRV is your e-buddy and that you helped him with the research. You aren't exactly an unbiased obseerver on this. I don't dispute any of the facts in the book, except maybe the story of Bischoff starting Nitro because of some prank fax, which I'm sure happened but everyone agrees that Nitro came about as a result of the meeting between Bischoff and Turner about Rupert Murdoch's satellite system. But don't you think that the overwhelmingly negative tone might make it appear that Randazzo has some sort of agenda? The way he tries to use a story of Scott Hall peeing on a dude's boots, probably an overly common wrestling rib, as proof that Hall and Nash are Legitimately Horrible People is just ridiculous. In the case of Pillman, I don't think it really matters that he exaggerated Pillman's steroid use, since he definitely did them at many points in his career, but I still think it was needless to portray Pillman as a massive steroid freak when he was only a moderate user, done for no other reason than to leave a greater emotional impat on the reader than he would have had he just told the truth, which itself wasn't very flattering. The fact that he admits to being rushed into finishing the book and not having time to properly fact-check sort of indicates that this isn't exactly the perfect wrestling book.

 

I thought the book was well-written but I can understand those who don't. Why does Randazzo, in the middle of the book, go out of his way to congratulate himself for not talking about Benoit's first wife and oldest kids other than to get himself over as a great guy? Why does he include a joke quote from that Andrewbulous Spring Break dude other than to, well, I don't even know, to get the whole Kaiju/Crush Kill Crush community to go out and buy the book? Why is there just a general list of sources rather than footnotes or endnotes? It's a good book, but it's not perfect, even if Bix helped with the research.

 

(As an aside, I can't wait for "Ring of Hell II" in which Dave Meltzer is referred to as "forty-something mullet-head whose markish obsession with fake fighters led him to spend his entire adult life writing about the art of men fake-punching each other in their underwear, and whose best friends in the business include legendary accused sexual harasser Ric Flair and deranged mark Bret Hart, who wrote a whole book chronicling a career of drug use and marital infidelity.")

[goodhelmet]

Why does Randazzo, in the middle of the book, go out of his way to congratulate himself for not talking about Benoit's first wife and oldest kids other than to get himself over as a great guy?

I just made this same point over at DVDVR, hours after your post :0

 

It was something that Loss and I were discussing the other night.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

Well, your posts was more along the lines of "why didn't he talk about the first marriage, as it could have provided more insight into his life?" Whereas I'm questioning why he essentially brags about how he's too nice to talk about Benoit's ex-wife and kids.