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Notice there's no picture here. There won't be any YouTube videos or other miscellany links. There's nothing to celebrate or make fun of in this what is sure to be somber blog post.
Instead of making a passé entry on what happened, I'll take you on a journey of my life through a five day span. Starting on June 22nd, 2007, and ending on the 26th, you'll see how this unspeakable tragedy unfolded as if this was a horrible remake of 'Ragtime'.
June 22nd: Finally, this day was my HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION! Conquering through special education to ending up being a regular mainstream student, I received my New York Regents diploma. With dress rehearsals starting at nine in the morning, the ceremony at 6, and then the all-night graduation party, damn am I tired! Sadly the footage is lost, but there is a frame on the video my parents recorded of a house principal doing a face palm as my diploma was accepted. I think the guy had a headache, but the proof is in the pudding!
June 23rd: I'm getting ready to go. NHRA's in town for the annual extravaganza at the Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey. What a better way to celebrate being done with school than going to see 7,000 horsepower freaks of nature burn some rubber on a drag strip?
June 24th: Yee-haw, just got home from the festivities! Not that hot of a day, and it was pretty damn fast. Don Prudhomme scored two wins in Larry Dixon (Top Fuel) and Tommy Johnson Jr. (Funny Car), while Andrew Hines won Pro Stock Motorcycle, and Greg Anderson shook off 'The Curse”* to win Pro Stock Car. Juan Montoya won the Cup race out in Sonoma, a nice little surprise. Wait, a Dodge winning a fuel mileage race? THAT'S GARBAGE!
(Goes to lordsofpain.net. I's want to know backstage newz dammit!)
Um.... what in the living hell?
Chris Benoit isn't at the Vengeance (ahem, Night of Champions) event? They say it's a family emergency, so it's gotta be just a one night absence, right?!?!?!?
Johnny Nitro has been named as Benoit's substitute against CM Punk for the ECW Championship. Nitro won the championship, but that's not the big story. That would be: what happened to Benoit and/or his family?
June 25th: Haven't heard any new rumors yet this particular morning, I think thankfully. Tonight's RAW is supposed to be about who blew up Vince's limo. 3 hours in length, oh boy is THIS gonna suck. June of 2007 wasn't a good month at all to be a wrestling fan, as every PPV and TV show between WWE and TNA has been drizzling shits so far.
Around 4PMish, I pop the Chris Benoit DVD into my brand new laptop, a Toshiba Satellite A205-S4577. It's the fifth or sixth time I watched this documentary in total, mainly because it's a feel good story about a kid who overcame the odds to make his dreams come true...
5:00PM Lordsofpain.net confirmed it.
Then WWE.com confirmed it.
I told my sister who had started work at IBM that day, and she was dumbfounded. That's not a word to describe her at all.
“CHRIS BENOIT DEAD AT 38”
I was steadfast in silence, as I started to read the details.
Nancy and Daniel, wife and son of the grappler, were also found deceased.
In a stunning turn of events, everyone who had tickets for the night's RAW had been turned away. The opening segment of RAW saw Vince, in uncomfortably casual attire, standing dead center of the ring explaining how tonight should have been centered on his 'demise'. Instead, it will be a tribute show to someone who has actually passed on. Since this was a 3 hour RAW, the program started at 8 PM on the East Coast.
As 9:30 rolled around, disturbing details came in about the crime scene. Apparently, it was figured out that Chris killed Daniel, Nancy, then himself. Since the show was already balls deep into the airwaves, WWE didn't have time to yank or apologize for the images. This wasn't the first time WWE had bad timing concerning programming, as an angle with Muhammad Hassan and Undertaker in 2005 aired the same day as the London bombings. Just 3 days before that monstrosity of a Great American Bash...
I digress.
I had the unfortunate responsibility of posting a new thread in the WrestleCrap forums, under the sub-forum 'ASK RD (Reynolds) & BLADE (Braxton)”. It roared to nine pages within a couple of hours. Then the forum moderator, Madison Carter, made probably the smartest move that night of shutting down the whole works temporarily. That being said, I thought at the time to sleep it off, thinking I misread something.
June 26th: The shit hit the fan.
Every media outlet, from CBS to CNN, from FOX to FOX NEWS, and from NBC to MS(C)NBC had this story as a top-leading headline. “PRO WRESTLER KILLED HIS FAMILY”. Professional Wrestling as a whole was coming under attack during this media hailstorm. Nancy Grace wanted the WWE as a company dead, and so did many others.
Hell, I even questioned my loyalty as a fan. The programming shown lately was atrocious, and quite frankly, this may have been the final straw. A grizzly scene, and worse yet, a grim prognosis for the WWE.
While more angles to the murders were drawn out (like the texts to Chavo Guerrero and the fact that the murders happened on Saturday), it seemed as if WWE was getting blasted from all angles. Some rightfully so, and some not rightfully so.
Chris, from what I have gathered, is that one guy who would perform through crippling endeavors. He had sustained concussion after concussion, but kept on trucking. After his autopsy, it was revealed that Benoit's brain was so badly deteriorated that it resembled an 81 year old man instead of a healthy nearly-40-year-old man he was.
The DVD I had playing in my laptop the day before? Every copy from every retailer was ordered to be yanked, and destroyed. Suddenly, a DVD not worth more than $19 brand new now commands three or four times the price.
Insanity was at a fever pitch, and wrestling as a whole has not still, and never will, recover from this.
_________________________________________________
Like terrorist attacks or major political shenanigans, this is one of those events where everyone knew where they were when they found out.
As a young man who graduated high school looking forward to the rest of his life, this was an extremely shaky way to start. It seemed like one of the few things I truly loved was under attack, and it was up to me to decide to say, “Should I stay or should I go?”
Time went on, and I stuck with it.
WWE was in a badly dark spot at this point. When you combine multiple injured big stars with the Benoit atrocities, the ratings plummeted and the faith in the company as a whole plunged almost as bad as a stock market crash.
I wanted to see WWE come out on the other end though, and by the time the 2008 Royal Rumble rolled around, I was seemingly convinced that WWE had overcome some of its demons.
Thank you for taking the time out to read this piece of literature. This was some sad therapy.
*: 'The Curse'. When I first when to E-Town in 2003, Greg Anderson was one of the first people I met. I took a picture with him, my then fourteen year-old self towered over this guy. Anderson, in Superman mode at the time, won a lot of races in 2003, but went out first round at that event from the first seed!
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