It was nine years ago today that the wrestling world – and the mainstream world for that matter – where rocked to the core. WWE Superstar and former World Heavyweight Champion Chris Benoit was found dead, alongside his wife, Nancy Benoit, and their seven year old son, Daniel. What was initially thought to be a triple murder, was days later revealed to be a murder-suicide. Chris Benoit, one of the most beloved technical wrestlers of the previous 15 years, had murdered his wife and son and then taken his own life.
Following an embarrassing moment where the WWE devoted an entire episode of Raw in tribute to Benoit before learning all the details, the WWE did an abrupt turn and began systematically removing all mention of Chris Benoit from its history. And at that point, who could blame them? Under their watch, one of their own employees – sorry, an independent contractor under their employment – had just committed a brutal double homicide of his own family and then taken his own life in the aftermath. His matches were removed from the WWE’s official website, stars who replicated his finisher, the Crippler Crossface, got no background support from announcers that it was Benoit’s legendary finisher (and “Crippler” was quickly omitted from the name), and even to this day, while his matches exist on the WWE Network, they’ve made it tough to search them out individually. A Hall of Fame induction – so deservedly earned through his 24 year career, from his beginnings in Stampede Wrestling to his adventures in NJPW, ECW, WCW and finally the WWE and his emotional World championship victory at Wrestlemania 20 – was now an absolute non-option.
Earlier today, LWOS writer Josh Hendrickson wrote a short, yet powerful, reflective piece on Chris Benoit on the anniversary of the tragedy. It discussed the neglect from WWE’s end to recognizing or assisting a talent that so obviously suffered from mental illness. But the story goes deeper than that. Instead of sweeping the story under the rug, like the black sheep of the WWE family, the WWE should be using this horrible tragedy as a way of helping erase the stigma of mental illness and leading the charge in the sports world in treating and helping their athletes, much like they are currently doing for the concussion research industry (which incidentally, goes hand in hand with the mental illness debate).
Chris Benoit’s career speaks for itself. Heavily influenced by the understated career of equally troubled English Superstar Tom “The Dynamite Kid” Billington (a former WWF World Tag Team champion in the British Bulldogs), Benoit’s style was perfectly constructed and encouraged within the Stu Hart realm of Stampede Wrestling. Training with Owen Hart, he emerged as one of the world’s best technical wrestlers, combining power moves with technical submission style wrestling, with hints of aerial techniques more akin to Mexico or Japan than North American style. He won championships everywhere he went – a World Champion in both WWE and WCW, a 4x British Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight Champion in Stampede, IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion in NJPW, a Tag Team champion in ECW, WCW (twice) and WWE and Stampede (four times each), not to mention a 5x WCW/WWE US title holder, 3x WCW TV Champion, and 4x WWE Intercontinental Champion. His career is one of the most outstanding stories of the 1990’s. The quiet kid with no personality and no size, who became one of the most decorated and beloved champions of his generation.
But sadly, the tolls of his energy, passion and full throttle style had it’s price. Months after his death, in agreement with Benoit’s father, Michael, Benoit’s brain was one of the first ones studied by former WWE Superstar Christopher Nowinski‘s Concussion Legacy Foundation. The results showed that the price of the repeated blows to his head – from opponents and his trademark flying headbutt – had reduced his brain to resemble that of an 85-year old man with Alzheimer’s. Apart from his dementia, Benoit was crippled with serious depression, which as Hendrickson outlined in his previous LWOS article, was well documented in his journal following the death of his best friend, Eddie Guerrero, a few years prior.
WWE is to be commended for their involvement in serious causes in today’s societies – from their involvement in the Concussion Legacy Foundation and Make-A-Wish, to helping with such causes as breast cancer awareness and anti-bullying – but their easy dismissal of Benoit as simply a murderer to be struck from the history books is a grave injustice to the reasonings behind the murder. Chris Benoit, in his right state of mind, would never have killed his wife and child. Chris Benoit, in his right state of mind, would never have taken his own life. While we probably will never know the rationale to his actions that fateful weekend, it’s clear that he was a man working under a delusional state of mental illness, brought on by severe head trauma doing what he loved most. Entertaining his fans.
While the WWE has worked on improving their approach to head trauma with their close work alongside the Concussion Legacy Foundation, even to allow such a guaranteed money making Superstar like Daniel Bryan retire for his own safety, they have completely turned a blind eye to the result of that trauma – the mental illness that followed. And it wasn’t just with Benoit. Scott Hall suffered severe depression and mental illness for decades following the accidental murder of a man in 1983 in a bar’s parking lot, which resulted in a long and painfully well documented life of substance abuse. Jake “The Snake” Roberts suffered from an excessively abusive family life under his father, former wrestler Grizzly Smith, which lead to his own life long battle with the same substances. But have they ever discussed their mental illnesses? It’s always about overcoming the wrong coping methods, not the symptoms that created the problems in the first place.
With Hall and Roberts now on the road to recovery and in the WWE Hall of Fame, the WWE should begin a fight that they have the power to be a successful soldier in. The fight against the stigma of mental illness. All three of the men mentioned kept their illness private for their entire lives (unfortunately for Benoit, till the bitter end). The drowned it in alcohol and pills, lashing out at the ones they loved most. When what they needed most was the courage to talk openly about an illness that millions of people who watch the WWE around the world also suffer from, most of which do so with the same silence and the in many cases, the same coping methods.
Granted Hall and Roberts have far happier endings than Benoit’s did. And in no way is this supposed to cheapen the lives of the two innocent victims in Benoit’s tragedy. But Chris, Nancy and Daniel would be here today if he’d had better access to counselling and more courage instilled in him that having a mental illness was no more embarrassing than having diabetes or cancer. It’s an illness. And illnesses need to be acknowledged, treated and dealt with free from public stigma of being ridiculed for being weak or subhuman from suffering from it. After all, mental illnesses like depression already make their inflicted hosts feel weak and subhuman as it is. The only way they will find the strength to seek help if they’re made to feel better about seeking treatment, not reinforcing the thoughts they already suffer from.
Chris Benoit should be made an example of the dangers of what untreated mental illness can result in. He is a worst case scenario of what ignoring the symptoms, avoiding the truth, what shutting yourself from the outside world can lead to. The world lost an incredibly gifted performer, a family lost their beautiful daughter, and a small child paid the price for not knowing anything at all. Mainstream media has no problem showing car crash scenes full of blood to show the horrors of drunk driving, or starving children to bring awareness to world poverty. Maybe it’s time that the WWE acknowledged their mistakes in missing the signs by showing the bravery and courage to help others who may be in similar situations – be it talent who may be suffering from head trauma induced mental illness, to the bipolar fan in the audience who goes home after the show and returns to their gloomy state of just trying to make it day to day.
And while Robin Williams never killed anyone besides himself, it was still a horrific tragedy brought on by dementia from mental illness. Did the Hollywood community rally to wipe Williams memory from the Hollywood history books? No. They lead the charge to use his death to fight the stigma that so often leads to more harm than good.
And in Chris Benoit’s case, that stigma lead to him not only ending his own story, but that of his family as well.
Chris Benoit was not the only murderer that day. We all were. Anyone who’s considered mental illness a sign of personal failure, anyone who’s assumed mental illness is a sign of weakness of character, anyone who has considered mental illness to be “just something in the head”. Chris Benoit had no help, no encouragement, and no support network to turn to, because society told him it wasn’t a big deal and it was for those who were weak.
Perhaps it’s time the WWE used Chris Benoit’s story to empower those of us who battle day-to-day with our own mental illness – yes, I too am a sufferer, diagnosed in 1991 with bipolar disorder – that this is a fight we must wage every single moment of the day in order to stay healthy. Just like a diabetic must take their injections, or a cancer patient must go through chemotherapy, we must work on our own illness with diligence and regimen.
Because if we don’t, we may end up like Robin Williams. Or worse, like Chris Benoit.
(Main Photo: Pintrest)
