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Submitted by Degenerate on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 11:16 AM EST
Welcome everyone, and thanks for taking the time to read this column on this historic week that the IWC will certainly never forget. Unfortunately, we won't ever forget this moment in time due to all the right reasons. This is Degenerate, trying to get my head straight and write this column about yet another tragic death in the wrestling world. I know that there will be floods of columns similar to this, and I usually try to shy away from writing something that I know hundreds, even thousands of people will write as well. But, being a wrestling columnist, I think writing this is part of the grieving process for us, no matter how the tragedy occurred. I'll be skipping my usual format this time around, simply because this isn't a usual column on a usual day. For those who have been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, last night at around 6:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, the WWE website reported that Chris Benoit had been found deceased in his home. As if that weren't enough, it was also reported that his wife Nancy and seven-year-old child Daniel were also deceased in their home. He was scheduled to be in a featured match on a WWE Pay-Per-View this past week, yet couldn't make it due to "personal reasons". I can imagine that many of you started thinking, just like I did. What the fuck happened? Did a burglar try to jack his home, and killed everyone in a struggle? Did his house have a carbon monoxide leak and silently killed them all? Did the little monkey from the movie Outbreak find its way to Atlanta and spread the Ebola virus around? I thought long and hard, hoping and wishing that this was just a sick joke, for the 90 minutes since the news broke, up until the beginning of Raw. In an even more shocking sight, there stood Vincent Kennedy McMahon in the middle of the WWE. The fact that there were absolutely no fans in the seats sent chills up my spine. Oh my God, this is real, I thought. Sadly, it wasn't a sick and twisted joke, nor a surreal storyline to complement Vince's supposed murder at the hands of a car bomb. I sincerely shed a tear when the first video was shown. That video appears at the end of the excellent Hard Knocks: The Chris Benoit Story, and I remember the first time I saw that video, I was filled with joy at that video. Like I said in one of my previous columns, Chris Benoit is someone I consider a real-life hero. Still, I felt that there was something missing. The fact that neither Vince McMahon nor anyone else mentioned how he died was odd. When Eddie Guerrero passed away almost two years ago, it was almost immediately disclosed that it was most likely a heart problem. This time around, nothing was said. After the show was over, I logged on to WWE.com before heading to bed, just to see if anything else popped up. To my shock, the following headline appeared: Double Murder-Suicide It took a while for that to sink in. A double murder suicide... That means... One of the three killed the other two and then committed... NO WAY... Hey, it was almost midnight, and I was awake for nearly 20 hours. My brain isn't as sharp at that hour. After that, I didn't sleep as much as I wanted, hoping that this was also a sick joke, and that the cause of death wasn't caused by one of the persons who died. This morning, I wake up to the same story. Before I continue into the current day's occurrences, I want to head back down memory lane for a while. I had first seen Chris Benoit wrestling in an edition of WCW Monday Nitro back in 1996, when I wanted to see what the entire "Outsiders" angle that Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were bringing to the table. I had enjoyed what I saw, but didn't think much of him at the time. I sincerely thought he was too small to amount to anything. I'm sure he had heard that countless times before. As the rest of the wrestling world, I was only watching WCW because of the nWo angle, nothing else. The rest was just filler to me, Benoit matches included. When I discovered the wonders of the Internet and wrestling news websites back in '97, I began hearing more and more about Benoit (among others) and how good he was in the ring, having great matches with Kevin Sullivan, Booker T, and many others. I had heard about many "darlings" of the IWC that people just adore, like many Ring of Honor and British wrestlers nowadays. I just decided to brush off this talk, thinking it was simply a fad, and I still thought he wouldn't amount to much in the wrestling world. Flash-forward to the beginning of the year 2000. I read that some WCW wrestlers asked for their release and got it, and they were free to roam anywhere they pleased. This was a bit of a shocker, as I had never read that a wrestler, let alone a group of wrestlers, asked for a release just because he was sick and tired of working for the company. Even more shocking, the current reigning WCW Champion, Chris Benoit, was actually part of that group, less than 24 hours after winning the damn belt in a Pay-Per-View. If that didn't prove that it sucked to work for WCW, I don't know what did. It took balls to do what Benoit, Guerrero, Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn did, and I greatly respected them for that. Immediately afterwards, I noticed that Benoit was the one being pushed harder than the rest of the group, getting his first WWE match against the then-current WWE Champion, Triple H, then later being featured in a Triple Threat match against two great wrestlers at Wrestlemania while his defecting buddies were stuck in a six-person tag match lower in the card. He was the first to win major gold in the WWE (the Intercontinental Championship at Wrestlemania 16) and the first to battle for the WWE Championship (against The Rock, I believe). He was head and shoulders above the rest of the group, and it showed clearly. This is the time when I started to notice how good Benoit really was in the ring. He quickly became one of my favorite wrestlers. Still, he seemed destined to be a great wrestler who helped others on their way to the top, and that he still wouldn't amount to much in the WWE. After a year, probably more, in the mid-card without any chance at a singles title (there were plenty of Tag Team Championships), the push that all Benoit fans swore that was destined to happen started. I really took notice to this huge push after being only the second man to win the Royal Rumble after entering #1 in the draw. His subsequent jump to Raw on Monday Nights, the clearly superior brand at that time, made this push seem legit, like any push he had before. Then it happened: On March 14, 2004, Chris Benoit won the World Heavyweight Championship. Even though it wasn't the first time, as I mentioned his previous WCW title reign, this truly was the first for him. I have to admit that I have legitimately cried due to wrestling-related events, but there have only been three times that I have done so. My first real tears of joy happened at Wrestlemania 12, when Shawn Michaels won the WWE Championship after the Iron Man Match. I was, and still am, a huge Shawn Michaels fan, and to see him looking at the belt with tears in his eyes brought a lot of tears to my eyes. The next time I cried was at the Owen Hart tribute show, the day after he passed away. I was in shock when I heard about his death, but nothing serious. The next night, when I saw all of those wrestlers just crying their eyes out, I seriously couldn't hold back and had tears streaming down my face. I still remember Jeff Jarrett couldn't almost finish his interview. The last time I really cried at a wrestling event was at the aforementioned Wrestlemania 20. I was holding back tears when Benoit won, but the tears flowed then Eddie Guerrero came out at the now-famous embrace at the middle of the ring. I cried again last night when they replayed that match, simply because I knew that those two are now dead. I think it'll be a very long time before we see a similar, genuine, heartfelt moment like that. We'll probably never see one again. Do you know why that last moment was special? Because we knew about the history between Benoit and Guerrero. Not only that, we knew about the life Chris Benoit had until that point. All the sacrifices and hard work paid off. To me, that's the pinnacle of working your ass off in any industry, period. No matter if you're a professional athlete, a software developer, or even flipping burgers. If you reach a point where you can look back at your life, see how much you had to bust your ass, how much you lost in the process, and still be able to say "I'm glad I did all of that", then you're worthy of having everything you earned. If it weren't for the IWC and its countless wrestling-related resources, I would've never learned how much I could look up to someone like Chris Benoit. In everything I love doing, I try to do it the best that I can. When I achieve a personal goal, I can sit back and enjoy what I have, because I firmly believe that I earned what I have. I have gotten things handed to me for free, and while I like getting some things like that, I simply don't enjoy them as much. Chris Benoit's career took him all over the place. He started in his home country of Canada, then as a young boy, had to travel a long way to Japan to continue getting his training. Can you imagine leaving your friends and family behind when you're about twenty-something years old, heading towards a very uncertain future? After his stint in Japan, he got a chance at ECW, then WCW, eventually getting to the "big time" WWE. It took about half of his life to get there, but he achieved the dream. Not only did he achieve the dream of "making it", he also got something even rarer in return: respect from everyone. He got the respect from his fans, and more importantly, he got the respect from his peers. In any workplace, it's very, very difficult to get respect. Some people demand it, yet never get any true respect because you don't just demand respect. You need to earn it. And once you earn that, you definitely know that the respect is genuine. Benoit apparently had that genuine respect from everyone. Imagine how good that could feel. However, that respect Benoit has earned through the better part of his life is apparently being torn to shreds at this very moment, due to simply a single moment, just one moment, in his life. It doesn't seem to matter if he did a million great things in life. Just one error, and it's all gone. Life's weird like that. You can do a million good things, and in one fell swoop, it disappears. If the current reports and speculation are true, and Chris Benoit was the one who killed a woman and, worse yet, a child who never got to experience life, then offed himself, what next? Will you still put his DVD in your computer and watch his matches and appreciate the things he did on camera? Or will you take that DVD, spit on it, burn it, and curse his name for the rest of your life? I've been hanging out at the forums all this morning, and I see people on all sides. Some are already accepting speculation and initial reports as fact, and are already pissing on the memory of Benoit. Others are riding the fence, waiting for some concrete evidence that directs them one way or another. However, very few, maybe no one, right now are still mourning this loss of the wrestling industry. Myself, no matter if it's proven that Benoit is a killer or it's proven that he isn't, I know that I can still view his matches from time to time, like I always have. I can separate his professional life from his real life. Just like Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and others, whose real life issues backstage taints the way some people think of them, I can still sit back and watch Hulk Hogan against The Ultimate Warrior in Wrestlemania VI, or Kevin Nash against Bret Hart in Survivor Series 1995. Just because I know they're asses backstage doesn't mean I shouldn't stop watching their greatest work. To do that, to me, is to be completely ignorant. Real life is something completely separated from professional life. I'm a firm believer than the two should never, ever, mix together. Right now, I don't really know how I feel. There are so many mixed emotions right now. I feel sad that a family has passed away, no matter the circumstance. Just think how their immediate family feels right now. Those people were someone's father, mother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, and more importantly, a close friend and someone I'm sure they could count on. I also feel angry that this doesn't seem like an accidental death, and a seven-year-old child will never grow up and be something in this crazy life. Still, I can be angry at Benoit all I want if he was the true culprit. But to me, that won't tarnish his wrestling legacy. He was, and will always be, one of the best to ever grace the wrestling ring. He provided so many memories to us. He put his life on the line to give us, the fans, a top-notch performance every single night he was wrestling. I may lose respect for him as a person, and he definitely won't be one of my heroes anymore if these reports prove to be accurate. But he will never lose my respect as a wrestler. That's why the WWE gave a tribute show to him. And that's simply how we should remember him as. That's the end of my point of view. I really wish I didn't have to write this edition of Struggle For Power. It sucks that yet another wrestler has passed away, no matter the circumstances. If you have your opinions on this matter, feel free to shoot an E-Mail my way at dennmart@gmail.com. Take care peeps, and remember that life's way too short to keep putting off something that you can do today. Don't ever forget to let your friends and family know you love them. 'Til next time, Degenerate ***DIRECT LINK*** Rare New Pix of JOHN CENA! Must See for Cena Fans!
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