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Submitted by Randomguy#5 on Monday, July 2, 2007 at 3:53 PM EST
Go To Hell Benoit Welcome back to the column that needs your arms around me, that needs to feel your touch,The Nosebleed Section. When you need me baby, I’m always here, The One Called Random host of this tripe I often call a column. Yes, this is a column about Chris Benoit. It’s not a cheap heat title, it’s quite literally expressing the sentiments you’d expect. Furthermore, it seems to have become “cool” to bitch a fit about all the columns/news about Chris Benoit on the internet. Word of advice-I’m telling you upfront before you’ve invested too much time that Benoit is what you’re going to read about today. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry, I’ll be back next week with something else and hopefully you’ll check it out, but please take the opportunity to click the banner that says “Lords of Pain” atop this page, it’ll take you back out to the main page and you can choose a different item to read. Maybe TNA’s ratings finally broke 1.2. Not likely. Until then sorry kids, but this is quite possibly the biggest news story of the year, maybe in the last several years. I, as a wrestling columnist on the internet, would be remiss if I didn’t use this outlet to vent my own emotions on the matter. It’s what we columnists do-and while you the reader have probably read a dozen columns on the subject, I the writer have as yet not written one, so thanks for allowing me the opportunity to express my thoughts on a very difficult situation, and if you absolutely cannot stand to read them, that little X in the top right corner of the page will help you out. --Memo to the WWE: Turn John Cena heel. Soon. Unlike the majority of the IWC I don’t think his run as a face is quite to the point of being completely beaten like a dead horse, after all the kids and women still pop like mad over the guy, so as long as they’ve got ugly monsters to feed to him (Snitsky’s still waiting) or capable heels (Hello King Booka!) then the WWE has options for SuperCena. However, there are serious, serious legs in the Cena as a Heel beast. A feud with Foley, an alliance with Orton, feuds with Bobby Lashley or a returning Chris Jericho or Triple H could all be big money matches for the WWE. It’ll happen eventually, I’d just like to see it happen before we all change the channel. --Monday Night Countdown grew up! We’ve now got our own website where you can subscribe to the show, view our mailbag, check out some blog stuff from Morph and myself, as well as numerous other little oddities. Check it out online at www.mondaynightcountdown.net! --Would somebody please file a missing persons report for The Highlanders and Cryme Tyme? Seriously all the pieces are there for Raw to have a KICK ASS tag scene, but they just don’t right now… --I enjoyed last week’s ECW show perhaps more than I’ve enjoyed any wrestling program in the last year. Last Tuesday was an awful day to be a wrestling fan, as all we could do is sit close by our computers and watch detail after detail of the Benoit case unfold, and it was painful to watch the positive image we’d had of one of our heroes unravel before our eyes. Yet, after Vince’s initial comments, when Cena’s music hit and he came blasting through that curtain all jacked up, followed by Johnny Nitro (who looks to be nailing the Champion swagger already) and his animations in the ring, I cracked a huge, glorious smile and thought “You know what man, everything’s going to be alright.” And it will be. Go To Hell Benoit Go to Hell Chris Benoit. No, I’m not expressing angry sentiments, I mean from a strictly Judeo-Christian standpoint the man many consider to be the greatest wrestler of all time is rotting in hell, his flesh searing from the bone as he is forever hungry, forever thirsty, too tired to sleep and covered in boils bearing pain that you and I cannot even begin to imagine. Chris Benoit is doomed to an eternity of corrupt visions of his wife and child, whom he reportedly loved prior to what can only be assumed as a complete and total mental breakdown. For the rest of time he’s pushing boulders up never ending hills, popping the shit stained blisters on the heels of Satan. While he endures endless pain, Eddie Guerrero weeps in paradise. I’d like to make the joke here about all the people that could be Chris Benoit’s personal Satan…maybe it’s Vince McMahon, Kevin Sullivan, Stephanie or perhaps Brian Gershwitz. Truth be told I considered doing an entire skit column of Chris Benoit’s Hell, complete with an infinite amount of jobber matches to Val Venis and tapping out to John Cena’s STFU. Chris Benoit’s hell would most certainly entail sports-entertainment finishes in which there are no winners, three minute timed matches with no opportunity to develop storyline and countless TV commercial breaks in between. They’d be no Crossface, no Dynamite Kid diving head butt, no going hold-for-hold with the likes of Kurt Angle, Brett Hart or Dean Malenko. Instead Chris Benoit’s own personal hell would be a lifetime of matches against Doink the Clown, The Zombie from ECW, and other useless characters and jobbing matches against those whom the most pure professional wrestler in the world could only consider the Anti-Christ’s work. Screw all that. Chris Benoit isn’t in “his” hell and perhaps I’m just not a gifted enough columnist to make that work. No, the Crippler is in God’s hell now, complete with the lake of fire, Lucifer and seven-headed dragons. There is no wrestling. Benoit loved wrestling, and such a love would surely be taken away from someone in Hell, even if it cleanly putting over Val Venis in a three-day iron man match. This life we live is a privilege that can be taken from us at any given point. The opportunity to be a professional wrestler isn’t a job just anybody is cut out for, and certainly not just anybody could do it as well as Chris Benoit did it. Yet he gave up that right, gave up that legacy, the second he took the life of his wife and child. Which I guess is really what this column is all about. I grew up Roman Catholic and while I don’t practice the religion nearly as much as I do in my youth, I still hold some beliefs true. I’m not looking for a religious debate here, mind you. I find it hard to side with any one particular religion over another nowadays, but as a personal insight into myself, I firmly believe there is something bigger than all of us out there. I’m not even sure I believe in “Heaven and Hell” as the concept they’re traditionally taught as in the Judeo-Christian faiths. I just now that the idea of Chris Benoit somehow living an eternity of agony and despair is haunting yet slightly comforting to me. I’d like to belief that if there is in fact a God perhaps he’s just enough to see through whatever mental illness it was that wrecked Benoit’s life during those final days. After all, as many around the ‘net have pointed out, we don’t even know all the details surrounding the case. Maybe he didn’t actually kill his wife and son. Maybe he didn’t kill himself. Maybe the local authorities are really thatincompetent to the point that a family tragedy with the global media’s attention was botched right in front of the world’s eyes. Certainly God knows the truth. Maybe Chris got a free pass for his transgressions for reasons we’ll never know. Maybe we have no clue, shit for all we know Chris was tangled up with an underground group searching for the Holy Grail and having discovered it’s true whereabouts he and his family were executed. Or maybe it all happened EXACTLY like we’re hearing? Then what? Religious views casts aside, theists and atheists alike are mourning the loss of one of the wrestling industry’s greatest performers, a family has lost loved ones, men lost best friends, a child lost their playmate. How are we to deal with this? Countless opinion pieces have been written already, including some very fine ones around this website by Leviathan, Morpheus and Degenerate (the latter two both took a somewhat more controversial approach I’d recommend reading) yet we’re still left trying to cope with our own emotions on the subject. My little brother was curious two weeks ago, partly wondering if what he saw in Vince McMahon’s death was actually occurring. My dad explained to him that it was of course, all an act. Yet then when news breaks of the Benoit tragedy my little brother and many of the fans around the globe were thinking the same thing this is an act. It most certainly, is not. For me, it’s impossible to not feel negative emotions about this. Do you all realize now that a man we watched on our TV, a man we cheered for and gave standing ovations for, was capable of cold-blooded murder? Tell me that doesn’t creep you just a little bit. It’s appalling and somewhat frightening that while we escape our worlds into a world of hero-worship and live vicariously through the art form of professional-wrestling we really know nothing about those who’re devoting our loyalties. And that makes it very, very hard to continue to “hero-worship” doesn’t it? The teacher in me sees students who don’t cheer for great booking, or the great match that Batista/Undertaker had, they cheer for heroes. They come in wearing their John Cena T-Shirts or Rey Mysterio masks and complaining about how much they hate Edge. After something like this it’s very, very difficult to continue that sort of loyalty to any other human being, realizing that perhaps we know nothing about them. Nobody wants to root for drug users, as I did with Mark McGwire posters smeared all over my walls as a young teenager. Nobody wants to put immoral men in a position to be adored, because it becomes impossible to separate the good from the bad, just ask NFL Commissioner Roger Giddell who is laying the hammer down on NFL players who break the law. He doesn’t want that sort of image for his players or his league, knowing that no good can come from it. Now, every time I see one of the greatest moments in wrestling history, I’ll be looking at Eddie and Chris in a cloud of confetti, and be forced to think “murderer…”. Who could be next? Seriously? What if John Cena snaps next…I mean how much pressure can one man take before he loses it? Randy Orton is obviously struggling with some social issues if reports for the last three years about backstage incidents are true, what if he kills somebody? A friend of mine recently met Dave Batista and found him anything but warm and caring. Dave’s been linked to steroid allegations in the past, what happens if all the “roid rage/depression/delusional” allegations are true and Dave starts literally tearing the heads of little kids? Shit what if it’s Vince? Obviously I say these things all in jest, but it’s the sort of paranoia we’re left with now as wrestling fans. It’s harder now to be innocent. It’s harder to just be a fan without second guessing the management and the culture that breeds this type of situation. To me the WWE has made tremendous strides in the last few years to clean up it’s image and it’s wrestlers but I certainly hope they don’t stop now. Damn it’s getting harder to be a wrestling fan. Admit it, the product isn’t what it could be. We’ve always faced ridicule for enjoying this “sport” and we could shrug it off. But now the outside world is coming at us wrestling fans with different ammo. They’re no longer saying “How do you watch that stuff, it’s so fake!”. No, now they’re saying “Oh my god all those guys are jacked up drug users, wife beaters and child killers, how can you support such a product?” And you know what? Maybe they’re right. It’s not easy anymore, I shouldn’t have to work at being a wrestling fan. The perception attached to wrestlers, professional-wrestling as an industry, and professional-wrestling fans has never been more negative. Yet throughout all of it we carry on. We’re already back online talking about what will happen on Raw tonight, or debating what this tragedy does for the Benoit legacy. To me, the legacy is nearly impossible to respect. I can’t look at the man’s face without wincing and turning away now, how can I possibly watch a match or hold reverence for a career when my gut reaction is to react that way? Maybe it will pass. Then again, maybe it won’t. The WWE is obviously struggling with it themselves. Some have indicated that they will effectively erase Benoit from ever having worked for them, blur him out as if he were the old “WWF” logo. I don’t think that’s possible kids, a man cannot be erased from a memory, and certainly not from the history of an industry. Yet all he ever did was rendered pointless the second his life ended, perhaps as much as two days earlier. As Lop Main page columnist Leviathan said to me Tuesday discussing whether his legacy should be upheld, “it’s like saying Hitler was a nice guy, but he killed all them Jews”. The legacy of a man is not fractioned, it cannot be broken into pieces. There is only the overall impression left upon those who’s life he touched once he’s gone. And in this case the overall impression is suffocating in it’s negativity. It is impossible for me, I’m not saying for everybody but for me, to differentiate between the two now. Despite it all, the feeling that runs strongest through me is apathy. I just don’t give a shit anymore. When Eddie died, I cried during his Raw tribute show. I felt for that family, and his legacy was elevated, even knowing all he’d done wrong knowing that he’d tried to change. With Benoit though, it’s shattered whatever sense of innocence I had left, and reminded me that the world is a cold, cruel place and no realm is free from its corrupt touch, not even my beloved wrestling. For that Benoit, go to hell. Go to hell Benoit. For the murder of your wife, may you burn. For the murder of your son, may you burn. For bringing unbearable sorrow, doubt and regret to all who ever loved you or your family, burn. For calling into doubt my ability to enjoy professional wrestling, for making me question my love for this industry, for obliterating the fragile world of disbelief millions of fans escape into on a daily basis. Go to hell. Sanctimonious Son of a Bitch Chris Benoit, and I don’t think I can really say anything more to explain it. A honorable mention goes to Vince McMahon and the WWE, for whatever part they had in creating any sort of culture that creates such an awful situation, though to me while I’m a firm believer in sub/counter cultures and their impact on human behaviors, to me it’s the greater culture of drugs and violence that leads to something like this. These situations unfortunately happen all the time, such an isolated incident finally occurred in a prominent role in the global media, and finally (tragically) happened in the world of professional-wrestling. Cannon Fodder Jimmy Snuka scares me to death. I seriously hope that poor guy never wrestles again because he moves like he’s one step short of kicking the bucket, and I fear for his well-being every time I watch him wrestle. You were great Jimmy, now hang ‘em up for good, even if you are just coming back to put over your son. Cheap Pop The Columns Forum in Lopforums is on fire. Simply on fire man, and it‘s awesome. There are a number of very talented new writers there stepping up and filling the void by the plethora of recent call-ups to the Lop Main Page, but perhaps most impressive is all the veterans coming out of the woodwork of late. Joining those awesome new writers are three of the greatest columnists to ever come though this website, Hall of Farmers Your Ayatollah, Xanman, and Morpheus. Typically I like to throw hit’s the way of the new guys, but when three writers of this caliber are all writing in the Columns Forum, the world (that’s you) should stand up and take notice. Check them out… Enter the Dream Realm by Morpheus. All About the Game by YourAyatollah. The Northern Star by Xanman. Like the golden bird that flies away or a candle’s fickle flame, this column is no more. I’m sure by now you guys are completely Benoit’d out, and I’m sorry for that, I know most wrestling fans are just trying to move on and want their wrestling world back to the perfect little escape that it once was. As I said in the outset, it already started with the Cena/Nitro match on ECW. Yet that doubt will forever remain, that sense of sorrow will forever be attached to Benoit’s likeness along with all of his glorious accomplishments. Some will no doubt say I was far to harsh in this column, and I respect your opinion and to an extent I probably even agree with you. However, tell that to Daniel. For the record, I’m completely sympathetic to the idea that we may not know the true details, and may never know. I’m also equally sympathetic to those holding mental illness, drug induced dementia, or anything else that might explain these acts. I feel those are possible explanations for his actions, but simply do not justify them. It’s not my job to judge a man and to be honest if I had the weight of that responsibility I’d be inclined to think differently than I am. With that responsibility would come added knowledge however, infinite knowledge, so for those of you who’re religious people, I’ll leave that judging to God. Based on the knowledge I have however, my opinion on the situation stands. Rest assured Bleeder Readers, the time is coming when our wrestling world will return to normal. I hope….I’ll be taking a little break to step away for a bit and head back home for Independence Day celebrations, so I’ll have to get back to emails regarding the Bleeder or MNC in a few days. Hope you all have a great Fourth of July, stay safe. Thanks for granting me a few minutes here though to sort of vent my own feelings on the subject. In a strange way I’m just not sure that my wrestling world can go back to normal until I’d written the obligatory column on this matter. Hopefully I contributed something to the overall discussion, and if not, I tried like hell. I’ll be back in the next week or so picking up where I left off with “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” series I was working on, I think Smackdown is up next. Until then, check out some of the plugs below for more stuff from me. Thanks for visiting The Nosebleed Section-but next time, get better seats. Click here to Email Randomguy#5!  Click above to visit the new MNC Website! Or click a link below to check out the latest show! Episode 28 -Hi-Fi Edition Episode 28-Low-Fi Edition --Hi-Fi Editions are slightly larger files and take longer to download but are better audio quality. Low-Fi are more dial-up user friendly.  Visit TheProjectLives.com and check out some great creative writing, social commentary, music downloads and pod casting including some familiar names you may recognize from Lop. Do some writing yourself? Jump in and give it a shot! Know somebody else who’d be better? Spread the word!  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