Chris Benoit was my favorite wrestler. He was one of the main factors that made me switch over to Nitro predominantly in 1996 and 1997. The NWO put a big part of that as well, but it was really the athleticism on the undercard that attracted me and clearly the best of the bunch was Chris Benoit. Even an 11 year old with minimal knowledge as to what makes a wrestler good at what he does could tell that Chris Benoit was the best technical wrestler on the roster.
I corresponded with him a couple of times via his old website in the late 90s and early 2000's. He was pretty good to his fans because he would write back if you emailed him and at that time would often spend time on the message board going back and forth and answering the same tired questions that we would ask him.
Growing up I always saw myself growing up to dress up like Ric Flair, to be my own man like Steve Austin, to have charisma like The Rock, you have a sharp and witty sense of humor like Chris Jericho comma but my work ethic would be based off of Chris Benoit. Being the first man in in the last man out, the attention to detail comma crossing your t's and dotting your I's, I found all that in him and recognized it because I saw this type of work ethic with some of the better influences in my life growing up.
The ending to WrestleMania 20 was for me. Fans like me. Maybe it wasn't the best business decision to put the strap on Chris Benoit that time but for us smart marks that appreciated the art of professional wrestling, and with the Inside Story on Chris Benoit, in the years and years of Monday night's watching him climb the ladder greasy rung by greasy rung that main event was produced for us and it was magnificent.
It coincided with my senior year of high school beginning where I would have a full-time job as well as high school, it became a struggle to catch Monday Night Raw and pay per views but I was determined to watch Chris Benoit's unlikely run with the top prize in the New York territory. I'll run that would have been absolutely impossible without the Monday Night War and the explosion of popularity that wrestling wrestling saw during that time period.
Predictably, they did not have confidence in their new champion and when he couldn't draw big in the subsequent rematch they regulated him to a Fluff run that was largely forgettable. For once, as a smart Mark, I didn't let it bother me. They couldn't take away WrestleMania 20 comma that was in the bag. So I decided that I would simply enjoy the title run whatever it was going to be, my only hope being that it would at least be lengthy and he would be used to put someone over at WrestleMania 21.
But as soon as the SummerSlam 2004 main event was set, I saw the writing on the wall. Having watched wrestling regular away since around 1994 I had seen the beginning and end of at least a couple of wrestling eras, and this time around I was plugged in enough to be able to predict that Randy Orton was going to win the belt and begin a new era. It made sense. Randy Orton at that time was an undeniable Talent with Limitless potential (potential that in my opinion, was never realized) and the whole thing looked like a slam dunk.
SummerSlam 2004 was the last WWE pay-per-view that I purchased until I got hooked into money in the bank 2011 where as an educated wrestling fan I was compelled to TuneIn because I knew the Chicago atmosphere was going to be off the charts.
Between those two pay-per-views did not watch wrestling. Maybe, occasionally I would catch part of raw or part of SmackDown depending on where I was but never had cable myself and never made it a point to watch. In my peripheral I would kind of sort of keep track of things via the news and rumors site that I still use to this day and have since about 1997.
I was kind of in a bad place in my life when the news about Chris Benoit's death came on the radio. My lack of being plugged in, no internet no cable at that time it actually took me a couple of weeks to find out what actually happened and in the subsequent years I have studied every little detail about the tragedy, trying to make sense of it in my mind. I've watched every single shoot interview that I can find where the topic is mentioned comma and gathered every Nuance of detail that I could no matter what the source of that detail was. Everybody knew a little something about Benoit, every single person was shocked that it happened, and none of them had an explanation, but when all of the details are combined it becomes pretty clear to me what took place.
It's been well documented, and also reviewed in this thread the drug habits, the health issues, the marriage issues, his son's issues and the Kevin Sullivan factor from years prior. Everything plays a role, but the media and the marks, hell, almost everyone once there to be a singular Factor to point to so that this brutal tragedy can be wrapped up into a tight Bow, processed and then forgotten about, which is simply unrealistic. Absolutely nothing in life, mine or yours is ever that simple, so why would this be? It's because a lot of wrestling fans are the artistic type, the media just wants to destroy whatever, in general simpletons just want to be able to simple. But it's not simple.
It's not the most complex theory that you've ever heard, but I'm going to let my thoughts be known on what happened. If anyone has dug deeper into this case than I have, it's because they have access to something that I don't, something that's not on the internet, because I have scratched and clawed do every piece of media that I can get my hands on over the course of years to try to wrap my mind around the whole thing. There might be one or two shoot interviews out there where the situation is talked about, and maybe the interviewee knows a little something about Benoit, or Nancy, but I doubt there is much more than that out there that I have not seen already.
I'm going to do this off the top of my head, I'm not going to re review the timeline or anything so if I get a time wrong, don't think that the entire thing is useless..
I believe that Chris and Nancy got into a heated argument on that Friday. I don't think it was unusual for this to happen seeing as domestic violence was already a documented factor in the family. Obviously it's impossible to know what the argument was about, and it's not really important, but I don't believe it was of such great importance that it would make sense for someone to get seriously hurt, let alone killed.
Pain pills will make you very irritable, get into an argument with someone on pain pills and they are likely to show annoyance and raise their voice at a much quicker rate than they normally would, or even someone that's normally subdued might find themselves being a little more on edge, aggressive. It's been said that Chris had taken up booze a lot more at this time as well, hard to know if he was drunk or drinking at the time of Nancy's murder, but it has to be considered a possibility.
I think he hit her and he hit her really hard, hard enough that this was going to be the end of the marriage, the line had been crossed and this fact was realized probably immediately. With these type of situations everything happened so fast so once she was struck, and struck that hard, I'm sure she immediately tried to escape him and his immediate thought was that she would call the police.
This is Chris Benoit, he has a title match on Pay-per-view on Sunday, he does not miss work, he is generally regarded as the hardest working man in the business. He also is known as a man of integrity, he cannot have Nancy's picture on the news with her black guy, broken nose, whatever it was... so he snatched her up and strangled her. I'm sure in his mind he had the idea of Simply subduing Her, but his mind was not sound any longer, it's been well documented he was having mental issues and in my opinion was losing his sanity, so there was also a part of him that wanted to hurt her further, to cause damage, to release that love and hate attention that comes with a marriage that's not the happiest... I wonder how long it took him to realize that she was dead, I wonder how long he held on as he choked the life out of her. Did he let go in a short time, not realizing his strength was too much and that it would not take much time for her to die, or did he hold on for a long time, minutes upon minutes? Nancy's sister has detailed the issues they had in their marriage, but she only knows what Nancy told her and no one can know the tension in that marriage except for two people that aren't with us anymore. For all we know he held onto that choke for 10 or 15 minutes, maybe he had completely snapped at that time, but my guess is that it was no more than 60 Seconds and that it was his strength that did the deed faster than he might have realized it would.
But the bottom line is that I do not believe he walked into that bedroom, entered that conflict with any idea of killing his wife. In my mind I see him sitting in that bedroom for a long long time after trying to come to grips with the fact that he had done something that he was not going to be able to come back from, and that she was not going to come back either.
I cannot imagine how many tears were shed in that house by that man throughout that weekend. Tears after his wife was dead, tears as he brings himself to the conclusion that he would kill Daniel as well, tears upon tears after he kills Daniel and again More Tears as he readies himself for suicide. And I sincerely doubt that crying with something foreign to him comma I think he probably cried a lot leading up to this tragic weekend given that he was dealing with a lot of death on top of what is already a stressful work schedule, workplace, and a plethora of health problems that were starting to add up.
From here, it's impossible to say how he reached his next conclusion because it's honestly the most tragic one and the most unconceivable one. At this point I imagine everything was being accelerated with chemicals. Alcohol, drugs, everything that he was putting into his body to try and Escape the pain that he was feeling I'm sure Norton completely off balance for good, as there was not much time left in his life at this point. I'm sure that he was feeling very sorry for himself, whether he meant to kill her or not I'm sure that in some small way he could convince himself that she deserved it and was feeling sorry for himself for being in the situation.
I'm not sure where religion fits into all of this, it's to my understanding that religion was something of a new thing for him and that he was studying up and reading about different religions, perhaps trying to find spirituality and hopes that it would help him deal with all of the death that had come to his life in the Years prior.
But even then I can't imagine that with only having recently become serious about religion that he had bought in so much that he thought that killing Daniel and putting a Bible beside him would somehow make the situation a more positive one in perception or for them in the afterlife. Rather I believe that he was fucked up on drugs and alcohol, angry at his wife and himself for ruining his life due to the murder, and feeling sorry for himself for being in the situation. He killed Daniel Benoit because if he was going to lose his life, lose everything that he had worked so hard for, then he was going to take Daniel with him and no one was leaving this house alive. It's no more or no less logical then some other reasons I've heard like maybe it was some sort of religious sacrifice and that he was hoping the three of them would meet in the afterlife comma I just don't believe he bought in the religion that much because by doing that he basically just created his own logic for the religion itself, if he believed in the silly book he laid down by their bodies then he would know he's already going to hell in a handbasket and will never see them again. It sounds crass comma but I truly believe he just said fuck it, and killed his son. The silver lining for him maybe was that Daniel wouldn't have to live in a life where he knows his father killed his mother, and never have to know that his mother was dead.
Such a deep, dark scenario. To be in the mind of a man going mad. I truly think that the only real Madness moment was Nancy's murder, he took his time and methodically made the rest of the weekend happen with logic and reason... just a logic and reason that you are I cannot even fathom coming close to understanding because it took 40 years, all the miles, all the bumps, all the drugs all the chair shots, who knows what with the marriage, it was The Perfect Storm, the recipe of disaster.
Why do I draw that conclusion, as far as why he killed Daniel? Because I believe in the fact that he felt sorry for himself being in the situation (he knows he's now a murderer, even though he did not purposely kill her) without a doubt. I believe in it so strongly because he spent that Sunday in the house, his family laying dead, and did not immediately kill himself. He knew he would kill himself before he ever killed Daniel, and yet still couldn't bring himself to do it before he pounded some crazy number of beers before hanging himself. He sat and he contemplated. What was there to contemplate? I guess it's not easy to end your own life if you're not suicidal to begin with, and none of this was supposed to happen, but by the time you kill your son I would imagine that the decision was already made. So what is taking you so long? I think he was scared, and the same cowardice that and did Daniels life was now possibly trying to find a way to get out of this. I'm pretty sure that as of Saturday night, or maybe Sunday morning (either one, Daniel was already dead) he was still sending texts or made a call to Chavo Guerrero indicating that he still planned on making it to the show.
To me that says that he was still trying to find a way out of this situation, because he wanted to live. Again, I do believe he decided on suicide before he killed Daniel, but when the time came to do the deed his instincts kicked in comma he was not suicidal, this was all a reaction to a reaction to a reaction.
What would seem like an eternity for him I'm sure, sitting in the house trying to think of a way to get out of this, was really not that long if you think about it. If your wife is on the line, 12 to 18 hours is nothing, that will pass fast. I don't think it took him a full 12 to 18 hours to make the decision final, I'm sure somewhere in the middle of the morning on Sunday he finally realized that there was no way out of this unless he ran, but then there would still be a possibility that he could be captured. I don't think it was acceptable for him to go to prison as a murderer, especially the murderer of his wife and child. Perception of him was still important for some reason, and I think that was another motivator behind the Bible's. It doesn't make any logical sense to you and I, but he was grasping at straws at this point. He was in a fucked situation and there was no way out, no sugar coating it.
So in his final cowardly moment he began pounding beers. I could relate to this, I couldn't do it to myself without being pretty fucked up myself, especially if I'm having to do it not in a depressed state of mind. We are not totally conscious of it, but we want to live badly, unless our mind is poisoned by that dirty d word, depression. I don't think he was depressed, I don't think he was ever suicidal, and that's why he waited until the very end and even then had to completely sedate himself.
Conclusion: obviously I don't know that this is at all factual any more than anyone else would with my theory or any. The only man with the answer, the subject of the thread, with probably pretty unsure himself.
I don't judge Chris Benoit for what happened. It was a completely fucked up thing for him to kill his son like he did when he either could have served his prison sentence and beg for forgiveness, or if he couldn't do that, I couldn't, he could have driven somewhere and killed himself somewhere else, had someone pick up Daniel, anything else. But again, I don't have all of the intricate details. Maybe Chris knew that Daniel would be so unbelievably devastated that his mother was dead, murdered, that his life would be an absolute mess going forward. That's not a good reason, there is no good reason that exists, that's the only fact we know for sure. All I can say is that it might be a reason, and there could be more.
OJ Simpson had a very similar story to this, obviously not the exact same, but it's similar in that a woman was the subject of a man driving himself to commit a crime of passion. If you read OJ Simpsons' supposed confession in the book "I Did It" he states that he had an accomplice and that he did not go two Nicole Brown's house with the intentions of committing murder against her, let alone anyone else. He says he went there to scare her, to intimidate her and whatever man she had over because of his overwhelming jealousy that ruled his life. It's okay, so it's hard to know if that is the truth even with the confession, I imagine the same would be for Benoit if we can somehow ask him what happened that night.
Because the fact is that we're all human. We see the world, and we see life through our eyes and our eyes only try as we might to gain other perspectives, other perspectives only serve to enhance our own perspective, because it's our perspective that we live with every minute of every day.
If I'm correct about the scenario in Nancy's murder, I could see myself in that situation rather easily. I never have, and probably never will physically strike or harm a female. That's against everything that I stand for. But I do know that certain things can trigger me to become Furious comma and jealousy could be one of them, catching someone cheating could easily turn me into a Jay Simpson for 120 seconds or so comma which is all the time it takes sometimes to make a mistake that you can't come back from. It's human, it applies to everything, we've all said shit we should not have said comma and never would have said if not for that specific situation.
I've only watched one or two Chris Benoit matches since the murder. It's not because I tried to avoid it because it gives me some sort of bad memory, because it doesn't. If I see a Chris Benoit match, it reminds me of my teenage Hood, in the days of thirsting for knowledge about technical wrestling, which led me to Jiu-Jitsu, which led me to MMA, would you led me to having an unmatched work ethic on the job site, being very active as a parent, getting shit done, Chris Benoit showed me that size and looks are something you are born with, but we are all capable of transforming ourselves, and being whatever the hell it is we want to be no matter what.
The whole thing sucks. There's no moral lesson to take from it. If everything that I described is 100% true point-for-point, which is impossible, but still if it was comma the still not much for us to take away from it. It's still frustrating, it's still confusing comma it's still inexcusable. But if anything I hope that anyone that since 2007 has been adamant that Chris Benoit was nothing but a piece of shit can read this and maybe take a different and go on it, be a little sensitive to the human element, The Human Condition, and know that sometimes something like this will happen and there simply isn't anyone to punish, to hang, to bash... nor is there a specific answer or take away. It's simply sucks.
