The Shimmy 7.02.07: We Cannot Forget

I was online right around the time the news broke on Monday evening. My first reaction was probably the same of many wrestling fans, saddened over the lost of one of the all-time greats. Chris Benoit has fallen into a long list of men and women that we have lost far too early, and to make matters even worse the rest of his family went with him. I raced home to make sure I was in time for the three-hour Raw which I surely thought would be in tribute to the Rabid Wolverine. Raw’s show was emotional but therapeutic and I loved being able to rewatch one of my favorite matches, the Triple Threat Match at WrestleMania XX. Little did I know that that moment would forever be tarnished. The majority of my Monday night was filled with sadness and confusion. How could this have happened? Why? I would later come to realize that sadness and confusion would be preferable feelings than what was to come.

Once I stopped watching Monday’s show I got online to see what others were saying or if any news had been discovered. Discovered it was, and it wasn’t pretty. It seemed as if the news bits off the main page kept coming in, one right after the other. By the time I was finished reading one there was another one waiting for me. With each news bit the knot in my stomach grew tighter. I started feeling physically ill as the news became more and more grisly. By this point I don’t think I really need to spell out the details for you because 411 has pretty much been Chris Benoit Central over the past seven days. Needless to say every news bit that has come out since has made things worse and worse in regards to Chris Benoit. No longer is he considered a victim; now he’s merely a cold blooded killer. This was information that I had a hard time processing. How could Chris Benoit, a man that we had seemingly become intimately involved with over the past few years, have done something so horrific? For a while I tried to picture in my head just what happened in that house and I couldn’t do it. I kept thinking back to the footage of Chris Benoit breaking down into tears during the Eddie Guerrero Tribute Show, stating that he would see him again later. That guy killed his family?

This may upset some people, but I think I could have lived with this easier if it had only been Nancy that had been killed. A domestic dispute gone wrong between two adults leading to a murder I can understand. It’s still horrific and Benoit would still have every right to be vilified for it, but that’s something that I can process, something I think I can accept. But killing his mentally handicapped seven year old son? That just doesn’t make sense to me. How does someone bring themselves to do something like that, even in an altered state of mind?

Over the next few days the sadness and confusion I had originally felt was replaced by anger. I was angry at a little bit of everything, actually. I was angry that a seemingly innocent woman and a seven year old child were dead. I was angry that an entertainer that I enjoyed was responsible for it and that he too was gone. I was angry that the media had the opportunity to attack professional wrestling. I was angry that the moralists had the ammunition to say “I told you so” about the Mr. McMahon presumed death angle, as if there were some kind of divine intervention to screw over WWE. I was angry that WWE and various other wrestling media outlets were quick to try and erase the very existence of the best pure wrestler this industry has ever known. I was angry that Chris Benoit himself robbed us fans of the ability to celebrate his career without feeling guilty. I was angry because one of the greatest personal moments of my own life, being there live at WrestleMania XX to witness what I considered the greatest single moment in professional wrestling history, was forever tarnished due to the uncontrollable actions of one of its participants.

In short I was angry at everybody: Chris Benoit, WWE, the media, the fans; and I’m very rarely angry at the media or WWE. So of course I was angry about my anger. By this point I would have taken that sadness and confusion of Monday evening back in an instant.

Over the last few days I’ve actually pretty much moved on to the acceptance stage. Part of it is media burnout. I keep trying to pull myself away from the news reports but the old instincts of being intrigued whenever there is a media wide wrestling discussion pulls me back in. I actually did a good job at staying away from wrestling news sites, including 411. I decided not to read in of my fellow 411 colleagues columns this week because I just didn’t think I could handle the extra load. In some ways I think I’m ADD to tragedy; I was bored with 9/11 pretty much by September 12.

The only other event that shook me like this was Eddie’s death. I was surprised at the level that I stayed sad over an extended period of time, but I figured it was because he was my favorite wrestler and the fact that he seemed so energetic and full of life while on TV. I never figured that the death of a wrestler would hit me like that again. Benoit probably wouldn’t have had such an impact if not for the constant stream of more gory details coming into play. Still, when Eddie died I managed to get over my grief by Friday. Similarly, this past Friday I found that the knot in my stomach had loosened and I could think about this situation in a more unemotional light. In truth this column is the most emotionally flat time I’ve spent thinking about the Benoit situation compared to my thoughts over the past week.

By this point I think I’ve determined how I feel about things. This sucks. Eloquent, no? Let me elaborate. It’s horrible that Nancy and Daniel Benoit were killed, Daniel Benoit in particular. Death is always bad, and unfortunately these two have fallen into the already unnecessarily huge statistic of homicide victims. There is loss all around for this incident. Humanity has lost two innocent souls, wrestling fans have lost a hero (on both life and death), and Chris Benoit has lost his legacy. None of these things should be true, but the cold reality is that they are. I can’t bring Nancy and Daniel Benoit back. Nor can I bring Chris Benoit back and make him not a murderer. But I can attempt to preserve the in-ring legacy of Chris Benoit.

Everyone is quick to erase ever having a connection with Chris Benoit, particularly WWE. I suppose I understand their point, because they have to be responsible for sponsors and public perception. But the man worked there, and despite what he may have done in his final acts on Earth, he was an integral part to professional wrestling history. The man existed and contributed a great deal to the form of entertainment that I love. As hard as it may be to swallow I think we need to remember that. Will those special moments ring a little hollow when we watch them now? Perhaps. But we can’t let those feelings allow us to deny history and to deny proper respect, no matter how ugly it may sound, to a man that otherwise earned it in his field.

It’s actually really bizarre. Two weeks ago I had planned on last week’s column to have been the start of the Chris Benoit Report Card. I was so sure that Benoit was going to be the new ECW World Champion that I was going to coincide my Report Card with that. I had save the Benoit Report Card for a special occasion and I figured that would be it. Ultimately I decided to hold off a week since I would have had to write the column before Vengeance and I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have to go back and edit it in case I was wrong. As it turned out Benoit didn’t make it to Vengeance. Still, I was in a Benoit state of mind and a chase for the ECW World Title would still be reason enough to do a series on him. So as phony as it may sound now, this week was set to be the first part of a multi-part look back at Chris Benoit’s WWE tenure. I think I’m still going to do that Report Card Series, but a little further down the road when the wounds have healed a bit more. I hope all of you will join me then, and I thank those of you that have stuck with me this far. This has been a tough week on all of us, and really we only have up to go from here. In the meantime we need to stick together, because wrestling could be on the precipice of dealing with something bigger than Chris Benoit.