Falls Count Anywhere

06-26-07

What can be said?

And there’s also anger.

That’s the strange thing about this situation, there are so many questions and no one is really sure what happened and what it means. A few people who were asked to do taped segments said no because of what they might say. A strange report from someone close to the situation said folks in the Fed were afraid that Benoit had somehow contracted avian flu and passed it to their family. That was based on a call Benoit made to the WWE to explain why he wasn’t showing up for the show on Sunday. The revelation that Biff Wellington had passed also happened the same day as Benoit apparently killed Nancy, and a day before he would have killed his son Daniel.

And those are the sentences that change everything.

There have been wrestlers who were murdered. Dino Bravo was one. Bruiser Brody was another. The Brody murder was the only time I can come up with that a wrestler was charged with murder. He was stabbed to death by another wrestler and that turned a lot of the wrestling world against the Puerto Rican wrestling establishment. That was the last wrestler I can remember being a part of a murder. There have been several wrestlers charged with murder or manslaughter due to drug-related matters such as providing drugs to someone who overdosed, but not murder.

Suicide in wrestling is also rare…maybe. There are a lot of questions about some of the overdoses that may, in fact, have been suicides. That’s been debated over and over, and no one will ever be sure. We know Kerry Von Erich killed himself. As did his brothers Chris and Mike, and there’s debate over whether or not brother David killed himself as well. Tojo Yamamoto also shot himself. A few Japanese promoters, including one of the founders of Pride, have committed suicide over the years.

I can’t think of another Murder-Suicide in the history of wrestling. It’s the saddest story. No one is sure what really happened, and not even after the investigation is over will a lot of people be satisfied. The details are being described as ‘bizarre’, and I don’t doubt that. The true story might have a lot of involved pieces, including factors of Benoit’s mental state following the announcement of the death of his former partner Biff Wellington.

The bigger issue here is wrestling’s lifestyle. This is one thing that probably won’t be able to be blamed on steroids or drugs. They may have played a factor, but it’s always the first thing people go to to explain why these deaths keep happening.

This will probably be much harder to grasp. There have been people who have said that something has to be done about the stress that wrestling places on the wrestlers and their families. There have been calls for easier schedules and a stronger stance on the anti-drug policy.

I’ve seen several sites that claim that ‘roid rage’ was involved, and who knows, maybe it was, but there’s no way to know for sure. It’s a hard nut to crack, so very hard. In a sport where you lose so many friends so young, the schedule that has you away from your family, the painkillers most need to make it through and the temptations of drugs, it’s never an easy thing.

Vince McMahon might be the biggest story here. He cancelled a show. That’s a giant thing. Vince kept the show going after Owen, did the show the night after Eddie died, and here he pulled the plug on a sold-out show. He blew the Mr. McMahon was blown up angle. He simply could have not shown up on TV and saved the angle.

Instead, he came out and said that it had all been an angle. He was called the rock, making sure everyone was OK and staying strong. This death, more than any other that anyone can think of, has shaken Vince. A lot of folks are talking about Vince finally ‘getting it’ when Eddie died, and here’s another death that might get him looking at the pressure these guys are under.

There is a lot of speculation about a lot of things and there’ll be more news conferences and write-ups over the coming days. There will be some answers and more questions.

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Chris Garcia