Hey Scott,
This is going to be wildly unpopular, but I was always curious. I wrote my master's thesis on professional wrestling (not on Chris Benoit specifically.) Inevitably, Chris Benoit came up as many non-wrestling fans know his name because of what happened. But for journalists and teachers and people not in-the-know, they all held the opinion that Benoit's psychosis was brought on by years of concussions and self-abuse. These were decent people and their opinions all seemed to be that Benoit was a tragedy, not a monster.
Yet, on this blog and inside many werstling circles, the opinion is “Fuck Benoit, he's a monster.” Rather than, “it's a tragedy what happened.”
Obviously I know he's still accountable and a murderer – and by extension, his actions were monstrous — but is there a piece of this I'm missing? Was he a wildly abusive person his entire life? Is it because he chose to take those head bumps that led to his mental state? is there any universe in which Benoit could be seen as a tragedy who himself deserves a bit of compassion? Surely he must've suffered enormously. Or is it really as black and white as we've been making it?
Thanks!
Swinging for the fences tonight I see. Was it a tragedy? Yes, no doubt. However, there have been many people, far too many people, who have suffered concussions and injuries that are similar to Benoit, and it didn't cause them to also murder their wife and child, so I can hardly blame the brain injury and/or drugs alone. Also, we did learn that Benoit was physically abusive to Nancy even before the murder, to the point where the marriage was considered over a couple of times before things were patched up again, so really the evidence points strongly to “Benoit was a piece of shit” even if you're not taking the tragic self-destruction later on into account. Really, the more I learned about Benoit in the wake of the incident, the more I regretted ever being a fan of his in the first place.