Chris Benoit – The next generation of wrestling fans
By Scott Keith on 24 November 2024
Scott,
I've been introducing my 11-year-old to wrestling, and have been curating certain great matches for him.
Last night we were watching the first 'Money in the Bank' match @ WM 21. As each wrestler enters, he's asking 'who's that?'
When Benoit entered, I had a momentary dilemma. Is it right to say “Just a guy?” Do I give the whole tragic story? Can I just mention that he used to be one of my favourites but “went on to do some pretty awful things in real life”?
I mean, this isn't something like cheating on your girlfriend – it is so many orders of magnitude more than that. I don't automatically want to exclude every match Benoit was ever in, but do you have thoughts on how people born after, say, 2005 should deal
with him initially?
Tim.
Yeah, that's usually how I handle it now. Great wrestler who turned out to be a monster. It's also retroactively affected my enjoyment of his matches, unfortunately, but at least I'm at the point where I can watch them again so there's that.