Chris Benoit and family found dead

I don't think it will be completely doomed because of the fanbase worldwide, but it's going to take a huge hit nonetheless.

 

Where will all of the fans go from WWE? Backyard wrestling? MMA? Tennis?

 

If they haven't already - and most of them have - they'll go MMA, where Hughes and Brock Lesnar are two very familiar names. Then they'll see Angle fall apart if he does make that jump.

 

I'll stick with pro wrestling, thanks.

 

People didn't stop watching the NFL when O.J. Simpson, Rae Carruth, etc., committed heinous acts.
This was an act of evil/insanity, but I'm not going to quit watching wrestling because of his actions. It has nothing to do with the business.

 

Wrestling writer Wade Keller has a new blog up about this, explaining more details on what WWE knew, their decisions and how tough this story is going to be for wrestling fans.

http://www.pwtorch.com/artman/publish/article_20635.shtml

 

They'll just keep on keeping on. Even if Benoit's rampage can be connected to steroid use, the WWE has more culpability in Owen Hart's death (equipment failure) and to a degree Eddy Guerrero's (heart failure brought on by all sorts of shit, though that's more on him and the wrestling culture in general). And nothing changes.

Shit, Eddy died and they brought out this new "wellness" policy. It got Chris Masters suspended, and when he came back, Triple H made fun of his lack of definition. And now he looks like he did before. Oh, and it got Joey Mercury fired because he got readdicted to painkillers after he came back from drug rehab and promptly broke his nose in an ugly ladder spot. He hurried back to action because otherwise he'd get paid squat, and guess what helped him get there?

They'll posture and make grandiose statements and perhaps they'll pass some rule about not beating your wife, and maybe they'll start enforcing that wellness policy of theirs. Then everything will go back to normal, and in a year or so someone major will die of a drug-induced heart attack or kill themselves or snap in a crowd, and here we go again.

Atlanta attracts the wrestlers who go crazy, doesn't it? Didn't Scott Steiner and Ric Flair both have major-league road rage incidents there? And if Benoit's apparent actions have anything to do with steroids, how in hell has Steiner not committed genocide by now?

 

Both O.J. Simpson and Rae Carruth were out of the limelight when their acts were committed. Carruth was a joke in his career and no one much like him, hell I didn't even know about him until he stuffed his girlfriend in the trunk. O.J. was a public figure, but the NFL didn't rock from his "crime".

The difference is that Benoit was still involved with the business and their business is going to take a huge hit from it. They are already pulling Benoit merchandise off of the shelves and other items as well. They probably have to rewrite many storylines. Wrestling was in a daze after Owen Hart smashed his face on the turnbuckle. This is more heinous than that.

 

Flair's road-rage incident was in Charlotte, I know that for a fact because I remember being in the area at that time. The Panthers removed video of him giving the 'Woo!' at their games. The charges were dropped.

 

I bet in three years, like they did with Pillman, they'll do a documentary DVD on the tragedy of Benoit.

 

Point taken, but right now it's so fresh in our minds, it's easy to predict doom and gloom.
But, like every tragedy, once there's some distance, people forget and go back to living their normal lives, doing what they did before. Are there going to be a few people who quit watching WWE? Sure, absolutely. But the business as a whole is going to be fine.

My thing is, this isn't really the time to wonder about such things. The tragedy is still too fresh. It feals wrong to wonder how this is going to affect pro wrestling when there's a 7-year-old child dead and two other children who've lost their father and now have to piece together in their minds, why he did such a horrific thing.

 

This just in:
ATLANTA (AP) — Pro wrestler Chris Benoit strangled his wife and smothered his son before hanging himself in his weight room, a law enforcement official close to the investigation told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Authorities also said they are investigating whether steroids may have been a factor in the deaths of Benoit, his wife and their 7-year-old son. Steroid abuse has been linked to depression, paranoia, and aggressive behavior or angry outbursts known as “roid rage.”
“We don’t know yet. That’s one of the things we’ll be looking at,” said Fayette County District Attorney Scott Ballard. He said test results may not be back for weeks.
Investigators believe Benoit (pronounced ben-WAH) killed his wife, 43-year-old Nancy, and son Daniel during the weekend and then himself Monday. The bodies were found Monday afternoon in three separate rooms of the house, off a gravel road about two miles from the Whitewater Country Club.