Chris Benoit and family found dead

I'd have to think that WWE-style touring takes more out of a body than even football. I mean what... 4-6 shows a week? 45-50 weeks a year? That shit has to cut years off your life.

 

We were able to convince our paper to run the story on the front page of the website, under sports, then we ran a link to our MMMA/Pro wrestling blog

 

We're running the story inside. Don't know about our Web site.

 

What's sadly ironic is that Tom Billington, aka The Dynamite Kid, and the guy who Benoit emulated and wanted to become like, is still alive, albeit in a wheelchair, but alive nonetheless, and Benoit rarely did anything remotely as dangerous in the ring as Dyno.

 

I second your sentiments, Moddy. I was caught off-guard when I heard it on FSR w/Siciliano about an hour ago. The slight irk I have is on how quick the WWE put this tribute thing together. This is me talking, but I have a strange feeling that WWE knew what happened before it became public earlier tonight. It's doesn't sit well with me knowing that McMahon and Co. can pull this off as structured and chorographed without much spontaneous reaction.

That said, I quit watching pro wrestling when I turned 13 because of the recurring hijinxs and bad drama. Chris Benoit was a popular wrestler among the wrestling nation. All of this has got to make Bret Hart sicker every moment.

 

Sausage factory.

Consume it, don't ask what went into it.

It's pro football without good PR.

 

D-3, I'm guessing they have canned obit things, like newspapers do.

 

They have enough footage of matches and the Benoit DVD interviews that it doesn't take that much to put something together. In fact, this was probably an easier night than normal for them (strictly from a work perspective) because they're not trying to coordinate three hours of live wrestling, interviews, backstage antics and ad breaks. The play-by-play and color commentary guys don't have to talk a fifth as much as they would on a normal night, no cutting the matches on the fly to fit it in before the commercials, nothing like that.

Eddy Guerrero's death was the really creepy one in that respect. He was found dead on a Sunday morning, with taping for both Raw (normally live) and Smackdown taking place that night. And they were leaving for Europe the next day, so postponing wasn't apparently an option. They had to go out and wrestle four hours while grieving the loss of a friend and co-worker. At least they didn't do storylines, but it was still stressful. Almost painful to watch, particularly (oddly enough) Benoit's grief-stricking interview about Guerrero.

 

That's the discussion the us guys in sports had just a while ago. They've got a ton of footage on every superstar, and I doubt it's that hard to pull it all together for a show of this length.

And apparently, the wrestlers found out around the same time everyone else did.

 

And they cancelled the show with less than an hour before it was to open.

Also, WWE has too much experience redoing shows based on sudden deaths. The Eddy death was day of a double-taping, and the Owen Hart death came a day before Raw (and of course during the Over the Edge PPV, which they slogged through even after JR told the audience Hart had died). And Brian Pillman died on the day of a PPV, though they didn't rewrite Raw for him (they did interview his wife and Vince asked her on live TV if steroids caused his death, in case anyone was wondering if he was a more gentle, thoughtful soul back then).

 

I don't see why they couldn't have canceled the PPV Owen died at or the Raw the night after Eddy died. But the tribute show that night was something else.

 

Not to thread jack and I won't, but that's a low blow to the educated people who actually like professional wrestling, Moddy. You're views are probably solely based on WWF/E, WCW programming. Don't forget there are a lot of promotions out there that focus on the actual wrestling, athleticism, etc, part of the whole deal minus all the ridiculous storylines.