I first heard about the Benoit tragedy about 6:30pm on Monday evening, my internet was down so I didn't get to check the news sites like I normally do when I get home from work in the afternoon. My friend Mike called me and asked if I had heard about it and I told him no I hadn't been online. At that point there were no details other than Benoit, his wife, and son had been found dead in their home. I normally never watch RAW anymore, I 'DVR' it each week, then read the results and see if there's anything worth watching. However monday night I made it a point to watch. Now, I plan to write another part of this discussing WWE's reaction to all this so I'm not going to go into my thoughts on the tributes and everything right now, we'll get into that later.
So, I finish watching RAW and I go online and decide to cruise the message boards and see what people are saying. I checked several different message boards and the roller coaster of emotions was intense. The ones from early on in the evening before it hit all the major news outlets was that most people thought it was a "storyline", which was just totally asinine. Granted, WWE does some dumb shit but what would something like this have been trying to accomplish? Anyway, once some other news sources besides WWE.com started reporting it people started believing it was true. So then there are tons of posts from people proclaiming Benoit the best wrestler of all time, "a tragic loss of a great human being and family man" and "now he will be in heaven with Eddie Guerrero and Brian Pillman" etc......, then comes the press conference from police giving the theories that Benoit had killed his wife, then his son, and then himself.
Now, I go back to the same message boards and moments after posting the previous messages some of the exact same people are now posting "F*** Benoit, I hope he rots in hell" "He's a monster, I'll never watch his matches again, he's a disgrace to wrestling." Ok, that really didn't shock me, that's to be expected, however then you had a lot of people saying, "even if he did kill his family it doesn't change the fact he was a tremendous wrestler and who are we to judge him?" WHAT?? Who are we to judge him? People went back and forth for days (and some still doing it) debating if this will keep Benoit out of the hall of fame?? Police are trying to figure out why he killed himself and his family and people are debating if he should be in the f***ing hall of fame??? Who are we to judge him??? People saying "we shouldn't discredit his whole career based on this one act."
These arguments rage on and everyone has the right to their opinion but WTF?? If this was Joe Blow from down the street I don't think anyone would be saying "who are we to judge?" or "Let's not base our memories of him based on the fact he killed his family, let's remember the good times!" So why does he get special consideration? If someone strangled YOUR sister and nephew, would you be less judgemental if they had an awesome 'workrate'? Or because they were a former WWE champion? Again, to each their own, who am I to judge right? I just don't understand that school of thought, so I guess I find myself somewhere in the middle of "F*** Benoit, I hope he rots in hell" and "What about his great matches?" I feel bad that he had whatever problems that led him to do this, but it doesn't excuse it and it doesn't make it forgivable. To even consider putting him in the hall of fame is laughable, some things trump a great wrestling career and I would think killing your wife and kid is one of them. I'll be back to give my thoughts on the way WWE has handled this as well as the media's handling of the situation.
