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| REMEMBERING CHRIS BENOIT July 2007 – Rich Tate I first started watching professional wrestling around 1976, but I didn’t watch one minute of it between sometime around early 1989 and 2000. I had become unhappy with the product I was being fed, and though I never missed it, I missed an entire decade. By the time my disgust had set in back in the late 1980s, I had heard the name of Chris Benoit, though I had never seen him wrestle. When I happened upon an airing of Nitro sometime in early 2000, I finally saw Benoit in action, and was quite impressed. Of course, the WCW product was horrible, but his work stood out to me. I remember thinking I may have to tune in from time to time just to watch this guy. So, as time went on, if I heard he was scheduled to be on the program, I would tune in and stomach all of the garbage just to get to his bout. Benoit would go on to become part of WWE later on, and as much as it pained me to watch, I followed him just so I could see a decent – more often than not, excellent – match that included him. Eventually, over the last year or so, I discovered that I had watched more wrestling between 2006 and 2007 than I had between 1989 and 2005. People who are not wrestling fans will never understand what Chris Benoit brought to the table. They don’t understand when we say he was one of the best because, after all, the top wrestlers are chosen in an office and not on the mat. While this is true, the point of the wrestling business is to suspend the disbelief long enough to capture your attention and make you think what you are seeing is an actual competitive sport. Benoit was one of the few of his generation who could actually make it appear as though he was better than his opponent. Wrestling fans also knew that despite the pre-determined outcomes, when Benoit had his hand raised in victory, he truly was the better man. After all, his earliest training was done in the infamous dungeon in Calgary under Stu Hart’s watchful eye. We knew that if pro wrestling was a competitive sport, Benoit would have probably been the champion whenever he wanted to be because he was just that good. He wasn’t a screamer or a yeller on the microphone, not did he rely on smashing people through tables. All he had to do was trade holds with his opponent; good old fashioned wrestling. Chris Benoit was one of the last of his kind. He respected the history of the business and those who came before him. He listened and he learned. He respected the past so much that he was the only modern era personality who attended the funeral of longtime wrestling guru Jim Barnett, who was a consultant to Vince McMahon at the time of his death in 2004. No one else represented WWE that day, Chris came to show his respects to not only Barnett, but wrestling’s past. I had met Chris a couple of times in recent years, and he struck me as a genuinely nice man. He spoke with me about the history of the business, and he was much more astute than many of his peers when it came to recognizing even the most obscure names and references to the past. He was a student of the game, and a class act. I never knew him well enough to claim him as a friend, but I was impressed when we crossed paths a second time that he remembered me by name, and seemed legitimately happy to speak with me again. Still, I know that I got to share a few moments of his time here on Earth; an opportunity that many would have wanted. However, on a fateful June weekend, the chance for us to speak again ended, when he killed his wife Nancy and his son Daniel, before taking his own life. I don’t know why he did it. None of us ever will. We can all speculate and devise theories, but we will never truly know what went through his mind and heart on that fateful June weekend. Even his closest friends – who are probably now looking back and wondering if they noticed anything that could have prevented this – will never truly understand. Personally, I will never forget Chris for the many entertaining matches he gave me. I will never forget him for talking about wrestling history with me, seeming to not want to change the subject. Still, I will never forgive him for the pain he has caused his family, the Toffolonis, his peers, and his fans. |
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