Benoit Tragedy

I was having trouble Blogging as much as once a week about wrestling, but I'm going to give it another shot, mainly because I wanted to put my own thoughts out there on this Chris Benoit tragedy. Here we are only a week later and it seems as though the mainstream media has already started to move on. ESPN.com has some articles up on it, but there was no mention on this week's Sports Reporters and the stories on Nancy Grace and The O'Reilly Factor have started to become less frequent. So now it's starting to become less of a national story and more of a wrestling story. Anyway, here's my take. Could steroids be the leading factor? Most definitely, but is there also a good chance that these were just the actions of a disturbed man? This was obviously a dysfunctional marriage which had at least one previous incident of domestic abuse, and that sort of relationship would not be helped by having to take care of a child with a serious disability. Even with all these facts, the mainstream media has tried to paint this as a "'Roid Rage" incident. I don;t necessarily blame them, given the history of the WWE and wrestlers in general dying young and having serious drug issues in the past. I understand that people are looking for answers as to why would anyone kill their own innocent seven year-old child, but the sad truth is that there never really are any answers when a child dies. There are many reasons and factors that don;t necessarily make sense, but the root is that there was a very disturbed and sick individual committing the act. His drug use and possible head injuries from his years in the ring may have contributed, and we'll never know to what degree, but ultimately Chris Benoit has to take the blame for this, and no one else.

I don;t really mind all the questions being asked about steroids and the attacks on WWE, many of these are long overdue. But in truth we really can;t say for sure that this is proof of the ineffectiveness of the wellness policy. The wellness policy may actually be doing its job, maybe many of the wrestlers have cleaned up their acts. We don;t really know , although based on the size of these guys and the fact that Benoit still had active prescriptions for steroids tells me that the policy is at least somewhat flawed.

This story isn;t over, there is still plenty of fall out, but my guess is that in another month it will be business as usual in the WWE. Vince McMahon will be as insulated as ever, he'll do things his way, he'll run angles that might be seen as "in bad taste." And maybe that's the way it should be, if the Owen Hart incident didn;t change him, and Eddy Guerrero's death was handled for profit the way it was, I can;t imagine this incident would change anything.

-SEF