Chris Benoit: 1 Year Later. Why it hurts, and why the mainstream media stopped covering it, and how the internet shaped what we know about it.
Recently the HBO program “Costas Now” had a 4-part roundtable discussion on sports media. There were programs on Sports Talk Radio, Sports TV, Sports Journalism, Race and Sports, and the internet. However, all anyone remembers is the internet because of one man: Buzz Bissinger and his self-immolation in the segment flanked by Deadspin founder and seeming eternal frat boy Will Leitch and an utterly confused Braylon Edwards of the Cleveland Browns. His point, near as it could be determined underneath a haze of profanity and disagreement, was that the internet is populated by-and-large with people ill informed about the concept, much less the principles, of strong journalism. I will leave it up to you to decide if that is the case with this blog. However, as I heard him, and recently read an interview on friend of this blog The Starting Five, I am reminded that the “old media” which Buzz is a part of clearly knew nothing of what they were talking about when it came to a case. In fact, it could be argued that without a blog, and more than one, that what we know about this case would be far less than now. The case I am speaking of is Chris Benoit.
First, for those of you who come to this blog having no clue as to who Chris Benoit is or what he represented, I will try to sum it up. Simply put… Chris was the wrestling fan’s wrestler. He had busted his tail in Canada, and Japan, and Europe to be thought of as the best wrestler that he could be. In many ways his aggressive style was the template upon which an entire generation of junior heavyweights based their work. He was the bright shining light for fans of WRESTLING, not sports entertainment, throughout the 90’s and up until his death. His was a legacy of brilliance up until the last time we saw him alive.
The way his life ended, and the way he ended the life of his wife and his son, hurts because we never believed this to be from him. Admittedly, we never believed it to be from anyone, but especially not him. Not when all you heard was about how nice of a man he was, how sweet, how caring to his child. And when he had seen his best friend die in just the same way, and wept openly on a live tribute along with us, we assumed he would calm down… that he would be the guy we could say we grew old watching.
But this is not intended to be an elegy. Rather it is a reminder of what he was on the day before his death, and what he became the day after. You see on his day after… Chris Benoit was a monster, a tragedy, and the best case for increased vigilance about concussions. All depending on whom you believed. But do you know who knew nothing? The mainstream media. Buzz Bissinger’s media to be exact.
Nancy Grace, who before this episode was perhaps best known for knowing nothing and driving a woman to suicide, believed Chris Benoit was demoted from the 4 Horsemen to Raw, and that his death was due to steroids exclusively. NBC’s Today Show allowed Vince McMahon to go on their air that By contrast…. The Wrestling Observer, a newsletter run by the estimable and highly qualified Dave Meltzer, had already sniffed out that this was a murder-suicide by the time of the west coast rerun of Raw and within 72 hours had found out that he had a high amount of concussions, enough so that his brain was like a 90-year-old dementia patient.
But even the internet gave up… because after a time there was nothing new to say. No survivors existed, and the WWE excised Chris Benoit from its entire history. So what do you do when there is nothing left to report? You move on.
And that’s what I am going to do. Move on. See you guys around next time.
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