It has been around a week now since the tragic story broke of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit and his apparent murder-suicide, but things are still unexplained. Sure, there are the obvious reasons that this may have happened; steroids, prescription pain medicine, and anti-depressants, but the mystery is that nobody saw it coming. I was never a real big fan of Benoit. I watched wrestling during the peak years of both the WWE and WCW, around my sophomore/junior year of high school. During that time, I enjoyed watching Stone Cold Steve Austin, The NWO (Hollywood Hogan, Scott Hall, Big Show, Macho Man, Sting), Goldberg, and other outlandish characters. Chris Benoit was always an average guy with no real flamboyance or distinct personality. He usually just strutted down the ramp looking pissed off, held a scowl on his face through the entire match, and wrestled his way to a boring win. He was simply vanilla, although visibly swoll.
When I first heard of this tragic story, it interested me greatly. Although I would have never made a neon sign to support him (or for anyone else for that matter), Benoit was still someone I knew from my days of watching Monday night Nitro/Raw. I read of him strangling his wife, suffocating his kid, and putting down a bible next to them as he committed his own suicide. A few days later I read that this didn't all happen in a matter of minutes like most murder/suicides, but that this horror scene took place over the span of a weekend. I learned that he tied up his wife and used his trademark choke hold to kill his son. I couldn't do anything but wonder why. How could a dad end the life of the son that adored him, the child who still had posters of his dad all over his room and a fake championship wrestling belt on his dresser? Why?
Initially, I knew that they would find steroids. In fact, every time I watch wrestling my eyes help my brain understand that more than 75% of wrestlers probably do them. I'm not naive. I understand that this is an industry where wrestlers can't afford to lose their edge, that men who would otherwise be body builders do whatever they can to gain as much muscle mass as possible.
Watch a wrestling event and tell me that this doesn't happen. Sure, it's not public, but neither was the "alleged" steroid era in baseball. It wasn't until Jose Canseco blew the whistle on Major League baseball that people, including Congress, started to take it seriously. And it should be the same with wrestling, but I'm afraid it won't be.
Vince McMahon has already been on trial for possessing and distributing steroids. Of course, he was found not guilty, but then again, so was OJ Simpson. I'm not real sure what the testing regulations for the WWE are, but if I were to assume that it is an in house operation with little external oversight then I might also assume that testing procedures and reporting are particularly subjective. Not to mention, if steroids are prescribed by a doctor for any reasons then a test for them will be returned negative. You think an organization like this doesn't have connections to doctors who are willing to prescribe such medications for "ailments" such as "back pain"?
McMahon is an entrepreneur. He loves his product. He understands that in building his product he will need to comprise the most fit, muscled up athletes possible. I have a hard time believing that he hasn't set up any loopholes for athletes within his organization. In fact, many wrestlers have died from a complicated use of steroids and other drugs. And yet, the United States Congress is more concerned about former (and a few current) baseball players that might have used HGH/steroids in the past.
Sure, seventy three home runs by Barry Bonds broke baseball's single season home run record and, yes, Barry Bonds is one of the men mentioned in the steroid scandal of the late 90's/early 00's, but Barry Bonds never killed his wife, son, and himself. He never ended up dead in a hotel room like others who have wrestled in the Organization of World Wrestling. And yet, he is in the national spotlight more than someone who is able to body slam a man weighing over 400 pounds?
I'm not trying to say that I don't understand why Congress looks into the MLB over the WWE. I know why. Major League Baseball is a professional league that is organized by owners and a players union. Just like any other professional league, the revenue and stage that it's on brings a lot of attention to the things that go on within the league. Wrestling, on the other hand, is a privately owned source of entertainment, not particularly organized by unions and such as the major sports are. The spotlight is minimal and a lot can happen without anyone over the age of sixteen knowing about it. It's not on a enormous stage, it's not even on any huge, major networks. And as a result, will probably not grab the attention it deserves on the topic of steroids.
I'm unsure as to why it always takes a tragedy to really look into something. I suppose it's just human nature. In the meantime, there are child aged fans of Chris Benoit who were subjected to horror stories of their favorite hero. As much as that seems to be unfair to those kids, think about the wife and son and how steroids and a combination of other drugs became unfair to the lives that they never got to live.
