It's Been Three Years
 

Do you appreciate what he accomplished in Sports Entertainment, or do you think his final actions overshadow it all? Do you think its fair to hold him 100 percent responsible for the tragedy, even though the doctors proved he had brain damage? Do you consider Chris Benoit a cold-blooded murder or someone who did something very evil because of drugs, mental illness, or a brain injury? Should he rest in peace or rot in hell? Discuss...

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Without the autoplay, that has no effect.

Benoit is and always will be one of my favourite, I even have his Hard Knocks video on my hard disk.

I wouldn't say he's a cold blooded murderer, but more of a Crippler or a Rabid Wolverine.

How many Chris Benoits does it take to ruin a perfectly good Bowflex?

One.

Yea 3 years should be plenty of time to forgive child murder

:rofl:

Yep he managed to get Danielsson fired from beyond the grave that's his greatest feat ever.

Is that different from a Tie-flex?

I never fucking said that the passage of three years, or of any amount of time, should necessarily mean it's time for us to "forgive" him.

The problem I have with it all is that the people who take the defensive side would never do that for someone else. If a 30-something man who was a great accountant and had great respect in his field went off the deep end and murdered his wife and child, they wouldn't step up and defend him. They'd probably write him off as a piece of trash just the same. It's just because he was a great wrestler and some fans don't want to let that go.
Great matches apparently mean a lot to some people. Personally, I can't get past it and I don't care if that requires me to disregard his legacy.
The horror and negativity he brought upon wrestling and the people who knew him far outweighs what he brought to the table anyways.

I liked Benoit. Never really LOVED him. I feel sorry for him and pity his family for he did to them. I don't have anything else to say on the matter.

I don't think I've heard of this man. Was he a good wrestler?

We'll never know why Chris Benoit did what he did. Whether the brain damage or the drugs was what made him do it, yet enabled him to seemingly plan the whole thing over a course of a few days what with the text messages, the dogs in the garage and the bibles etc.

If I want to watch a Benoit match, I can watch it on YouTube, I don't need the WWE to acknowledge his existence. As a company, this is probably the right call due to the nature of his and various other wrestling deaths.

Chris Benoit the character entertained a lot of people for a lot of years. I don't really view the person I see in a video as the actual man. But I can understand if people don't have the same perspective.

He knocked 'em dead.

I do think there is discussion to be had about where he was mentally over that weekend, but at the same time I think there's a ridiculous amount of justification and denial from fans.
I don't deny concussions and drug use may have contributed to his actions, but how much does that vindicate him?
It's also not as though he was droning around slobbering on himself. He was making conscious decisions and plans regarding the situation over the course of several days. It's documented that he felt some semblance of realization of what he had done, and chose to continue going further to avoid facing the consequences. It didn't all happen in the heat of the moment. It was certainly cowardly.
It's very disturbing.

It's also unlikely that a thirty-something accountant would have accumulated enough concussions to have the mental capacity of an 80 year old with dementia. He killed his family, there's no denying that at this point. However, I don't think of him as a murderer because I don't believe he was capable of judgement at that point. I think without the suicide, he would have been found "Not guilty by reason of insanity" and put into an institution.

I don't think that would have happened. Getting that ruling is incredibly difficult in the real life legal system. He would have never have gotten it considering he had committed the murders on seperate days, lied to his place of employment to explain his whereabouts, and prepared the house for the authorities to arrive.
There's no way he'd have held up as a man who wasn't in control of his actions. Especially considering the nature of his crimes, which a jury would be extremely unlikely to overlook.

He seemingly had the mental faculties to be able to text from two separate phones to advise two people that he'd left his dogs in a specific location at his house. Earlier that weekend, he told a bunch of lies to get out of a house show.

There was also a big gap between Nancy and Daniel's deaths. He sedated his son so he would not be aware. He left bibles out. He planned and successfully hung himself.

Doesn't strike me as someone incapable of judgement.

i still watch his matches. i'm also one of those conspiracy theorists about this, so i've got my own thoughts...

Yes, I do think that the question of how the WWE seemingly knew 2 hours before the police about Nancy's death has never been fully explained.

It's been 18 years.

"Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers (February 20, 1921 - June 26, 1992)

Whether or not a man in another line of work would have such brain damage is irrelevant to what I'm saying.
The point still remains that people are quick to defend him based on their opinion of him as a performer, and would not offer the same support to others guilty of the same crimes.

As for the injuries, they are the unfortunate result of an industry that was irresponsible and dangerous. This is not exclusive to wrestling, however. Concussion related illness runs rampant in professional sports as well.
There are other ways to recieve brain damage. The point still remains that people aren't calling in these factors to clear the name of random murderers.
I'm sure someone killed their wife and kid today. I bet they even had a history of brain damage too. If they wrestled more 5 star matches, would they be more deserving of understanding?

Judgement is different than cognative abilities. Like someone said, he was walking around drooling all over himself, but I don't believe he knew right from wrong.

If you drink and you drive, you're still responsible for your state if you run someone over. To some similar extent, one has to hold benoit to some fault for his own condition. However, as the effects of drinking and driving are more immediately obvious than those of concussions on killing your family, I have trouble treating him like a murderer.

Benoit's end will probably always overshadow him. Even if you think he was ill, and I do, it doesn't wipe the slate on killing your wife and child. I actually think it's a bit more of a mark on his career that it was his career that left him with a skull full of swiss cheese and a murder-murder suicide to his name.

One school of thought is that, brain damaged or not, there had to be something dark inside of him for him to take it to that level. This wasn't just a quick, heat- of-the-moment thing. He took his time and knew exactly what he was doing.

On the other hand, some would say it's CLEAR that he was not born a murderous bastard. His mind was all fucked up on the drugs he was on, the concussions he had, and the alleged marital problems he and his wife had. He placed a Bible next to them. I'm quite sure that was after he killed them. Why? Remorse, no? Isn't that also why he killed himself?

He did it... for The Rock.

This too. He was still capable of what he did. Not everyone that suffers from dementia or concussion related mental illness goes around offing their family systematically.
It's difficult to sort out the real reasons behind what happened on those days, and where things seperate.

I will probably bow out of this conversation now, because there's not really much more I can offer other than descending into a pissing contest.

i think he decided to off himself then killed his family cause they tried to stop him, he thought the bibles he placed around made it ok though, cuz it is religion or something

I think that's a valid point....... but then again, remember what Syxx said? That no one told Benoit to take whatever stuff he was taking and no one told him to wrestle the way he wrestled?

Since the context of those texts was released and we could see he basically repeated the same information over and over, it might be worth pointing out. Since none of that information was more than basic, that might be an important piece, too.

Since mental illness doesn't stop one from being able to selectively rationalise, that might be important. Being able to judge right from wrong is not the same as being able to carry out a thought process like "weights are heavy. I can use heavy weights to kill myself." The level of "planning" involved here is kind of exaggerated by calling it planning.

I'm not saying I'm any less of a layman than you, but you're certainly demonstrating prejudice in your presentation of the facts and applying it to come to a very prejudicial end.

I just listened to a Podcast today and this came up. They said that there was word that Benoit was upset that Daniel had his condition and that's why he decided to kill him.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

HUH???? :|

The judgement of right and wrong may have contributed to the desire to place bibles, lie to his place of work, and kill himself though.

Depends on how you look it.

Clearly, he knew right enough from wrong to want to end his son's life in such a way that would cause him the least pain. Put his dogs in a safe place and ask his friends to come and get them. In my lowly opinion, I'd say a nutjob would simply of taken a shotgun to them both then himself.

If you ask me, Benoit, in a rage caused by drugs, brain damage and marital problems killed his wife in a violent manner. Then, racked by guilt and the thought of a disabled son growing upw ithout a mother and father ended his life as mentioned above. He then ended his own life as planned.

As much as I want to think that Benoit was not in control, I think he was to an extent - whether that makes him evil is up to other people to decide.

That would certainly support the theory about Benoit having mental issues, wouldn't it? He was upset that his son wasn't well, so he killed him?

Absolutely.

Yes, because the human mind is so well understood and the correlation between concussion and murder is so strong.

More of a theory than anything else. It's difficult to have any type of theory about this without taking a prejudicial view one way or the other when presenting facts possibly overblown by media intrusion.

No-one has come up with any definitive answer in 3 years on the subject. I doubt anyone here will get any closer.