Reddick: Benoit, Steroids & the Media
Redd ponders the mainstream media’s fascination with the Benoit’s tragedy.
“What you spend years building,
someone could destroy over night.
Build anyway” - Mother Teresa
“You must be the change you want to see
in the world” - Mahatma Ghandi
This is where I’d usually throw in some comment about putting off writing my next piece, but to be honest, I’ve been spending the last week mulling over the whole Benoit situation. When I first heard about it last Monday evening, I had a serious problem processing the information; not so much due to denial, but the fact that there were parts of the initial story that didn’t make sense to me. The very first thing to stick out was the time of deaths for each individual and the fact that the media were saying it was ‘roid rage. That didn’t fly with me for two good reasons - one, ‘roid rage lasts for roughly 5 minutes, which was entirely too short a time frame for Benoit or anyone else to do what had happened, which was too thought out to execute on impulse. second, the authorities found ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ with the condition of the house. This was ‘roid rage, they said, so why wasn’t the house in something other than pristine when they found it? Maybe because like the authenticity of wrestling, everything wasn’t all it seemed to be. I could go into theories here, but I’ll just stick to the fact that I disagree with the nature of death with the Benoit family.
Let’s look at another angle of the situation for a moment; what was Benoit’s motive if he did kill his family? It’s easy to say it was domestic since he and Nancy did have some personal issues, but who doesn’t? At first I thought they made a big deal of it because it just happened to be a mainstream wrestler rather than Joe Average, but wait a minute, it was Chris Benoit! Now the average person that doesn’t follow the sport of pro wrestling wouldn’t know Benoit from Adam, so why would the media bother with this story other than ratings? The steroid issue. Problem there is this, even if Benoit used them, you’re looking at a man who has been in the wrestling game for about 25 years, and just recently tested negative for anabolics, now all of sudden he has the stigma of a ‘roided up musclehead painted on him? You’d have a hard time convincing the people closest to him of that description, especially if he wasn’t like that at all.
But why ‘roid rage? Because it’s easier that way. Other wrestlers died as a result of culminating effects of steroids and other illegal substances over the years, so Benoit gets added to the list, end of story right? Hardly. The only thing they got right here was the age range (Benoit was 40), especially when you consider that he was hung to death in his gym as opposed to having organs getting fried. But why ‘roids? Because the mainstream needed a scapegoat to pin steroid abuse on and using Barry Bonds wasn’t working, so they resorted to usual suspect - pro wrestling. Any other time it’s not a valid sport because the outcome can be predetermined (like that’s never happened in any other sport before), but now Benoit’s death was the last straw…
Wait a second, there were 2 other people involved, were they not? I haven’t heard anyone say a thing about Nancy Benoit. Last a I checked, she was in wrestling about as long a Benoit has been in. Most people may remember Woman, but I remember the Dirty White Girl and the Fallen Angel, Nancy’s respective stints working in the Mid-South with Tony Anthony and in Florida with her ex-husband Kevin Sullivan. Desite not being active anymore, she understood the business very well, especially her husbands schedule. Granted they almost had a fallout (she petitioned for a divorce which she later withdrew) She still supported Chris, who had even cut down his schedule to spend time with his wife and son Daniel, so what’s wrong with this picture?
The only reason I won’t mention Daniel is because you all get the point by now; there’s enough holes in this story to make swiss cheese. Now the question is what do we do about it? I just read a column by the Daily News’ Michael Smerconish, who had interviewed the Living Legend Bruno Sammartino, who had left the business out of disgust because of what it had turned into. No one was listening at that point to what he was saying about the sex being promoted (now you have the Divas) or more importantly, the deaths of all these younger wrestlers who “keep dying, keep dying and keep dying, and no one is paying attention” says the former WWWF champion. He even said that there was a joke in the 80’s that “if you tested negative for steroids back then, you were fired”. What does that tell you? On one hand, you have the mainstream press attempting to make Benoit a poster boy for the evils of anabolics while at the same time making him a monster for allegedly murdering his family as a result of it (the tox reports have yet to come back, they can’t take that long and I used to work in an E.R) On the other hand, a lot of wrestlers that I and many others grew up watching are dying off at an alarming rate and most of them aren’t living past 40. Something needs to be done. Something needed to be done a long time ago. It’s up to the rest of us to determine what direction this game is going to and there’s no denying the resonating effect that the Benoit family’s death or any other wrestler’s death has at this point…
– Redd
7/6/07
shaka57@hotmail.com
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