Benoit by Steven Johnson

Author:Steven Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO053000
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2007-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Steroids and a variety of prescription drugs were found in the Benoit home after the murders, and Georgia’s chief medical examiner later determined that the wrestler’s body contained ten times the normal levels of testosterone when he died. Benoit was full of steroids when he committed the murders. But despite all the hysteria about “roid rage” heard in the media, the medical examiner said there was not sufficient proof that his actions were the result of an uncontrollable fury. In fact, there was much about the incident that indicated deliberation, not rage. Still, years of steroid and prescription drug abuse may well have played a part in Benoit’s personal descent.

Even before the medical examiner’s findings, Bruce Hart condemned Benoit in the media calling him a “delusional juice freak” and adding: “The last time I saw him he was in pretty rough shape mentally.”7

Meanwhile, in a disturbing coincidence, news circulated around Calgary that Benoit’s former Stampede tag team partner Biff Wellington, born Shayne Bower, had died at the age of forty-four, around the same time as his former friend. His heart failure was attributed to years of drug abuse.

Looking back at the Stampede crew during Benoit’s days in the promotion, former heel manager Milad Elzein was dismayed to report that “of the fourteen guys we used to travel with . . . eight of them are dead right now.” And while a few of those deaths—like Owen Hart and “Bad News” Allen—were unrelated to routine steroid and drug abuse, so many of them could be linked to those landmines, including “Lethal” Larry Cameron, Davey Boy, and Brian Pillman. The phenomenon was by no means exclusive to Stampede Wrestling. Since 1999, a long list of major stars of the industry have died similar deaths, several of them Benoit’s friends.

It’s not difficult to understand how so many wrestlers became drug dependent. Considering the severity of the neck injury that almost ended his career in 2001, one has to guess that Benoit wrestled in an enormous amount of agony. When asked about the injury in 2004 he replied: “Me being who I am, I thought ‘I’m going to work through this,’ I just kept pushing myself and it just kept getting worse and inevitably, I was in chronic pain. I had to accept the fact that I was injured, which was hard. . . . There’s a lot of pride that goes into what we do and a lot of wrestlers have that mentality. We’re on the road year round, and it’s hard to step back and say ‘Hey, look, I need some time off .’ . . . I grew up as a kid watching Stampede Wrestling and wanting to become this and now that I am, I feel very gifted. I feel blessed to have this opportunity, and I never want to take advantage of it.”

In hindsight, those words seem so telling now. That he was also reportedly paranoid about his position in WWE brings us an even greater understanding as to

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