Venti
Unicron
Posts: 2,994
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Post by Venti on Jun 24, 2019 21:44:12 GMT -5
Just remembered that today is June 24th, meaning 12 years have passed since the Benoit tragedy, and it was a huge punch in the gut remembering that.
I cannot believe it has been that long.
Where were you when you heard the news?
I, just like many others, turned on the TV with my family to watch Raw and was greeted by the graphic, along with 3 hours of the most uncomfortable tribute show in hindsight. I was still a kid and didn't somehow get the gravity of the situation.
I hate dwelling on it and debated on making this thread, but sometimes I feel it's a reminder on how far the wrestling business has come.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2019 21:47:33 GMT -5
One of the main things I remember about it - the next day I was in the car and the radio was talking about it, then it played this terrible song.
Then someone called in and he and the DJ were laughing about the timing and chuckling it up about roid rage.
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Post by Fade is a CodyCryBaby on Jun 24, 2019 21:48:06 GMT -5
At a Barnes and noble Starbucks. Got a text from a buddy. “Benoit’s dead” I was like, what?!
I also think of Cody who debuted shortly after the entire fiasco. Like, “hey look at this young good looking blue chipper!..everything’s gonna be alright!”.
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Post by arrogantmodel on Jun 24, 2019 22:12:20 GMT -5
I was dating a girl, and we went out that Monday night. I figured, nothing too exciting is happening, I won't miss anything.
Next day, I get on my computer, and first thing I see is about the "death of WWE star and family." I was thinking somebody was in a car crash or something. Then it says it was in their home, and I thought carbon monoxide.
So I missed the Benoit tribute show and had no idea what had happened, since I wasn't getting ppvs, so I didn't know Benoit no showed. But damn was this insane to hear.
The Benoit murders is definitely wrestling fan's 9/11 and Kennedy assassination. You'll never forget where you were when you heard the news.
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Post by Tiger Millionaire on Jun 24, 2019 22:18:36 GMT -5
That fact that this board made it was a credit to the mods. There were a ton of really awful feelings and angry people in the weeks and months afterwards.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2019 22:19:50 GMT -5
I remember calling an old school buddy, we hadn't chatted in months for one reason or another, and we just talked about it for several hours as details emerged.
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Post by ben:friendship frog on Jun 24, 2019 22:25:01 GMT -5
Someone on MSN Messenger (remember that?) told me to look at WWE.com
"Benoit Family Found Dead" I believe the headline was. Keep in mind this was during the time when Vince was blown up in a limo and you had detectives as characters on TV and ongoing "whodunit?" as the main storyline. My immediate thought was it was the next step in that storyline..
When it was said that RAW would be a tribute show for him and Vince himself was there, my mind went to a home invasion or a terrible accident of some kind.
Not once did I ever think that it was what it turned out to be.
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the2ndevil
Grimlock
Super Seducer Survivor
Where Is Your Santa, Now?
Posts: 13,629
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Post by the2ndevil on Jun 24, 2019 22:32:17 GMT -5
This event, coupled with Eddie’s death severely damaged my desire to watch wrestling for a long, long time.
Even now, I don’t think I ever truly regained the spark I lost at this time.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2019 22:33:24 GMT -5
I don’t remember exactly when I found out, but I was home alone while my parents were on vacation, and while I was watching the tribute Raw my electricity just completely shut down and didn’t come back on. So I had to go over and spend the night at my sister’s house for the first and only time, and I just remember not getting any sleep at all that night. A combination of thinking about the tragedy, sleeping on an air mattress, and having a really uneasy feeling. The power shutting down during such a dramatic time just had me completely on edge. So the next day they’ve got the TV on CNN for whatever reason, and I see the actual story developing.
I’ve never felt those feelings again. Just the most uneasy, uncomfortable feeling I’ve ever felt.
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nisidhe
Hank Scorpio
O Superman....O judge....O Mom and Dad....
Posts: 5,719
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Post by nisidhe on Jun 24, 2019 22:46:21 GMT -5
I've reached the point at which I've stopped questioning why it happened or what might have been. I have a hard time conceiving of a different series of events which would have ended up with the same result.
Benoit's actions, while certainly horrific, had some of the most edifying consequences imaginable. It was the murder-suicide that blew the lid off the concussion studies and catalyzed the snowball that forced professional sports to take a good, hard look at its response to CTE. It even brought attention to a study of Toronto's homeless population which suggested that 50% of that city's homeless suffered from some measure of brain injury. It shook pro wrestling to its core, but the changes that emerged came from the bleachers and the locker room, not the board room. More and more, wrestlers started thinking about their work/life balance and what awaited them at the end of their careers; fans lost a lot of their collective stomach for the ultra-violent movesets and spots that risked significant injury; size ceased to be a hard requirement for entry into the profession. While more would die after Benoit, those deaths were fewer and farther between, and the contagion of mourning that has been seeping into the subculture dissipated seemingly overnight.
It was a dark and challenging time, but wrestling emerged from it more resilient and healthier than ever, I think.
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Post by "Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik on Jun 24, 2019 23:04:56 GMT -5
It's honestly shocking in hindsight that they did a tribute show for him. In that situation where foul play has to be on your mind, you gotta at least assume there's a possibility something happened. And if he wasn't the culprit, you would know by the next day. I literally remember changing the channel from RAW crying over his death and immediately seeing headlines on CNN that he killed his family. It was surreal.
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MiLB Fan
Fry's dog Seymour
Posts: 20,375
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Post by MiLB Fan on Jun 24, 2019 23:53:26 GMT -5
I remember checking PWInsider that morning for Vengeance results, and there was a small note that Benoit missed the show because of a “family emergency.” At that point I didn’t think much of it other than “gee, hope everything’s okay.”
The next time I accessed the Internet was shortly before Raw started. As this was supposed to be the Mr. McMahon tribute show, I was all set to kick off my night of posting with a joke about which of these would dominate the show: Vengeance recaps or McMahon tribute segments. For some reason I decided to make a quick visit to WWE’s website, and that’s where I saw the headline:
“BENOIT FAMILY FOUND DEAD.”
Now without reading the article—and remember that all the details hadn’t come out yet—I thought maybe there had been some kind of accident, or even that someone had broken into the home and killed the family.
I raced right over here and things were understandably tense. My dad called me during the tribute show to ask if I had heard what happened, and that’s when I found out that the police were treating the case as a murder-suicide.
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Post by RadcapRadsley on Jun 25, 2019 0:04:02 GMT -5
12 years later and Kevin Sullivan still is getting away with a triple murder cover up
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Chiral
Salacious Crumb
Posts: 73,508
Member is Online
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Post by Chiral on Jun 25, 2019 0:05:19 GMT -5
F***ed me up real bad. I remember just turning off WWE and watching Gordon Ramsay instead to get my mind off it.
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chazraps
Wade Wilson
Better have my money when I come-a collect!
Posts: 27,955
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Post by chazraps on Jun 25, 2019 1:08:58 GMT -5
TW: Death
My grandfather fell in his nursing home that morning and landed pelvis/hip first. He was rushed to the hospital and was unresponsive to efforts to communicate with him due to pain and medication. I, my Dad (his son) and my aunt (his daughter) went to the hospital as soon as we heard and stayed next to him the whole day until visiting hours were ending. The only words he said was when a nurse tried to move his leg and he said "NOW CUT THAT OUT!" but while we couldn't exchange words, we were by his side, holding his hands as he still squeezed back.
At one point in the afternoon I stepped out to the bathroom. I turned my phone on (this was pre-airplane mode/pre-smartphone and phones weren't allowed in hospital rooms) and during that window my buddy patrick called to tell me benoit and his family were found dead. No cause of death was given, and my mind went to a carbon monoxide leak, not even thinking murder/suicide could be a possibility.
I stepped out of the bathroom, turned the phone off and rejoined my family until we had to leave for the night.
I was home for only 30 minutes of the Raw tribute before we got the call that my grandfather had died. We drove back to the hospital and there was my grandfather looking lifeless and in pain. His eyes shut, his mouth open like he was screaming. His head and neck arched into the air. My whole life I'd been told how at peace people look right after they die, like all their worries and concerns just fade away and they're at peace. This was the complete opposite. It was everything we fear about how sliding into death looks. I really, really wish I hadn't seen it. I thankfully have many happier, brighter, more vivid memories of my grandfather that I think of first when he comes to mind, but this was just so ghastly he was almost unrecognizable.
My phone was off until I got home that night. I didn't want to turn it on. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I put on my livejournal, xanga, and AIM Away Message that my grandfather had just died and I didn't want to talk to anyone for a few days (I used to deal with grief by hardcore withdrawling). I then went to check the wrestling news sites to see if there was a update on Benoit's cause of death and found out all at once that it was being investigated as a homicide, but nobody outside the crime scene was being suspected. I stayed up lurking on these forums and reading every news site I came across to see if there were updates as they slowly poured in a midst speculation. It was, at the very least, a distraction that kept me busy for a while before I really had to begin processing my grandpa's death.
This is the first time I've ever been able to talk about losing my grandfather that day. Thank you for indulging me.
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Nr1Humanoid
Hank Scorpio
Is the #3 humanoid at best.
Posts: 5,477
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Post by Nr1Humanoid on Jun 25, 2019 2:21:10 GMT -5
My brother told me Tuesday morning when he did his daily morning check of the net for news (I did not have a computer at the time).
The truth was out and I found it hard to belive. I even entertained the poor Sullivan bullshit.
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Post by thechase on Jun 25, 2019 3:30:48 GMT -5
Between this and Spider-Man's One More Day, 2007 was not kind to me
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4real
Wade Wilson
Posts: 27,652
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Post by 4real on Jun 25, 2019 4:14:05 GMT -5
Benoit was my favourite wrestler so it took me a long time to get over it.
Heard it being announced at work on the radio (Radio 1 if I remember rightly) about 3 hours before my shift was due to end and after that that was all I could think about. This was before I could drive so it took me an hour to get home and before I had a phone that could access the internet. Got home, had a read through on this board and even saw it mentioned on Sky Sports News. Don’t know if it made our national news or not. Probably.
That evening I had a driving lesson and it went terribly and I burst into tears and probably shouldn’t have had the lesson. 9 days later I passed my driving test at the 9th attempt. If anything good came out of Benoit’s death for me it was it caused me to have a driving lesson so bad I burst into tears and by the time the test came around I was fully focused and ready.
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Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
Posts: 28,896
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Post by Sephiroth on Jun 25, 2019 4:55:47 GMT -5
I remember reading this board in the midst of the tribute show on RAW, when the news broke that it had been ruled a double murder/suicide. Man, you could feel the air go right out the room.
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Post by Limity (BLM) on Jun 25, 2019 5:02:11 GMT -5
I remember reading this board in the midst of the tribute show on RAW, when the news broke that it had been ruled a double murder/suicide. Man, you could feel the air go right out the room. I had just come back from driving my grandma down to my grandpa's funeral. We settled in and I turned on RAW and was confused as to why they were showing the WM20 main event.
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