RedHanded - Episode 195 - Chris Benoit: The Canadian Crippler

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

In 2007 Chris Benoit was one of the biggest stars of the WWE. And he was known for his almost masochistic dedication to his craft, so when he didn’t show up to work one day his colleagues quickly called the police.  At the Benoit home, officers discovered a nightmarish scene that would change the face of professional wrestling forever... BOOK! Pre-order your RedHanded book here: https://linktr.ee/RedHanded_Book For tonnes of bonus content: patreon.com/redhanded Sources: redhandedpodcast.com    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed, where I don't even really know where to begin with this one. I feel like we've probably got some other stuff to say. We've written a book.

Oh, yeah. Go and buy that. Pre-order the book. Can't forget to say that. Yeah, we had a big meeting about all of the creative ways we're going to market it, how and where we're going to put it into the episode, and we've done none of it. So, next week. I just realised, as I hit record on my laptop, I was like, oh, whoops.

Forgot to write anything down about what we were going to talk about today about the book. But that doesn't matter. We wrote a book, guys. And next week, from next week, we're going to be telling you a bit more in depth about the content that the book contains, because that was our big plan and we've completely forgotten to do it. For now, all you need to know is it's a book about true crime and it's very well researched and it's kind of funny. So you should go buy it. Pre-order now. It's also the last week of merch. Oh yes. The merch is going. It is going away forever and ever. Amen. It's never coming back. It is your last chance. Yes. If you listen to this Wednesday or Thursday, the merch store is closing this Friday. So Friday the 30th Thursday, the merch store is closing this Friday. So Friday the 30th of April, the store is closing.

You also have like until midnight on Friday the 30th of April to still get your hands on free shipping. That includes free international shipping. There are also discounts on what's left of the mugs. So if you want to get your hands on a red-handed mug and you want free shipping, now is your only chance to do that because the merch store is closing on top of all of that information overload for you go and follow us on instagram at red-handed the pod we're blue ticked now only took us four fucking years but it's happened and if you want to go look at it you want to go

look at that blue tick and maybe some snippets of our faces that we quite regularly post on our Instagram. Go and follow us immediately. You can also follow us on Twitter and join the Facebook group. All of that good stuff is there. So yes, lots of announcements done. Lots of announcements. We know you love them. We know it's the only reason you tune in. All of you will stop listening now and not listen at all to the story we're about to tell you. This one has been kicking around in the request list for quite some time. And we're very excited to be telling you the story of Chris Benoit. And you've all just been fucking gagging for this. To begin telling the story of this tragic case, we have to start by answering the question what is professional wrestling and the amount of people who have quite

aggressively i would add slid into our dms being like if you even think about covering chris bemoir make sure that you absolutely understand what wrestling actually is so we have taken quite a lot of time to we think gain a cursory understanding of the world of professional wrestling have to admit not something i was super involved or aware of. I just knew that boys liked it. That was basically my only exposure to WWE growing up. Yeah, I mean, me and my little brother used to watch it on a Saturday morning, occasionally. Sky One, I think, used to play like WWE. Ah, see, I didn't have Sky, I only had Paul Provision. Yeah, we had it for like a year,

I think, and then it got taken away. So during that year, I'm pretty sure we used to watch WWE and then The Simpsons on Sky every Saturday morning. I don't remember much. I remember The Undertaker. I remember someone called Kane, I think. I remember Kane. I'm almost certain I remember Chris Jericho. Yes, I feel like I remember that name. I remember Ray Mysterio. He was a dude who wore a mask. That's good knowledge. You're caning me with this.

The Rock? When was he doing this thing? Yeah, see, I feel like I remember, I can envisage Dwayne The Rock Johnson before we knew he had a first and or second name, like being part of wrestling. I remember that. The Undertaker. I remember The Undertaker. Yeah, I remember him. That is the entire extent of my wrestling knowledge is just randomly listing five or so WWE wrestlers from about 20 years ago. So, you know, top knowledge.

Yeah, well done. You've done very well there. And listeners at home, maybe you are a professional wrestling expert. Maybe you are even a professional wrestler yourself. We know we have some. But perhaps you've been in many a lively debate about whether wrestling is real or fake. Is it a sport or is it just acting? Also, maybe you haven't, but we're pretty sure that this idea of whether wrestling is real or not may have crossed your mind, even for the briefest of moments. What we should do first off is distinguish the difference between amateur wrestling and professional wrestling. And the basic idea of what wrestling is, is, please step into Hannah's Classics Corner, wrestling is two people engaged in physical combat and its roots are ancient.

As you probably already know, it dates back to ancient Greece. Now we call that freestyle wrestling, apparently. Did you know, this is pretty graphic, Hannah's Classics Corner. I can't remember whether it was the Greeks or the Romans, but obviously they used to compete naked and they used to tie string around their foreskins so the heads of their penis would not be exposed as they were wrestling and or competing in other sports

because it was deemed as being the most embarrassing thing that could possibly happen to you. Well, that just seems sensible. Yeah, I don't know how or why I picked up that bit of knowledge, but I'm 90% sure it's true. Well, it's there now and now everyone knows it. Yeah, exactly. So the Roman Empire adopted freestyle wrestling, like they adopted literally everything about the Greeks, including religion. And they placed a particular emphasis on brute strength. And that resulted in the type of wrestling known as Greco-Roman wrestling. Both freestyle wrestling and Greco-Roman

wrestling are internationally practiced to this very day in the Olympic Games. There are also a few other types kicking around, something called pancration. Is that how we're going to say that? Nobody knows. Pancration? Pancration, which apparently started at the Greek Olympic Games as far back as 648 BC. However, our case today is all about the world of professional wrestling, in which there is a predetermined winner, storylines, characters, writers, theatrics, choreography, gymnastics, and quite a lot of pageantry. And as we said, the winner is predetermined by script writers, so the outcomes are not dictated by the wrestler's skills. Each match is carefully

choreographed and rehearsed. But does that mean that professional wrestling, as we understand it, is fake? I suppose it depends what you mean by fake. Because all we really mean by fake, I guess, as far as this case is concerned, is that because everything is predetermined, because it is more, you know, choreographed and rehearsed, wrestling is not a sport per se. It is what wrestling promoters dub as quote-unquote sports entertainment. And maybe this feels like a very pernickety thing to point out, but no, no, no. This becomes very important later. So remember that because we will be coming back to it. And I think another thing that's really important to say is that wrestlers certainly aren't trying to injure and beat up one another, but it needs to look like they are.

I guess we can think of them as like thespian gymnasts, acting dancers, you know, like a ballet. Yeah, rhythmic gymnastics is one of the most weird things to watch, second only to synchronized swimming, I think. Rhythmic gymnastics blows my mind. Like, why is ribbon tossing a sport? I'm sure it's very difficult. As long as there is an audience for it. True, true. We can keep doing it. Capitalism. Let's do it. I love it. I'm here for it. So pro wrestling is kind of like, I guess, an action movie. We know that Jason Statham doesn't really jump out of a burning car going 100 miles an hour, but it looked like he did. And that was fun, and that was entertaining.

But the thing is, although Jason Statham didn't do it, a stunt person most likely did do it and did jump out of a burning car at 100 miles an hour for that particular movie scene. So most wrestlers I guess we can think of as kind of being like stuntmen. They're also incredible athletes. And those bodies come on like fucking hell. They must train every single day like maniacs in order to maintain those unbelievable physiques. I mean, just look at Dwayne The Rock Johnson. Look at him. Look at him. And then we can also stop looking at him and talk about something else.

I don't think I can. I don't think I can. Love him. I think that's the thing. It's like, you know, it's not like they're not training. No. They are doing things

that are incredibly difficult. It's like how ballet dancers are incredibly, like incredibly hardcore and super, super, super strong. And I think that's what we can think it and ballet is not a sport exactly but I guess here it's like we'll go on to discover there's like I said we will come back to the whole idea of like why it's not deemed a sport it's part of

the politics of wrestling as to why it's not deemed a sport but we'll come back to that yeah yeah so really like we said these wrestlers they train incredibly hard and they also practice their moves for years in order to be able to execute them safely whilst at the same time still ensuring that they look incredibly dangerous because that's what the public want to see that's that like fine line they have to tread and the thing is while we say is it fake or not, there is definitely nothing fake about jumping 20 feet through the air from the top rope and slamming onto an uncushioned ring floor or getting hit on the head or even in the back with a steel chair for that matter. So how demanding physically wrestling is, is not fake. It's fake in that

they're not actually trying to cause physical harm to each other. It's all choreographed, it's all rehearsed, they already know who's going to win. It's not a true competition, like it's not like based on merit. Exactly. I think that's why you can kind of think of it as like a dance. You know, there's a storyline, they're doing their thing, but they're working incredibly hard for it. But this brings us to the darker side of the pro wrestling industry. Hearing about a pro wrestler dying has kind of become commonplace. In fact, a study in 2014 found that pro wrestlers had a mortality rate of 2.9 times that of the average American man.

It's not great, is it? That's mad. They're dying at three times the rate of a normal man. Can confirm. That is statistically extremely bad. Yeah. If it was any other, like, group of people, we would be like, that seems fucking crazy.

And like, maybe somebody needs to take a look at this. Yeah. And actually, go and pause this very podcast to take a look at this yeah and actually go and pause this very podcast and do a quick google search or if you're feeling fancy and ambidextrous and multitasking just google it i believe in you you can do two things at once just google list of premature professional wrestling deaths and go to the wikipedia page with that very title and watch your jaw hit the floor as you see the mammoth list of men and women, many of whom died before the age of 40 in the most tragic circumstances,

directly or indirectly sometimes, as a result of their pro wrestling careers. It is unbelievable. Based on the data collected on the deaths of over a thousand professional wrestlers, around 30% of them died from cardiovascular-related diseases. A massive 10% died in the ring or after a match. And around 5% of them died from suicide. And the average age of a wrestler at death is about 60 years old. So they're not getting a fair crack of the lifespan whip.

No. 60 years? My God, that is horrific. And, you know, we looked at this list, obviously, of deaths. It just keeps going and going and going. I was like, how far am I scrolling down before this list ends, the Wikipedia list that Hannah was just talking about? And on there, some of the deaths,

when you read them, you're like, that is horrific. There was one particular wrestler whose cause of death, they had just written starvation from depression. Oh, my God. I was like, what the fuck? This is absolutely miserable. Actually, on a similar like ballet note, like one of the things I feel quite strongly about ballet, it's like the human body is not supposed to do that. Like, it's just not. We're not built for it.

And we're not built for professional wrestling either, as evidenced by the enormous amount of people it kills. So there are a number of factors that contribute to these untimely deaths. Two big ones are the fact that pro wrestling has no off-season. So they're, you know, buzzfeeding themselves to the absolute extreme. Absolutely. Wrestlers can be in the ring five to six times a week all year round. Whilst if we take a look at American Hand Egg, for example,

players will play like 16 games a year and then they get half the rest of the year off to like train and like hang out. And I think this is one of the key things that we'll sort of touch upon in this episode is the level of exploitation within this industry towards these performers. Because yeah, like you said, when you look at something like American football, we see so many head injuries in that. I mean, the classic case of like Aaron Hernandez, we also spoke about the most recent case of a man named Brian Phillips Adams, who just took a gun and went and shot a bunch of people in a FedEx, killing like five or six of them. And when they did the autopsy, they're like major CTE.

And that's with a player who was playing American football with off-seasons. Imagine the damage being done to professional wrestlers when they don't get any time off at all whatsoever. I think it's a possible offshoot is the wrong word, a consequence of it not being seen as a proper sport. So like they're not athletes, they're actors and they don't need therefore the time off, which is obviously total bullshit. But I can see that being argued. That's very true. And you will also go on to see the whole reason it's not called a sport is again for the further exploitation of these performers.

If you are interested in listening to our deep dive into the case of Brian Philip Adams, who did go on that shooting rampage, come sign up to be a patron. All $5 and up patrons. We do a monthly segment called In the News where we talk about those more topical cases. It's just really uncanny that the two are very closely linked and in the Carolinas as well. Interesting. Another major contributing factor to premature deaths in the wrestling industry is rampant drug and steroid use that has plagued the industry throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s and a lot of people claim even still today. Wrestler deaths are so common that nobody batted an eyelid when they happen but there was one wrestler's death in particular that took place just 13 years ago

that a lot of you will know about whether you're a wrestling fan or a true crime fan or not. And of course, we are talking about none other than the death of Chris Benoit, a.k.a. the Canadian Crippler, a.k.a. the Rabid Wolverine. I didn't know that wolverines are real animals until relatively recently, which is quite embarrassing for me. A wolverine. I also think a lot of people don't know the Tasmanian devil, I believe, is also a real animal, which is fun. Yes, I knew that one. I also knew a guy who thought giraffes weren't real until he was 18. And then he saw one in a zoo and he cried because they shouldn't be real. Giraffes shouldn't be real. Like they shouldn't.

They really shouldn't be real. Like it looks like a be real. Like, they shouldn't. They really shouldn't be real. Like, it looks like a child drew it. Like, it's, no, I can see why you'd be like, a giraffe, that's not real. That is hilarious. Well, I'm here to fight against the erasure of giraffes in our world, man who didn't believe. Got the highest blood pressure on earth. Yeah, they'd have to, wouldn't they? Got to shoot it up that neck.

Exactly. In 2007, Chris Benoit, one of the biggest stars in WWE at the time, failed to turn up to a pay-per-view event in Texas that he was scheduled to perform at. And as a man who had a reputation as being the hardest-working wrestler in history, this was very unusual. Unable to get hold of him, the WWE actually contacted the police

and requested a welfare check on Benoit. And when officers entered Benoit's home that day, they made a harrowing discovery that would change the face of professional wrestling forever. Now we'll get to what they found very soon. But for now, let's go back to where it all started. Benoit was born on the 21st of May 1967 to Catholic French-Canadian parents in Montreal, Canada. In his early years Benoit was extremely shy and also quite a small child who spent most of his time alone with a book or daydreaming in his room to the point that his parents were actually concerned about his reclusiveness that is until one day at the age

of 12 in 1979 when his dad took benoit to go and watch a live wrestling show in calgary i love that i love the idea that they've just got this very like shy quiet child and they're like right get in the car we're gonna go look at some fucking wrestling in Calgary it's happening get in Chris I don't want to fucking hear it and then they just unleash the beast exactly that is what happened they unleashed the rabid wolverine so at this show among the usual freakish roster of absolute giants with like fucking muscles on their eyeballs performing at the event, there was one wrestler that grabbed the attention of 12-year-old Benoit.

He was shorter than everyone else. He was pale-faced and looked nothing at all like your typical wrestler. In fact, he looked a lot like Benoit. His name was Tim the Dynamite Kid Billington. He was a British-born wrestler who made up for his small stature with his insane athleticism and equally insane near-suicidal stunts in the ring. The Dynamite Kid's signature move was the flying headbutt, in which he would jump off the top rope kamik style, and land headfirst onto a flawed opponent.

This was a move that would have life-changing repercussions for the man who invented it, who's Harley Race, and it would go on to devastate the Dynamite Kid's spine, leaving him wheelchair-bound in his later years. And by later years, we're talking about his late 30s and his 40s. Not like, you know, he doesn't get old, this guy. I mean, not many of them do. No.

And as bad as that might sound, this move would arguably have even worse consequences for Benoit as he got older. But we'll put a pin in that and come back to it later on. You all know where this is going. From the moment 12-year-old Benoit laid eyes on the Dynamite Kid, performing like a lunatic, he decided that then and there he was going to become a professional wrestler and nothing was going to stop him. In 1999, Benoit wrote on his webpage, quote, Ever since I first laid eyes on the Dynamite Kid, I've tried to emulate him. I've tried to look like him, walk like him and talk like him. I started lifting

weights at 13 to try and clone myself after him. Like obviously there are some things going on with young Chris Benoit but like I can't imagine the mindset of someone who watches a grown man torpedo his own skeleton on top of someone else and being like, yes, that is what I want to do. But equally, I've literally just hoisted by my own petard there because I used to look at ballerinas when I was a kid and be like, I want to do that completely superhuman thing. Yeah, I think that's what it is. I think it's that superhuman allure that these wrestlers had, especially for a young Chris Benoit. Watching a man who was like smaller, who was his size, made him feel, I guess, like he could also be powerful.

It so often happens in loads of disciplines, like Darcy Bussell, for example, arguably like the most famous British ballet dancer, certainly now, like in her early career, she was like heavily criticized for looking too muscular. It just wasn't like the style of what dancers were supposed to look like when she was coming up. But now, because of her, everyone looks like Darcy Bustle. And like, I think it's this sort of like underdog thing of like looking slightly different is going to get you a following.

And then in the end, you change the whole trend. Absolutely. That's very much like what happens to Chris Benoit, actually, because there is a two part vice documentary out there. If you've got Sky, it's on there. It's probably quite easy to find elsewhere as well. I'll leave the links to it below, but it's called The Dark Side of the Ring. And it's actually a full-on series. It's like every episode is about a wrestler. Whoa!

I know. I thought it was like a one-off documentary about Chris Benoit called The Dark Side of the Ring. No, there are two seasons with like multiple episodes about other wrestlers. So there just happens to be a two-parter in season two it was didn't even make the fucking season one cut season two there is a two-parter on Chris Benoit and I would really like implore you all to watch it because I felt

like I learned so much during those two hours and one thing in particular was this idea how all wrestlers at the time were giants you had to be like you know six foot plus some of them were like fucking getting on for seven foot because that was the thing that these promoters wanted those are the kind of men they wanted to pull into wrestling because they were going to make the big bucks so Chris Benoit was like really quite short I I think like below average height. And so then when he did manage to break in, there was like a certain appeal to him because of how different he looked and how he was, quote unquote, taking down these giant men. Obviously, it's choreographed, but you know what I mean? It became like another appeal. But let's get back to baby Benoit.

His obsession with Tim the Dynamite Kid was strange to everybody, even the Dynamite Kid himself. He found it quite strange that this little kid was infatuated with him. His wrestling character was the bad guy, like you're not supposed to like him or cheer for him. That was the whole point of him. But Benoit didn't care. He saw his future self in Billington and was happily the only one in the crowd who would cheer for him. That's so funny. Can you imagine? It's like, yeah, I guess like was Undertaker meant to be the bad guy and like no one would cheer for him. He was there to be like Buddha. I guess that's kind of creepy. Maybe it's like now the kids that are actively like, I want to be in Slytherin. And as a parent, are you like, oh, he's cheering for the bad guys.

It's such a kid thing, though, to just be contrary, isn't it? That's true. It's like when my mum was always like, oh, like when I was growing up, like you either like the Beatles or you like the Rolling Stones. There was no in between. Like you couldn't like both. You had to pick a goodie or a baddie. But here's the thing. Tim Billington wasn't just a mythical bad guy. He wasn't just a baddie in the ring.

He was a terrible person in real life too. By all accounts, he was a violent sociopath who never thought twice about assaulting strangers in the street for just glancing at him the wrong way. He himself came from an abusive household and was the last of a long line of bare-knuckle boxers from Wigan in England, where he had learnt to wrestle. Wigan's like, it's Greater Manchester, it's like 40 minutes out from the city centre. So there are countless stories of the dynamite kid hospitalising young boys in fits of rage, drugging people, and get this,

even setting people on fire. What the fuck? Yeah, not good news. Not ideal. Absolutely not. Once he'd even dragged his ex-wife outside and held a shotgun to her head, threatening to kill her. His life of rampant drug abuse and self-destructive wrestling performances caused him to go from a WWE millionaire celebrity

to a wheelchair-bound senile old man living in public housing back in Manchester before the age of 40. That is quite the fall from Grace. Yeah definitely obviously bad guy but that's a sad ending especially when your career has been like I know people weren't specifically cheering for him but like if you're like have a performer's career and like you need to be around people and like get that hype and then it just goes away all very self-inflicted choices it's just the mania of like having had it all and losing it all because you're such a terrible person this is the thing is that the dynamite kid tim billington's life should have looked like a cautionary tale to other young boys,

particularly to 12-year-old Chris Benoit. But instead, this was who Chris Benoit decided to model his life and his career on. He praised Tim Billington like a god until the day he died. At the age of 13, Benoit convinced his parents to buy him a weight set and he began working out like crazy every minute of free time that he had. Now, I don't know, but I feel like 13 is a little bit young to start doing weights. Yeah, yeah. But like maybe it was like a Fisher-Price weight set. Maybe.

Maybe. Maybe it wasn't the real deal. You can pretend. Sure, chris don't worry about it i mean maybe but i feel like everything we've gone to discover about chris benoit is he's not a man of half measures i feel like even at the age of 13 he would be like i don't even know enough about any of this to make a joke or a reference about what type of weight set he wanted a real heavy weight set i feel like he would have wanted a real heavy weight set they're expensive man like even if you want like 5k dumbbells fucking crazy expensive i wanted to build like a prison gym in my old garden of lockdown one

and i was like looking up how they're fucking expensive like even the little like half kilo ones that you see like yummy mummies walking around the park with like they're fucking expensive they really really are and they don't do. Like they're fucking expensive. They really, really are. And they don't do anything if they're that light, women. They don't. Don't bother. So yes, he gets these prepubescent fucking weights that he starts working out with. And when he wasn't working out, the once shy and quiet kid was now talking about wrestling non-stop to anyone who would listen.

By the time he was 16, Benoit was even taking anabolic steroids regularly. And the thing is, if that shocks you, the problem was at the time, so this is like the 80s in America, they weren't exactly hard to get. And that's because at the time, steroids were legal and widely available. And because they'd only really been around for a decade or so at that point, their detrimental side effects weren't very well known or publicized. So I guess we can't really blame him. He's not doing anything illegal. He's doing something that he thinks is fine. And he's like, as we'll go on to see, getting them prescribed by a doctor. So it's not like some sneaky business he's doing. Chris Benoit started off by taking something called Dinobol in pill form, along with anti-anxiety medication, to quote, calm the ensuing

rush. Not great. No. Already very bad. Terrible decisions. Already walking a bit of a tightrope here. He's 16. He's 16. The damage that starts being done to Chris Benoit's body and mind starts very, very early. But before we get on to what happens to him later, let's have a science lesson, which, yeah, obviously not my area of expertise, but it's in my bit of the script. So here we go anabolic steroids are chemical derivatives of testosterone that can help athletes burn fat grow muscles recover from injuries and get stronger it basically means

you have to take less downtime it also means that athletes or whoever's taking them can get stronger in a way that would be impossible without them. However, the side effects are not great, and to name just a few, they include growing breast tissue, like Bob in Fight Club, and explosive bouts of rage, and shrinking testicles in men. It can also make women who take them have enlarged clitorises that look like little penises.

And also, women's voices get way deeper. Scary drugs, basically. Fucking scary shit. Scary. Yeah, just being handed out to fucking teenagers like there's no fucking problem. Also, there is a severely increased likelihood of cardiac arrest issues, seeing as the heart is a muscular organ, which can become enlarged due to steroid use. And this in turn impairs the heart's function. Andid abuse has, in countless cases, led to sudden cardiac death. Whilst Benoit was taking steroids to compensate for his small stature,

what he didn't know, amongst many things, was that adolescent use of anabolic steroids can stunt skeletal growth, literally the opposite of what he wants. It's just like making him more muscly but stunting his actualal growth. Literally the opposite of what he won. It's just like making him more muscly but stunting his actual height growth. So it's likely that if Chris Benoit had never taken anabolic steroids, he may well have grown a few extra inches and he would have achieved a height in adulthood that wouldn't have made him feel so desperately inadequate in the wrestling

world. And it's also possible that had he never dabbled in the steroids, he would not have developed his horrendous addiction. But we don't know that for sure. Maybe he would have stayed the same height regardless. When Chris Benoit turned 18, he went to train at the famous Hart Family Dungeon, run by a guy called Stu Hart, a famous wrestling superstar, who ran Stampede Promotion,

Canada's largest wrestling promotion company. The dungeon was famous for churning out some of the biggest names in the wrestling industry, but it was also known for the borderline sadistic practices that took place there, and it's been described by many as being just like a torture chamber. After graduating from the dungeon, Benoit finally went on to become a professional wrestler for Stampede and spent many years there until it finally went out of business in 1989. But this didn't stop Benoit. After Stampede closed down in Canada, he headed to Japan. And apparently, the Japanese fucking love wrestling. I can totally imagine that. I can

totally imagine that. They go nuts for baseball as well. But wrestling in particular, it ticks all of the Japanese boxes. Absolutely. So here, Chris Benoit began working for New Japan Pro Wrestling as the character, the Pegasus Kid. And this is also where he met fellow wrestler Black Tiger, aka Eddie Guerrero, a man who would become his best friend and have a profound impact on Chris Benoit's life. Benoit made a huge name for himself on the Japanese circuit and became one of the biggest superstars in the company. And in between his tours of Japan, Benoit began wrestling for Extreme Championship Wrestling, or ECW. This was an upstart promotion out of Philadelphia that was known to be one of the more violent promotions out there.

So the ECW was not what you'd let your kids watch, as they were proudly R-rated, glamorising things like violence against women, excess violence for the sake of violence, and near X-rated sexual innuendo. Definitely not something for national TV. Definitely not something for Saturday morning kids viewing. And this is the thing that's like important to say.

The reason that Chris Benoit, you know, he goes off to Japan, he goes and joins this thing called ECW, is because he can't get into WWE because he's not tall enough. That's the reason. They don't want him at this stage. So he's kind of doing the rounds with these other promotions. And if you're in any doubt about just how violent ECW was or their mindset, which I think is incredibly depraved, let me tell you why. Because it was during a match for the ECW in 1994 against a wrestler named sabu that benoit

earned himself the name the canadian crippler the match ended prematurely when benoit messed up a move where he threw sabu into the air and he landed upside down on his head breaking his neck instantly. I like hand to mouth gasped when I read that. It is absolutely horrific. It gets worse though because backstage Benoit was having a complete meltdown because he had just broken a man's neck in the ring. He was absolutely, you know, devastated, according to everyone who was there. But the ECW simply said not to worry. They saw this as an opportunity for more promo, and they decided to emphasize now how cold-blooded Benoit was as the Canadian crippler. And this name remained with Benoit for the entirety of his career. So this is the thing.

Chris Benoit breaks a man's neck. He is having a fucking meltdown about this. And the ECW are like, Naz, fine. We're going to get more viewers this way. We're going to make you the real bad guy. You're going to be the superstar. And that's how they run with it.

Imagine you're made to wear it as a badge of honour for the rest of your career. The Canadian Crippler. It's not just a made-up name. I'm guessing the undertaker wasn't really undertaking people. He actually broke someone's neck. And again, it's worth pointing out that Chris Benoit was devastated by this. But the company were like, that's fucking jokes, mate.

This is going to be great for you. I don't know, fun fact, fact fact fact fact it let's chuck it in anyway Sabu made a full recovery after this neck breaking incident I honestly don't know how how do you recover from having your neck broken like that I don't know but he does and in a later wrestling match he actually broke his jaw got up duct taped it together, and then finished the rest of the show. If that doesn't give you an insight into the mentality of pro wrestlers, nothing will. Like that, just like, I have to finish the show because if I don't, they're going to replace me with somebody else. It is like, zealous isn't the word. I don't know what

the word is. Addicted. I know I keep making the ballet comparison but like at like ballet school like say if you get into the Royal Academy like I knew a girl who got in and that's like the pinnacle right like that's like what you work your whole life to get in and she left because she was like everyone is so terrified of being the weak one in the pack because you don't want to be the first one to get injured girls dance on injuries for months then they can't like get over their injuries like they are just injured and they can no longer be dancers because they hid them it's not wanting to be the limpy gazelle really isn't it and also like on camera in front of a you know a not quiet audience you know yeah it's not

people just like sitting there quietly with their barbells and their white gloves, like just waiting for you to be finished. It's people literally screaming for blood. It's a blood sport. I also think that Formula One is a blood sport. I just zero, zero, zero understanding about what is going on on Formula One. It's just okay. I don't know. It's really boring until there's a massive fire and then someone dies.

Like, it's bloodsport. So, after some years building his reputation, Benoit, along with his best friend Eddie Guerrero, made the move to America to join the World Championship Wrestling, WCW promotion. And it was here that he caught the eye of wrestler Kevin Sullivan, who was also a booker and scriptwriter. Kevin was married to a lady called Nancy Sullivan,

who was what's known as a valet in wrestling, which basically means like a manager who also happens to be an attractive woman who accompanies a male wrestler to his matches. And she went under the name of Woman. Just Woman. Okay, Nancy. She's again featured very heavily in the Vice documentary and also in the rest of this episode.

No spoilers yet, but yeah, fascinating woman, woman. Kevin began writing Benoit into more and more storylines in which Benoit became his arch rival and for reasons unknown, Kevin created the storyline that Benoit had stolen his wife from him. He came to regret this later on when Benoit and Nancy's in-the-ring romance became extremely real and Nancy divorced Kevin for Benoit. And it became a bit of an industry joke that Kevin had written his own divorce, which is embarrassing.

Like, that is an embarrassing thing to have people say about you. It is embarrassing. It's just like, it's so cringe. Again, if you go watch the Vice documentary, they show all of the, you know, they make all of those kind of like shit talking promo reels that they play before the game. They made all of these ones of like Nancy and Chris Benoit hanging out together drinking wine and Chris Benoit is looking at the camera saying, she's with a real man now and all of this. And Nancy's just like looking up him adoringly. And it's all meant to be the act, but then they actually run off together. And they ran off because they were very much in love. And as Benoit's career began to reach new heights, Nancy decided that she wanted

to start a family and began managing him from home. Pretty soon, their son Daniel was born. And then the two got married later the same year in December of 2000. It was around this time that Benoit started to get quite unsatisfied with the way the WCW were running things. He wasn't getting to perform as the main event due to their preference for the bigger seven foot plus wrestlers. And so along with Eddie, he moved to the WWE, the biggest wrestling promotion in the world. And it was here that Benoit and Eddie Guerrero became absolute stars. But it came at a cost. As we mentioned at the top of the show, pro wrestling does not have an off-season.

And even with a growing family, Chris Benoit refused to ever take any time off, fearing that his art would suffer. And in 2001, Benoit suffered a serious neck injury after jumping from the top of a ladder and not quite nailing his landing. He was carried out on a stretcher, but continued to wrestle for the rest of the month after surgery. Oh my God. I mean, it's just so irresponsible, isn't it? Like the idea that if you were, say, a gymnast who would hurt yourself that badly, I don't know, and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like a coach would be like, you can't do it. You can't do it. You need to recover.

Here it's like there's nobody looking out for these wrestlers' welfare, so they're left to make their own decisions, but they're making decisions based on fear for their career suffering. So they're not in the best place to make those decisions. Oh, totally. There is a video of an Olympic gymnast who, I think she's Russian. She might be Romanian. I can't remember. She fucks herself up on like, I think it's on the vault where you get two goes.

And then the first one, she fucks it up and you can tell that she's done something like bad to her leg. And her coach makes her do it again. Oh God. You can see in her face when she lands that she's like, this is it. So, and that was the end of her career. She never recovered. And this thing, I don't want to speak out of turn, like possibly also there is huge amounts of exploitation as well

in other industries for other athletes and performers. I'm just saying here, there is absolutely no one that is there looking out for these people. No one's looking out for them at all. And they will be saying like, OK, you can have the time off, but I can't promise that your storylines will be here when you get back. So after this incident, Chris Benoit was forced to spend a year on the sidelines. And it's believed that it was during this time that he developed an addiction to prescription pain medication.

This is where Benoit and Eddie had the most in common. They both gave their entire lives to their art, literally, but in very different ways. Benoit, unlike his in-ring persona, was still very reserved behind the scenes and didn't have many people to confide in, except for Eddie. During their years in the WWE, the two grew closer than ever. Eddie and Chris became almost like brothers. Whether it was work, family or marriage troubles, the two always supported one another. Eddie had always been very religious, whereas Benoit had never so much as set foot inside a church since his wrestling career had started. That is, except to attend the numerous funerals for his wrestling co-workers, because obviously they were literally dropping like flies around him. But as a testament

to how much influence Eddie had over Benoit, he gifted him a Bible. And from that day on, Benoit carried it with him everywhere he went, no matter what. And this is the thing we'll see between the relationship between Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero. Chris just seems like so, I don't even know what the word is, he's so like easily attaches himself to anything or anyone who's there. That's what I was gonna say. He's got a very dependent personality. Very much so, very much so. And again, if you watch the Vice documentary, you'll see exactly what I mean. There's like a closeness to a relationship and then there is the extreme.

And that is what it feels like, at least from Chris's side, towards Eddie it was. But despite how deeply religious Eddie was, this wasn't enough to save him from his own personal demons. By this point in his career, he had suffered multiple injuries, the kind that surgery couldn't fix. And it didn't help that he refused to ever take any time off. Again, Eddie knew that just being off screen for a few weeks meant that you'd likely be replaced by one of the hundreds of other wrestlers waiting to take your spot. So like countless wrestlers before and after him, Eddie turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with the pain.

He regularly got DUIs and had even overdosed about four times. The third time his wife Vicky found him unconscious, she took their kids and left the house, not helping him, deciding to leave it to God to decide whether he would survive or not. Which sounds pretty savage. I think she was probably a woman at the end of her fucking rope. Yeah.

Eddie did survive, but when he turned up for work one day, high as a kite and unable to perform, the WWE fired him. After that, he went to rehab and recovered. Then he returned for WrestleMania XX, one of the biggest pay-per-view events on cable television in 2004, where he stood alongside Benoit with confetti raining down on them as Benoit won the title. Their families were in the crowd crying with joy as they watched what many consider to be one of the greatest moments in pro wrestling history. Shortly after this, Eddie was on a plane to Minneapolis, sat next to his tag team partner and nephew, Chavo Guevara. Whilst

in the middle of a sentence to Chavo, Eddie dropped his head and suddenly fell asleep. Obviously quite concerned by this, Chavo asked around and found that this had been happening to Eddie quite a lot recently and nobody really understood why. They arrived in Minneapolis and checked into the hotel where they met Benoit. The three of them had agreed to meet up and go and train in the gym together like usual the next day. But the following morning, Chavo woke up to the hotel security telling him that Eddie had failed to answer his wake-up call and wasn't responding to them knocking at his room. Strangely, the chain was still on Eddie's door which meant somebody had to be inside. So security cut the chain off and Chavo walked inside

where he discovered his uncle lying face down on the bathroom floor. When he turned Eddie over, Eddie was making gurgling sounds. And then he died just a few seconds later in his nephew's arms. Benoit phoned Chavo from the hotel lobby and when he heard what had happened, the man, who was known for never showing any emotion, broke down completely, letting out a loud and pained wailing sound. The autopsy found that Eddie Guerrero died as a result of acute heart failure due to an underlying atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. He was just 38 years old. It was alleged that like many others in the industry, Eddie was abusing HCG, a steroidogenic hormone,

along with the steroid stanozolol. Of course, Eddie's family, his wife and his kids were devastated. But it really seemed as though nobody took it harder than Chris Benoit. The show that day was cancelled, and instead the WWE put out a memorial show for Eddie where the wrestlers who wished to were able to give their tributes to him. Benoit cried throughout the entire event and during his tribute he said I love you and I miss you and I want to thank you from my heart and tell you that I love you and will never forget you and that we will see each

other again. I love you Eddie. And like I've just said it in a matter of fact way please go again and watch this documentary. The way Chris says this it's like his life is over. That's how he's speaking. And I understand obviously his friend has died. I'm not saying like this is an irrational feeling at this point. I think I'm speaking because I know what's about to happen next and how long this grieving process goes on for with him and in an interview many years later Chaveau likened Benoit's reaction to that of a man who just lost his spouse and I think that is a very accurate way of describing it Benoit cried through Eddie's entire funeral too and immediately after it was finished he boarded a plane with the other WWE wrestlers to perform at a big show in Europe,

again refusing to take any time off. He was not handling it well to say the least and became something of a hermit after Eddie's death, no longer speaking with his colleagues or even his family. During the first month of Eddie's passing, his wife Vicky mourned his loss by staying in bed without moving. During this time, Nancy Benoit actually went to go live with her and to help look after her two daughters while Vicky recovered. And she eventually did recover for the children's sake. But in between shows, Benoit would often come over to Vicky's house. So this is Vicky who's Eddie's widow's house with Nancy. And on a number of occasions, the women would find Chris Benoit

lying on Eddie's side of the bed, clutching Eddie's pillow and crying his eyes out, saying that he couldn't cope without him. Vicky and Nancy understood how close they were but still something about Chris Benoit's uncontrollable crying and the devastated feelings he was exhibiting seemed a bit off. They grew more and more worried about Benoit as his behaviour grew more and more strange over the following years. Nancy noticed that Benoit began to speak a lot about wrestlers' children who'd been kidnapped and a lot about wrestlers' children, who'd been kidnapped, and a lot about crazed fans who were potentially dangerous and out to get him.

He started to act very paranoid, so Nancy asked her friends at the WWE to keep a close eye on him. But it only got worse, to the point that Benoit began using a different car each day of the week and changing his route to work and the gym every day. His mental health steadily declined as he fell deeper into a depression whilst also growing more impatient and angry, something which led to a lot of fights between him and Nancy at home. A few months went by where Benoit didn't speak to anybody, not even his own family, and that is until Nancy gave him a journal. She told him to write in it as though he was speaking to Eddie.

And it really helped him for a while. Benoit began to open up and started to feel like his dead best friend was with him, in spirit. But it was too little too late. Knowing what was about to happen next, many would say Benoit's fate was sealed the day Eddie passed away. Whereas others would say that it was sealed the first day he saw the Dynamite Kid and decided to join the self-destructive world of pro wrestling. Both are correct answers, but it doesn't change the tragedy that happens next.

Before we get to that tragedy, shall we take a little bit of a sponsorship break to say thank you. Oh, yes. To our lovely sponsors who help make Red Handed possible. There are also some other people who help make Red Handed possible and that is all of the lovely patrons that we have. If it wasn't for you guys

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Oh, and we also do, for $10 and up patrons every single month, a full-length bonus episode of Red Handed. The one that we released this month was on the Broken Arrow killings, which is absolutely horrific fucking family annihilation. But we've started doing it that you guys can vote for the bonus episode that you want to hear over on Patreon. So, you know, it's fully democratic and that's what you voted for.

Previous episodes have included things like Anatoly Moskin, who is the Russian doll man. There's some real fucking stonkers in there. So head on over to patreon.com slash redhanded to become a member and get your hands and eyes and ears on loads of bonus content. So get this, the Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who?

I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be

honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today, I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and

fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. So where were we? On the 22nd of June 2007, Chris Benoit,

Chaveau, who's Eddie Guerrero's nephew, and another friend were planning on driving to Texas together for a series of shows over the next few days. That afternoon, Chaveau received a phone call from Benoit telling him that he wasn't going to be able to make it after all because Nancy and his son Daniel were suffering from a really bad case of food poisoning and that they had even been vomiting blood. Benoit said he needed to take care of them

and that he'd have to miss the first show. But he said that he'd be able to make it for the big pay-per-view event once he'd sorted his flights out. Before hanging up the phone, Benoit told Chaveau, I love you, repeatedly. In recent interviews, Chaveau reflected on the call and said how weird he found it at the time because it was completely out of character for Benoit to speak like that and also for him to be missing a show but Chavo had just brushed it off. Benoit then called back later and let Chavo know that he'd be landing in Texas at 8am and they arranged for Chavo to pick him up from the airport. The following morning, however, at 5.30am, Chavo and another friend of Benoit's at the WWE received some very strange text messages from both

Benoit and Nancy's phones, saying, quote, the dogs are in the enclosed pool area and the back door is open. These texts were then followed by another, which just contained Benoit's full address. Chaveau went to the airport at 8am, but Benoit never showed up after the flight landed. And he wasn't answering any calls, and neither was Nancy. Thinking he was just covering for his friend, Chaveau didn't tell anybody at the WWE that Benoit was missing, until it began getting dangerously close to showtime. And still, Chris Benoit was nowhere to be found.

Eventually, Chaveau did tell one of the bookers and they decided it would be best to phone the police to conduct a welfare check at Benoit's home in Fayetteville, North Carolina. As two officers approached Benoit's million-dollar home, they found one of his neighbors already outside the property and two large German shepherds in the front yard barking. The neighbour said that she hadn't seen any of the Benoits coming or going for the last three days. So this neighbour

mentioned to the police that she frequently fed the Benoit family's dogs while they were away. So the police in a really bizarre move considering they don't actually know what's inside the house, send this neighbour in with the dogs having no idea what's inside. But as the police waited outside after the civilian they had sent inside, they got a bit worried because she was in there for a really long time. And then when she eventually did come back out, she was screaming. She was screaming, Daniel's dead. In that moment, it went from being a normal welfare check to something far more serious. As the officers entered the property with their guns drawn, the unmistakable odour of death flooded their noses. They followed the stench up a staircase that led them to a child's bedroom, and there they found seven-year-old Daniel Benoit

lying face down in his bed. Next to his lifeless body was a copy of a Bible. Together they then began clearing each room one by one, not knowing what to expect. They found Nancy Benoit's body lying on the floor of a bedroom. Her hands and feet had been bound together and she was wrapped in a towel and next to her body was another copy of the bible. Finally the officers made their way to the basement which was comprised of two large rooms one of which was a gym with its walls covered in mirrors. I once read an interview with Kate Moss and like it might be entirely not true but I remember so clearly reading this interview with her she was like I have a cupboard in my room that is completely lined with mirrors

and I stand in it and I circle problem areas. That is fucking horrific. That might be one of the scariest things we ever say on the show. I hate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ugh, God. So as the officers entered this gym covered in mirrors, which also sounds like my fucking hell,

one of the officers caught sight of a man in a reflection. She immediately pointed her gun at him and screamed, show me your hands. What she hadn't noticed, however, was that the man had a cable wrapped around his neck, hanging from one of his weight machines. This is really fucking horrific, guys. So, like, just brace yourself for...

I'm not going to say no eating because it's not like gory. It just like really unsettled me. It really is. Because the police realised that this man was Chris Benoit. So this officer lowered her gun and they called into the station that the house was the scene of a suspected murder-suicide. The WWE were informed that Benoit, Nancy and Daniel had all been found dead. However, and this is very important, that's all they were told at the time. People were speculating everything from whether it had been a gas leak to a break-in gone wrong. Everything except what had actually taken place because nobody could have imagined what really went down. Vince McMahon, the chairman of the WWE, decided to cancel the show scheduled on the 25th of June, and instead he held a three-hour-long memorial in honour of Chris Benoit,

something he would come to later regret when the full details of what actually happened eventually emerged. I also love that there's like WWE and all these wrestling promotions just like constantly have to cancel shows and do memorial shows for all of the wrestlers that keep dying. Yeah, and no one is like, maybe seven memorials this month is a bit many. The memorial budget's fucking maxed out. So just like with Eddie's memorial show, each of the wrestlers who chose to sat in front of the camera and said some words about Benoit.

Everyone spoke about how much they admired and loved him, what a loss his death was for the world and how much they were all going to miss him. Chaveau told the cameras that Chris was one of the greatest men he'd ever known and that he would have trusted him with his life and his kids' lives. It wasn't until 24 hours after the show aired, so they haven't just filmed it, they've aired it, that the full details of Benoit's horrendous crimes were revealed to the world. Because yes, of course, Chris Benoit had murdered his wife and their seven-year-old son before taking his own life. The evidence indicated that Nancy had been murdered in a particularly violent manner,

indicative of a lot of rage. It seemed like Chris and Daniel had had a barbecue together in their garden during the day, and that evening, possibly after a heated argument, Chris tied Nancy's wrists together using rope and tied her legs together using tape and an extension cord before wrapping a telephone cord all the way around her neck. The injuries she sustained suggested that he forced his knee into the top of her back as he tightened the cord and strangled her to death. She also had injuries consistent with blunt force impact on the right side of her head. After he killed her, he wrapped her body up in towels

and left a bible beside her. It's believed that Benoit then went to sleep in the house with his dead wife on the floor beside the bed and their seven-year-old asleep upstairs, totally unaware that his mother had been murdered. The following morning, Benoit fed his son Xanax so that he fell unconscious and then Benoit choked his own son to death. There was a large butcher's knife found under Daniel's bed but it hadn't been used in any of the murders and Benoit choked his own son to death. There was a large butcher's knife found under Daniel's bed, but it hadn't been used in any of the murders. And Benoit left a Bible next to his son's body too. And then, after he killed Daniel,

Benoit sent the strange text messages to Chaveau and various others at the WWE. And then he went to sleep, yet again, as rigor mortis set into the bodies of his wife and child. On the Sunday, he made some strange Google searches. He searched a story about the prophet Elijah and the resurrection of a dead boy from the Old Testament. And then he looked up the quickest and easiest way to break one's own neck. And this is the bit where it's going to get really...

I mean, obviously, that is horrific, but this bit is the bit that I found the most like visceral because Chris Benoit went downstairs to his basement gym wrapped a towel around his neck took the bar off the lap pull down machine and fastened the cord around his neck as though it were a noose and like just in case anyone doesn't know what these machines are it's like the ones you sit in like it's a chair and the weights are behind you and you pull it down when you pull it down you're pulling the weights up and then you like drop it if you see what I mean so what he does is he loaded this machine with 100 kilograms wrapped the cord around his neck and then just

let it go so you had the force of 100 kilograms of weight and it just snaps his neck. The toxicology report stated that Benoit had testosterone levels 10 times the average man at the time of his death. No doubt as a result of his years of constant steroid abuse. When the news broke, everyone was in complete shock, as you can imagine. And desperate to do some PR control, Vince McMahon went live on air just 28 hours after the three-hour-long memorial show for Benoit. He told viewers how he had been unaware of the full details of the events that had taken place, and that the WWE would not ever be mentioning Chris Benoit's name again.

And he wasn't kidding. Every single mention of Benoit, every photo, video and record of his wrestling career at the WWE was completely wiped from the organization's website that evening. Every employee and performer was forbidden to ever speak about him in interviews and the organization essentially washed their hands of Benoit and wiped his legacy from their memory. The WWE never even reached out to Benoit's or Nancy's family afterwards either, not even once. Benoit's ex-wife and mother of his two remaining children had been shipped a number of his possessions by the police

after the investigation was closed, and among them was a Bible. It was only months later, however, that his ex-wife discovered a suicide note inside that read, I'm preparing to leave earth. Mike Benoit read through it and found a lot of very disturbing entries that essentially served as a timeline for his son's descent into madness. One particular entry written to the dead Eddie stood out. It detailed a dream in which Chris described some very powerful people had killed his and Nancy's parents despite him trying to save them and Chris

ended this entry with I'll be with you very soon. Why did this happen? How could this have possibly happened? And the term the media began throwing around immediately was, of course, roid rage. Everybody knew wrestlers were on steroids. And as we alluded to snarkily earlier, part of the reason that organisations have dubbed professional wrestling as sports entertainment and not sport in the first place was to bypass the rigorous regulations of drug testing that actual athletes have to undergo. It's like putting Guantanamo Bay not on US soil. It's like it's a workaround. Chris Benoit was always known as the small man in a big man's ring, which is the reason he began using steroids in the first place at the age of just 16,

all the way until the day he took his own life. It was also uncovered that a number of text messages from Nancy's phone to Benoit said things like, I will not accept this steroid-induced rollercoaster ride of emotional abuse. Ignoring the problem or running away isn't going to help you face it. You need professional help and only if you're fully honest about all of it. Another message said we both know that the wellness program is a joke because the thing is shortly after the death of Eddie Guerrero the WWE came under fairly intense media scrutiny for turning a blind eye to the restless steroid abuse and in turn the WWE established what they called the wellness program which was supposedly a drug

testing program meant to be similar to that of the testing programs you can find in professional competitive sports. However after a little investigation into how it worked it was clear that it was nothing more than a veneer full of loopholes and blind spots, which allowed wrestlers to continue their heavy use of steroids without detection. Once again fighting another PR nightmare for the WWE concerning steroids, Vince McMahon released the following statement. Quote, The physical findings announced by authorities indicate deliberation, not rage. WWE strongly suggests that it is entirely wrong for speculators

to suggest that steroids had anything to do with these senseless acts. It's incredibly convenient for you, isn't it, Vince? It doesn't matter that he was pumped full of steroids. It's not the same thing. It's not roid rage. There was deliberation. He had time. And here's the thing. Benoit had passed all of his wellness checks leading up to the murders. However, his toxicology report, like I just said,

clearly indicated that he had insane levels of testosterone in his body, around 10 times that of the average man. So clearly these wellness checks are a joke if he was taking steroids basically up until the point that he died, but he was passing all of these wellness checks. It's just bullshit. And that he had 10 times the testosterone of a normal person like are you even looking at his blood no obviously fucking not the thing is the issue with the wwe's wellness checks were that if you failed once then you'd get a warning if you fail twice you'd get a 30-day ban and if you failed three times you'd be let 30-day ban. And if you fell three times, you'd be let go.

However, if you had a doctor's prescription for the steroids that you were taking, then you were all good. And guess what? Benoit had a doctor prescribing him, my jaw hit the floor when I read this, 10-month supplies of anabolic steroids every three to four weeks. Jesus. The doctor was later sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2009 after he admitted to illegally prescribing drugs without even examining patients first and he pleaded guilty to 175 counts of over-prescribing medication. Fucking hell.

In the weeks following the murders, more and more details of Benoit and Nancy's volatile relationship became public. Benoit had once smashed his wife's windscreen in a fit of rage and had physically assaulted her on another occasion. And this physical assault led to Nancy filing for both a restraining order and for a divorce, way back in 2003, just three years after they first got married. But Benoit convinced her on the phone to take him back and she dropped the restraining order and stayed married to him until, as we all know, he eventually murdered her and her only child. So the media might have been obsessed with the idea of roid rage,

but there was only one man who knew that there was more to Benoit's story. Enter Chris Nowinski, PhD, who was actually a former WWE pro wrestler who retired having suffered six concussions, thinking it was probably unwise to continue, and then he went on to become, of all things, a neuroscientist and founded the Concussion Legacy Foundation, whose mission it is to support athletes, veterans and all affected by concussions and CTE. CTE was featured in the news this month

and it stands for concussive traumatic, I couldn't say it in the news and I can't say it now, encephalopathy. Encephalopathy. And what it is is it's progressive and fatal brain disease associated with repeated traumatic brain injuries, including concussions and repeated blows to the head. And the real kicker about CTE is you can't be diagnosed with it until after you're dead and they take your brain out and cut it up. So when Nowinski saw Benoit's story on the news, he immediately recalled having met Benoit just six months before the murders in the changing rooms at a WWE event.

Nowinski was in the middle of writing a book on CTE at the time, and Benoit had approached him to ask him about what CTE was, and told him that he had suffered more concussions than he could count during his career. The two had then exchanged numbers, and Benoit asked Nowinski to give him a call the following week, because he felt that something wasn't right with him. However, when Nowinski did call Benoit, he caught him in the middle of what sounded like a heated argument with somebody, and their conversation was cut short, and the two never spoke again.

And obviously six months later, Chris Benoit would be dead. After the murders, Nowinski felt compelled to find out more, and so he contacted Chris Benoit's father, Mike, and told him what he knew. And Mike Benoit agreed to allow Nowinski to analyze his son's brain. And within a month, Nowinski concluded that Benoit had indeed been suffering from a severe case of CTE. They found significant deposits of tau protein throughout his brain, tau protein being a marker for brain damage. It seemed Benoit had an uncommonly serious case of CTE for a 40-year-old. In fact, Nowinski said the state of Benoit's brain was comparable to that of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient. There was damage to all four brain lobes and brain stem and significant

damage in the areas of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and behavior. Nowinski stated that this disease would have gradually changed who Benoit was as a person and what he was capable of. And I think that's the terrifying thing because I'm sure many of us, you know, have tragically seen somebody taken because of Alzheimer's. And I would say that my grandma is now currently in the decline of dementia or Alzheimer's. And you see the paranoia ramping up, you see the personality changes, you see the aggressive behavior, in all honesty. But she's a frail old woman. Imagine all of of those things but in a man who was the size and had the strength that Chris Benoit had. Once Nowinski held a press conference to announce his findings everyone began to think back on the countless times that Benoit had taken hits directly to the back of his head specifically with steel chairs. Steel chairs as a weapon was and still is a common thing in pro wrestling. There are even events named TLC matches, which stands not for tender love and care,

but for tables, ladders and chairs, where you kissed it, wrestlers hit each other with tables, ladders and chairs. Like, we're quite a developed species. Allegedly. Why do we want to watch this? Like, what? Like, read a book or something. Most wrestlers today will only make it look like they've actually hit you on the back of the head with a chair. But in the 90s, according to superstar Chris Jericho,

how hard you could take a steel chair to the back of the head was a badge of honour. He said in an interview that you just grit your teeth, tense your muscles and eat it. If you had a concussion, you just shook it off and carried on. Given that concussion is your brain shaking, shaking it off is literally the worst thing you can possibly... Stop shaking. Stay exactly still, please. Oh god. Nobody ever gave a second thought to what concussion really was or the cumulative effect it could have, especially when you're taking thousands of steel chairs to the back of your own head over your career. No one was bothered about what effect that would have on your brain until Nowinski's findings about the state of Benoit's particular brain. And in Benoit's case, it wasn't just the steel chairs. It was also his ludicrous signature move, the flying headbutt, that he got from his hero,

the Dynamite Kid, and was invented by the Dynamite Kid's predecessor, Harley Race. Like we said at the top of the episode, Harley Race had warned the Dynamite Kid not to do the move because it had ruined his old age. The Dynamite Kid didn't listen, however, and ended up in a wheelchair because of it. He, in turn, warned Benoit not to do it. And he, in turn, ended up murdering his entire family and then committing suicide. But hey, it was a crowd pleaser. So why, you know, stop, even though two people whose lives have been ruined by it tell you to? So to answer the question, why did Benoit do what he did? The answer is a

multifaceted one, comprised of years of drug and steroid abuse, alcoholism, CTE, and a psychotic devotion to professional wrestling. The culmination of these things almost brought down the WWE, and as a result shone a light onto the darker side of the professional wrestling industry. And that is the real irony of this case is that Chris Benoit was so obsessed with WWE that he was the one who almost completely destroyed it by what happened. And the decision that the WWE made to simply ignore everything about Benoit and wipe him from their records whilst ducking and dodging every common sense question

raised about the organization's history of casualties clearly demonstrates its lack of responsibility despite being the most powerful promotion in pro wrestling. And a lot of people would say that this has happened time and time again. There have been, as we said, many, many, many untimely deaths of numerous pro wrestlers and a lot of tragic cases associated with the sports entertainment industry and WWE shy away every time from accepting any accountability. When CEO of WWE, Vince, and his wife, Linda, who I believe has been on Undercover Boss, and she also, when she's not on Undercover Boss, she ran for a Senate seat in 2010.

But it was the serious issue of the mortality rate within WWE that stopped her being elected. After Benoit murdered his family and himself, the WWE saw a significant drop in ratings and pay-per-view buys, and in an effort to address this, they did put in place some measures that are worth mentioning. For one, they banned hitting each other on the head with chairs, and they worked with Chris Lewinsky,

and they instilled a rule in which if a wrestler was found to have suffered multiple concussions, then they would be let go. They also banned a number of problematic prescription drugs and began to take the wellness programme a bit more seriously. Although King of the World John Oliver did call out WWE in a fantastic 23-minute rant about their troubling employment practices. In this bit, John Oliver outlines the following reasons in which McMahon has shielded himself

from any responsibility for his wrestlers' welfare by employing them as independent contractors instead of full-time permanent employees. McMahon has his wrestlers sign exclusive long-term contracts, which means they're unable to work for any other organisation. They perform when demanded to, whilst also agreeing not to sue, even in cases where they have suffered an injury due to an oversight made directly by the WWE. As independent contractors, not permanent employees, wrestlers don't qualify for annual paid leave, pensions, or health insurance benefits. And John Oliver has also called on the fans of pro wrestling

to protest the next WrestleMania, because when it comes down to it, the fans are the ones with the most power when it comes to changing business culture. So we're going to end this episode with one particular weird thing that is worth mentioning. 14 hours before the police discovered the bodies at Benoit's house, someone had updated Chris Benoit's Wikipedia page,

stating that he would miss that night's show due to Nancy Benoit dying. The person who ever had updated this Wikipedia page had written, Benoit was not there due to personal issues stemming from the death of his wife, Nancy. This change was added at 4am on the 25th of June, but the police only found the bodies at 2.30pm. The police traced the IP address of the person who had written this, and even more strangely, they found that it had come from Stamford, Connecticut, which is where the WWE headquarters is based. That is so fucking weird.

Yeah, I don't like it. Because I would have thought, like, maybe Chris Benoit just did it. Like, he was in that house for two days after Nancy was dead. Maybe he did it for some weird reason, like a weird kind of confession. But no, it comes from some IP address that's in fucking Stanford, Connecticut while he's in South Carolina. And when the news of what had happened hit the media, the person responsible for the post wrote on Wikinews that his edit was a, quote,

huge coincidence and nothing more. The police thoroughly investigated this guy, questioned him, even seized his computer. And as it turned out, the guy was telling the the truth it really all was just a big coincidence the guy had a long history of vandalizing wikipedia pages for fun and on this occasion it was just coincidence that he'd been eerily on the money no as a time traveler i'm not buying that for a second he just must have known it cannot have been a coincidence. I just don't believe it. That is absolutely insane. But yeah, that's what happened.

So yeah, fucking hell, that is the case of Chris Benoit and the horrible, horrific murders of Nancy Benoit and Daniel Benoit. So yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed our little tour into the world of professional wrestling. I never thought we'd do it on this show, but there you go. It's done now. No, me neither. It is done. And I feel like I've learned many things about the world of professional wrestling. I never thought we'd do it on this show, but there you go. It's done now. No, me neither. It is done. And I feel like I've learned many things about the world of professional wrestling that I didn't previously know. Likewise. I hope we did the industry justice

for all our super pro wrestling fans. If we didn't, we'll find out soon. So brace yourselves. Just get bags of shit sent to our houses. So yeah, hopefully you guys learned a lot too. And like we said, if you would like to come hang out with us immediately after the show you can do so on patreon.com slash red handed here are some lovely people who have signed up at some point to be patrons that we need to thank so thank you christopher rachel kaylee miller devy jessica sink charlotte wilson robin heidi jacobson lauren johnson middy Spindler, Luke Morgan, BC Stead, Amy Kathleen, Matt Erickson, Katerina Ferguson, Debra Mink, Tessa, Ashley Burden, Harriet, Michelle Moore, Heather Klein, Paige Wehner, Christina Phillips, Crystal James, Marcus Jane, Tishara Day, Charis Parslow, P, singular letter P,

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