Many young professional wrestlers have died in the past. Normally, their passing is marked on blogs devoted to wrestling, or in a short wire service blurb buried on the Internet or the back pages of the newspaper.
Not this time.
The Chris Benoit case has captured the attention and imagination of the entire country. The reason is clear. Unlike previous pro wrestling deaths, Benoit wasn’t found doped up in a dingy motel room. This time, a wife and young child were involved. Benoit murdered them both, then hung himself.
Toxicology reports are pending. Meanwhile, speculation runs rampant that steroids were involved.
Freelance writer Mike Celzic has written a fascinating column urging the steroid lynch mob in baseball to shift focus to the world of pro wrestling. Baseball hasn’t been cleaned up, but Celzic has a point. If you’re on a steroid crusade, how can you ignore grapplers in the ring?
Celizic writes, in part:
”It’s time for those in Congress who have been piling up brownie points with the voters by ranting at Bud Selig about steroids in baseball to get out of the grandstand, get down on the field and actually do something useful.
We’ve got another dead wrestler on our hands, Chris Benoit, who spent a quiet weekend at his Georgia home murdering his wife and seven-year-old son and then hanging himself on a weight machine. Anabolic steroids were found in the home.
The gruesome killings are a surprise; the steroids aren’t. Professional wrestling — "wrestling entertainment" as the WWE’s Vince McMahon calls it — is filthy with them and has been for decades. It’s too early to tell if Benoit’s actions were driven by roid rage or other psychopathologies induced by the drugs — it’s always possible he wasn’t ever wound too tightly and just went over the edge. But there are plenty of other dead wrestlers around whose demises have been linked to the drugs. You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows in that alleged sport.
But has anybody in Congress ever said anything about it? Has anyone ever dragooned the estimable McMahon, who had to cancel his own faked death to go to Benoit’s funeral, before a subcommittee and demanded to know why he’s providing such a horrible example for America’s impressionable youth?
As far as that goes, how many of you reading this spend the afternoon grumbling about Barry Bonds and his alleged steroid use and then turn on Monday Night RAW to cheer for your favorite freak?"Read Celzic’s entire
column.
