lyrics and more Benoit
HMV finally stocked Pig Destroyer's new album, Phantom Limb. It's incredible. As with Terrorizer before it, I am completely enthralled by this album. This may make them my new favourite band.
Between the sentiment and the use of the word "wrestling" my mind instantly went to Chris Benoit when I heard these lyrics. Even though the song itself isn't really about this, these parts of the song still stuck out.
Alexandria:
[...]
"Now the nausea's in my guts
And I'm wrestling with doubt
The kind you get when your heroes sell you out"
[...]
"I've got this feeling like things have gone too far
And now we can't get back"
I don't really want to talk about Benoit too much again, as I still haven't gotten my thoughts straight on it. I've tried writing a couple things, one about my thoughts on Benoit and one about the sequence of events for the WWE and where they go from here, but I couldn't. In trying to write a brief summation, I did finally get some of my thoughts down.
I think that the WWE has handled this as well as they could. News broke midday Monday that Chris Benoit and his family had died, and immediately the WWE cancelled the scheduled live episode of Raw and put together a tribute show to Chris Benoit instead, featuring his greatest matches and moments with heartfelt and heartbreaking comments and tributes from many of the wrestlers. At the time when the tribute was done and the comments were recorded there was no information whatsoever about the circumstances of Chris Benoit's death, and I don't blame the WWE one bit for running the tribute show. With the information they had, and the time period that they had to make the decision in, it was the right thing to do.
In a sad irony, the originally scheduled episode of Raw was to be a tribute episode to Vince McMahon, who was (in storyline only) killed (officially "presumed dead") after his limousine exploded two weeks ago on Raw. People (myself included) thought it was tasteless to run a storyline about death in an industry plagued with them even before Chris Benoit died, but afterwards it was completely inexcusable. All mentions of McMahon's supposed death were removed from the WWE's site as soon as the news broke, and Vince McMahon himself opened the Benoit tribute episode, casting the storyline aside.
In the closing minutes of Raw, the investigators announced that they now believed the case to be a murder-suicide. Once again the WWE was put in a very difficult position, having just dedicated a three hour tribute to a man now believed to have murdered his wife and son. First off, they cancelled the show from being shown in repeats or in foreign markets. The tributes posted on the website were removed, and the grim truth was given the spot as top story. They removed all of his merchandise from their online store, and went so far as to remove his name from the descriptions of matches on DVDs. Now, removing his name from DVD listings I disagree with, but I can understand how the WWE was in deep need of damage control.
It was announced that the WWE would still hold the tapings for this week's other shows, ECW and Smackdown, but they would be storyline-free, focussing only on putting on entertaining matches. This was necessary for a lot of reasons. Firstly, everyone working for the company must have been deeply affected by Benoit's death and the later revelations about what really happened. No one's heart would have been in a show, and besides, the main storyline focus would have been scheduled to be McMahon's death, which has now been scrapped anyway. I'm sure there are many fans who have faced the same conflicts as myself in dealing with this, and many may not have been able to handle any so-called "sports entertainment". Meanwhile, it may have been the best thing for a lot of wrestlers to deal with the tragedy by doing what they do best - wrestling. This isn't the first time that the WWE has run a storyline-free show - they held one of the first large-crowd events post-September 11, and opened with a tribute to America, and how they wouldn't be afraid and would carry on. I remember that show quite well. On that night, there were no storylines - wrestlers just went out and wrestled and entertained.
Tonight on ECW Vince McMahon opened the show, with the following:
Last night on Monday Night RAW, the WWE presented a special tribute show recognizing the career of Chris Benoit. However, now some 26 hours later, the facts of this horrific tragedy are now apparent. Therefore, other than my comments, there will be no mention of Mr. Benoit's name tonight.
On the contrary, tonight's show will be dedicated to everyone who has been affected by this terrible incident. This evening marks the first step o the healing process. Tonight, WWE performers will do what they do better than anyone else in the world, entertain you.
(Transcription taken from Rob Blatt at InsidePulse Wrestling). Word is that John Cena and Johnny Nitro went out and had what may be the best match ever on ECW TV since it was revived by the WWE. They, and everyone else on the show, put their heart into their craft and found a way to carry on past this tragedy. I, too, will have to carry on as well.
Between the sentiment and the use of the word "wrestling" my mind instantly went to Chris Benoit when I heard these lyrics. Even though the song itself isn't really about this, these parts of the song still stuck out.
Alexandria:
[...]
"Now the nausea's in my guts
And I'm wrestling with doubt
The kind you get when your heroes sell you out"
[...]
"I've got this feeling like things have gone too far
And now we can't get back"
I don't really want to talk about Benoit too much again, as I still haven't gotten my thoughts straight on it. I've tried writing a couple things, one about my thoughts on Benoit and one about the sequence of events for the WWE and where they go from here, but I couldn't. In trying to write a brief summation, I did finally get some of my thoughts down.
I think that the WWE has handled this as well as they could. News broke midday Monday that Chris Benoit and his family had died, and immediately the WWE cancelled the scheduled live episode of Raw and put together a tribute show to Chris Benoit instead, featuring his greatest matches and moments with heartfelt and heartbreaking comments and tributes from many of the wrestlers. At the time when the tribute was done and the comments were recorded there was no information whatsoever about the circumstances of Chris Benoit's death, and I don't blame the WWE one bit for running the tribute show. With the information they had, and the time period that they had to make the decision in, it was the right thing to do.
In a sad irony, the originally scheduled episode of Raw was to be a tribute episode to Vince McMahon, who was (in storyline only) killed (officially "presumed dead") after his limousine exploded two weeks ago on Raw. People (myself included) thought it was tasteless to run a storyline about death in an industry plagued with them even before Chris Benoit died, but afterwards it was completely inexcusable. All mentions of McMahon's supposed death were removed from the WWE's site as soon as the news broke, and Vince McMahon himself opened the Benoit tribute episode, casting the storyline aside.
In the closing minutes of Raw, the investigators announced that they now believed the case to be a murder-suicide. Once again the WWE was put in a very difficult position, having just dedicated a three hour tribute to a man now believed to have murdered his wife and son. First off, they cancelled the show from being shown in repeats or in foreign markets. The tributes posted on the website were removed, and the grim truth was given the spot as top story. They removed all of his merchandise from their online store, and went so far as to remove his name from the descriptions of matches on DVDs. Now, removing his name from DVD listings I disagree with, but I can understand how the WWE was in deep need of damage control.
It was announced that the WWE would still hold the tapings for this week's other shows, ECW and Smackdown, but they would be storyline-free, focussing only on putting on entertaining matches. This was necessary for a lot of reasons. Firstly, everyone working for the company must have been deeply affected by Benoit's death and the later revelations about what really happened. No one's heart would have been in a show, and besides, the main storyline focus would have been scheduled to be McMahon's death, which has now been scrapped anyway. I'm sure there are many fans who have faced the same conflicts as myself in dealing with this, and many may not have been able to handle any so-called "sports entertainment". Meanwhile, it may have been the best thing for a lot of wrestlers to deal with the tragedy by doing what they do best - wrestling. This isn't the first time that the WWE has run a storyline-free show - they held one of the first large-crowd events post-September 11, and opened with a tribute to America, and how they wouldn't be afraid and would carry on. I remember that show quite well. On that night, there were no storylines - wrestlers just went out and wrestled and entertained.
Tonight on ECW Vince McMahon opened the show, with the following:
Last night on Monday Night RAW, the WWE presented a special tribute show recognizing the career of Chris Benoit. However, now some 26 hours later, the facts of this horrific tragedy are now apparent. Therefore, other than my comments, there will be no mention of Mr. Benoit's name tonight.
On the contrary, tonight's show will be dedicated to everyone who has been affected by this terrible incident. This evening marks the first step o the healing process. Tonight, WWE performers will do what they do better than anyone else in the world, entertain you.
(Transcription taken from Rob Blatt at InsidePulse Wrestling). Word is that John Cena and Johnny Nitro went out and had what may be the best match ever on ECW TV since it was revived by the WWE. They, and everyone else on the show, put their heart into their craft and found a way to carry on past this tragedy. I, too, will have to carry on as well.