Not since the Midnight Rider was unmasked, during a ringside brawl in Florida in the early eighties, as Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream — but nobody told! — have fans circled the wagons as assiduously as they are doing right now around Chavo Guerrero and Scott James. They are the two World Wrestling Entertainment performers who received those early-morning text messages from Chris Benoit on Sunday, June 24, 2007. What Guerrero and James did upon receiving the texts is the key to clarifying the timeline of the Benoit murders and suicide, and how WWE chose to handle it.
I started to type the words “of course” Guerrero and James were the Benoit text recipients. But let’s not get carried away here — that would imply much too large an assumption. They are not, after all, named in the hermetically sealed world of pro wrestling. They are only “named” in the homicide investigation by the sheriff in Fayette County, Georgia, whereupon they were “named” at this blog. So far as I can tell, they have not been named in the so-called dirtsheet community or the fan blogosphere. (A notable exception: the persistent series of links to our updates from the site of Figure 4 Weekly [http://www.f4wonline.com/]. Thanks, Bryan Alvarez.)
Guerrero’s WWE push is flagging. James, meanwhile, has settled in as a referee at the ECW brand. I’ve never been very creative with my booking suggestions, but this time I really think I have a winner of a gimmick: Guerrero and James, The As-Yet-Unnamed Wrestlers. From Parts Unknown.
But seriously, folks … What is it that really matters about whatever Guerrero and James are keeping to themselves? Why can’t I leave these poor guys alone? I’ll turn to that subject in the next post.
Irv Muchnick