Mike Benoit on The New York Times on Linda McMahon
Second Mixed Martial Arts Death: Brain Hemorrhage
July 16, 2010How About ‘Corporate Success Story Or Death Merchant’?
July 16, 2010Earlier I commented on the appallingly inadequate Linda McMahon article in today’s New York Times. Here’s more from Mike Benoit, the father of the late Chris Benoit, father-in-law of the late Nancy Benoit, and grandfather of the late Daniel Benoit:
The article in the NY Times should have the caption “Paid For By Linda McMahon.”
There are some interesting items in the article. The first one to jump out at you is their failure to talk about the Chris Benoit tragedy. WWE has banned anyone within their organization from mentioning the name. Do they also have that power over the NY Times? They also failed to mention Andrew Martin. I guess once you bring up Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy, the Benoit name will follow.
Linda pats herself on the back for being responsible for the deregulation of the wrestling industry. This allowed them to script some of the extreme and very dangerous stunts into their matches. The rise in death rates within the industry coincides with deregulation. I believe that once any industry has no oversight, the first thing to go is safety.
Linda compares contract wrestlers to singers, golfers, and tennis players. I wonder if in any of the above contracts have death clauses.
Irv Muchnick
3 Comments
Having thought about this for my own blog update, how can you bring up Chris Kanyon’s name without mentioning the possibility that he was suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy at the time of his death? Given that he likely had numerous undiagnosed concussions during his career, suffered from depression and committed suicide, several traits that he shared in common with Chris Benoit, the possibility should have at least been raised.
Well, I can’t bring up everything in every single post. I know that Mike Benoit believes it is a strong possibility and that Lance Storm was furious with the TNA chair shots on TV right after the Kanyon death. I agree that Kanyon is a major CTE suspect and I hope his brain receives the study made on Chris Benoit’s and Andrew Martin’s.
Also, a lot of people seem to be convinced that CTE was an issue with Mike Awesome since he took as many chair shots to the head as anyone and committed suicide.
As some people noted at the time, three wrestlers hanged themselves in the first 6-7 months of 2007: Benoit, Awesome, and indy wrestler James Fawcett.