The April 10 issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter has a story, on pages 17-18, playing off ours about WWE’s earlier-than-acknowledged information on the nature of the Benoit case after Chris, Nancy, and Daniel were all found dead on June 25, 2007.
Dave Meltzer provides a rather involved analysis jumping off the rather simple set of facts reported here. Meltzer, for example, is very focused on what individual on-air talent might have known while they were praising Chris Benoit during the hastily put together tribute show on Raw. While that may be the aspect most interesting to wrestling fans and taste critics, I think it’s the tiniest piece of the overall corporate damage-control strategy.
There’s plenty of time for fans and everyone else to process all this information, come to their senses, appreciate that we were all worked, again, and start thinking about what it means. In that connection, Meltzer makes a couple of clear points. The account on this blog “removes the big question I had in defense of the company at the time.” WWE officials said they had no idea until well after the show was on the air, but “‘no idea’ was far too strong.”
Meltzer’s other important conclusion: “[P]eople within the McMahon family itself had to know.”