In the last post I had some fun at the expense of Chavo Guerrero, the ECW champion who got “jobbed out” at WrestleMania ten days ago.
But, of course, the information that he and Scott James, and probably a small circle of others, are closely holding about Chris Benoit’s last contacts with the outside world is no joke.
To review, no sane observer of the Benoit family tragedy is suggesting anything other than that Chris murdered his wife Nancy, murdered their son Daniel, and committed suicide.
At the far other end, no one who has read the reports on this blog could seriously continue to believe that World Wrestling Entertainment didn’t manipulate the news so that the world wouldn’t yet know a murderer was being honored on the June 25, 2007, edition of Raw. As for which specific WWE personnel knew what and when – that can’t be pinned down. Almost all of the wrestlers certainly did not know; they were being “worked” – for their own good, of course – every bit as much as the public. However, enough of the important people, the ones who call the shots, knew. In isolation, that describes what essentially was a PR issue, and for cynics just another in a line of “who cares?” questions when it comes to pro wrestling.
But in between when the crimes were committed and when the sheriff’s deputies descended on Green Meadow Lane in Fayetteville, there are still lots of substantive questions with lots of grim implications. And that’s where Guerrero and James come in.
In the timeline story in the current Wrestling Observer Newsletter, to which I referred earlier, Dave Meltzer wrote: “Chavo Guerrero and William Regal were the two whose reactions [on the Raw tribute] seemed strange at first, particularly Guerrero, who was one of Benoit’s best friends. But he may have just suspected something and been confused.“
In an email, I asked Meltzer to elaborate. “He just seemed quite reserved for a guy whose best friend had died,” Dave said.
The Observer‘s line that Guerrero “may have just suspected something” is a vast understatement. Observer readers may not yet realize that Chavo was a recipient of the Sunday morning texts from Benoit. But many non-Observer readers have long known.
Irv Muchnick