If it bleeds, it leads...

If you follow this blog with any regularity, you'll know I'm a wrestling fan; I've watched wrestling since I was around 12 or 13. The thing about wrestling though is it comes and goes in waves, sometimes the product is spot-on, other times it falls flat. For me personally, it's been in a slump the last few years and as such, I haven't really watched it recently. I still follow it on the internet with a near obsessive regularity, and recently ordered WWE 24/7 On Demand from my cable provider, but as far as the current product, I'm just not digging it right now.

I will say this though, despite - or perhaps because of - the low points of professional wrestling, it is what I believe to be the last true performance art remaining. Sure you could go down to the local art house and pay good money to watch someone smear feces on themselves and call it art, but I'll take a flaming baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire any day.

In case you've missed every media outlet known to man, professional wrestler Chris Benoit apparently murdered his wife and son over the weekend before killing himself.

Pretty fucked up thing to do.

To be honest the first thing that came to my mind when I heard the news was the pair of family killers in Oregon a few years back - a couple guys on a God trip killed thier familes for whatever reason. Of course the first thing that came to every one else's mind was steroids.

Sometimes I think the media prays for these kinds of events to happen. Let's face it, wrestling is a cash cow - they've gotten their share of money from me in the past - and dead wrestlers sell papers; dead wrestlers who kill their families first even more so.

So here we are in day three of the scandal, all the familiar topics have been hashed and rehashed - wrestlers are nothing but ticking time bombs of roid rage, Vince McMahon is the Anti-Christ, the list of wrestlers who died before 45, and the old stand-by, it's all just fake anyway.

I'm in no way going to defend Chris Benoit - he was a terrific wrestler, but it takes a real prick to kill your wife and child, that's beyond inexcusable - but why is it wrestling's fault? Did anyone blame the football for O.J.? I don't see anyone blaming the police for the sick fuck who executed his pregnant lover. Where were the scathing condemnations of the military when Timothy McVeigh decided it was good idea to blow up that building in Oklahoma City? But anytime a wrestler dies, or does something wrong - in this case evil - it's wrestling's fault.

If you listen to the media, it wasn't Chris Benoit that killed his family, it was wrestling. Or to be more specific, wrestling made Chris Benoit take steroids, which made him kill his family; forget that none of this has been verified yet, it's wrestling's fault.

Apparently every person in every other profession has freedom of choice except for professional wrestlers.

As if.

The only person who knows why Chris Benoit did what he did is Chris Benoit. Maybe it would be a better - although far less profitable for the media - idea to look at the bigger picture...Why is there an epidemic of familial murder taking place in America? You've got cops killing their lovers, crazy mothers in Texas offing their children, etc., etc.

Is Vince McMahon responsible for their deaths too?

Tags: Chris Benoit

Labels: Media, Wrestling

posted by m/a/z/e  [2:30 PM]   0 comments