The Tiger's Take 11.27.07: My Thoughts on 'Benoit'
Posted by Mike Campbell on 11.27.2007
My take on one of the many new wrestling books to hit bookstore shelves.
It seems to me that there are only two real types of wrestling related books out there. The first is of course autobiographies, with such great books as 'Pure Dynamite,' 'Have A Nice Day,' and 'Listen You Pencil Necked Geek!' The other type seems to be quasi-historical books like the series of books by Scott Keith, along with 'The Death of WCW.' So when I was in Barnes and Noble and saw a book in the wrestling section simply called 'Benoit' I took notice pretty fast. Due to already buying the Batista, Terry Funk, and Chris Jericho autobiographies, I had to leave it be. But to my luck, the next night Ashish sent out his usual e-mail blast offering several things to be reviewed, and much to my luck the book was being offered, and nobody had yet claimed it, so it was all mine. I managed to polish it off in two days, and I think it's a fabulous read.
The book itself is more or less a cross between the two types of books you find on the subject of the business. The book is made up of four essays. The first half is two essays that provide a retrospective of Benoit's life and his career, and the second half covers the tragedy and the fallout from it. The background info on Benoit's life and career is a great read on it's own. It's not without a few factual errors, such as claiming that Benoit won the Super J-Cup Tournaments in 1993, 1994, and 1995, when he only won the 1994 Tournament (he'd won different tournaments in the other years). But all in all, between Stampede, ECW, Japan, Mexico, WCW and WWE, we're given a very good rundown of Benoit's career. It mostly sticks to in the ring, we only get the bare minimum of info as far as him and Nancy getting together, and things like Nancy getting an order of protection against him are really just nuggest of info.
The second half, I thought, was also quite interesting. But a lot of the info was new to me, because after less than a week, I just got fed up with hearing about it everywhere, so someone who followed it all the way through may disagree on that front. It shows how much research was really put into the book, with a nice overview of the ratings of the various news programs, before, during, and after the Benoit incident. And the authors aren't shy about exploiting the lack of research that some of the media put into their reports, including a very funny story of Geraldo Rivera trying to link the tragedy with Sherri Martel's death and pinning it on Kevin Sullivan. And thankfully, it's also very unbiased, as quick as the book it to take shots at Geraldo for looking foolish, or Larry King for throwing softballs, it's also quick to point out a lot of the hypocracy of the wrestling business, such as Kennedy's comments about WWE making him clean, and then him getting outed for buying steroids earlier this year.
So what we've essentially got is an honest, but fair look, at a great wrestler who had a great career, who was part of a horrible tragedy. This is probably as fair a look a things as we're ever going to see, given that WWE is erasing him from memory (I personally think that it's a very short-sighted move on their part, but that's just me), and that the media and casual fans of wrestling are basically on one side of the spectrum, while the longtime fans are on the other. The book makes a fairly nice bridge for them, but it doesn't paint a black of white picture of things, it's written in such a way that the reader gets to make up their own mind about Chris Benoit. I can't recommend this enough.
