Scripted Through Sin 6.24.08: A Spit of Venom

Posted by Jarrod Westerfeld on 06.24.2008

A trip back in formats, as this feels more like a straight up old school column. This week we look back into the tragedy of the Benoit family, and reflect upon ourselves as a community.

The past few weeks I was unmotivated to the point of practically phoning in my previous articles, but this week I actually got fired up. I actually feel ready to pump out an article that's completely wrestling related, or at the very least one that is more so focused on the topic of wrestling than anything else. This fire inside was inspired by some of the comments I've been reading here on the site on various columns, especially the Wrestler of the Week [06.16.08: Week 11] that always stirs up controversy. The inspiration stirred up a need to echo this sentiment once more, and just so we're all clear, I'll emphasize the shit out of it: WRESTLING FANS ARE FUCKING DUMB!

The last time I said this I caught flack and tried to be cute and dance around it to only state it was a select few out there but, let's be honest here, we're all tagged with this insult. When I say wrestling fans are dumb I mean every last one of us which includes myself.

But it isn't about why I think we're dumb, but rather why the rest of society looks down upon us and claims us to be dumb. That's where this all really stems from: the ostracization of our community from the rest of society and the media who snubs our fandom of this hobby. We're looked down upon as the lowest denominator within our culture for enjoying a "fake" sport. We're criticized as being closeted homosexuals for enjoying a show that features half naked men, glazed in baby oil to make themselves look bigger and more defined, touching one another to put on a "fake" fight. We're looked down upon by practically everyone, and we continuously give reason to keep up these ideals of our inferiority.

From the close minded twats who run about screaming about the lack of appraisal to the big companies on American TV to the people who constantly look at the Benoit tragedy as being a blemish to his career, or as some crazy conspiracy theory that holds no water. We've all earned this distinction as being dumb and on the anniversary of Chris's final days on Earth it's clear what the focus will be: Chris Benoit.

In this entire time I have one question for every wrestling fan, whether you think he's burning in hell, up in heaven with Eddie [Guerrero], if you think he was a good man that fell or an evil, horrid man; whether you believe he deserves to be honored or neglected as though he never existed: what are you doing to remember the loss of Nancy and Daniel?

The reason I ask this is because for a year, all the talk around this tragedy centers around Chris and his actions, but at no point do people look to even think of the victims of this event. All of the focus is centered entirely on the perpetrator of any heinous act; much like it always is within our society.

Take into account the examples of the Virginia Tech massacre. We know of the killer [Seung-Hui Cho] and have talked about him ad nauseaum, but what of the victims? Without researching it, can you name any one name of his thirty-two victims? The same with the Columbine massacre where, again, the focus was on the killers and the question that holds no answer, "how do we prevent these acts in the future?"

The only true difference here is that while everyone's focus is either to love or completely hate Chris, Nancy and Daniel get lost in the shuffle. People reacting to the pain of the situation only look to demonize Chris, all the while forgetting all about the victims in their attempt to preach on about hatred and disgust with one individual. All of the focus to try and hate this one person at the expense of a family stuck in mourning over the loss of three lives, two of which were tragically cut down by the selfish actions of one individual.

And even if people can't bring themselves to remember the victims of this disgusting act, why do we need to vocalize a label that only embellishes the hatred around him? I've laid out the question behind the need to label those based upon one, publicly aired out, incident about a year ago on my on and off again LiveJournal page.

Sometimes I forget I even have this thing, and when I do recall this journal profile remaining active, I simply just don't care to update upon it. I guess I just don't see the point of it, right now, with my videos all over the place where I pretty much talk about all of the things I care to announce for the world to hear.

But right now, there is something that's weighing on my mind that I feel I should make public - it's been something I've been thinking about for quite some time, but never bothered to bring forth on any public forum. But with the recent news of Chris Benoit's tragic end to his, and the lives of Nancy and Daniel, I guess I feel more compelled to make this public.

A part of me wonders just how complex a being we, as humans, really are, when our mentality about any and all situations seems to be so easily reduced to simplistic thoughts, at times.

Basically, what I'm getting at is this - why is it that the last actions a man (or woman) is recorded as doing overshadow the entirety of their life? At least with the way history will remember them.

Right now, while I'm disgusted with all those trying to depict Chris as a disgusting human being who was nothing more than a murderer, I'm also, equally disgusted with those trying to defend the man - either as a saint, or as a man who made a simplistic mistake, or as a victim to substance and circumstance, or whatever other notion these people are trying to contrive in their own mind. I can't align myself with either side of the argument, and a part of me wants to - I want to align myself with the delusional, because I cannot accept Benoit as being this disgusting individual that would up and decide - calculating, cerebrally and menacingly - to kill his own wife and youngest son. A part of me doesn't want to accept this, because it taints the very memory of him I grew up watching, and enjoying, and admiring - a part of me that always wanted to emulate this man feels so betrayed by his selfish, thoughtless actions.

But I also don't think it right to simply label the man upon the one last action committed in his life, because I can't believe that one action, no matter what it is, outweighs an entire lifetime of work - a lifetime body of actions.

A saw a video earlier this morning, by fairlyoffparents , in which he painted up a pretty good picture of how, psychologically, Benoit was a coward for his actions of suicide. That he doesn't deserve any respect because of his cowardice to confront life and its tough issues that press on us all - and especially those that pressed the hardest on him, individual, and his family. I still don't agree with the label he added about Benoit as being a murderer, because there was more to this man - much like there is more to any other man, such as Hitler, and Charles Manson. Yes, these are figures that conjure up hatred, and rightfully so; they slaughtered many, and possibly took delight in it all. But these two, as evil as they are portrayed by history, were also many things.

Does this, in anyway, justify their actions? No. I don't plan to sit here and try and justify their actions that took the lives of others, but I don't feel it right that we should judge a person as being good, or evil, just because of their last, recorded action, throughout history.

I don't think I could try and change a millennial worth of thought that dictates how humans will judge others. It's something almost inherent in us all, and while I dislike it with great passion, it's also something we have to, inevitably, live with.

Many will still choose between a paradoxical red and blue decision upon any subject - or a black and white. Forget hues and all that encompasses the between. Either a person is good or bad, either they're a saint or a sinner: they cannot be anything other than that, so our history books continue to teach us, and our media continues to feed us, and what we're instilled with as we're raised by our own parents and community. We cannot choose a differing option. We are stuck between the True or False answers that accompany all questions; we're stuck between choosing A or B, forget if there's a C or 'none of the above' answer.

While I'm probably not the right person to talk about this subject, now, considering my own bias towards Benoit, and my inherent want and desire to defend him, I do feel that right now I'm being nonpartisan.

Why is it more comforting, in these instances, safer and easier to label people? Why is it so much more fair to label Benoit as a scumbag and a disgusting human being, especially when all the media will ever cover are his final deeds on this planet? Does it not matter the amount of good he did through the years? Yes, what he did was horrible and in many eyes viewed as unforgivable. But we can still acknowledge his good deeds without praising the man or his final actions on Earth, can't we? We can still just remember him as being a decent man, and a caring man, whom made a disgusting, and horrible mistake, can we not?

I don't ask for others to pay tribute to this man - I can't see myself doing that with all of the facts coming in. But I do ask that we not label people so quickly all based upon their single actions. After all, we're all just people, and we are all flawed in our own ways.

If anything, I'd like to think of us all as just that, and nothing more. At least, I can only hope that others will possibly think the same.

The end result is more hate that hurts the surviving members of this tragedy, but of course no one cares to protect them so long as they get to voice out their displeasure and disgust. So long as they get to label Benoit, these individuals don't care about David and Megan, his children from his first marriage, nor do they care about the rest of the Benoit's and Toffoloni family. But hey, they're only a minor inconvenience to your podium to preach out about how you feel about the whole situation. It's not as if they matter, they only happened to suffer this tragedy on a first hand basis as it affected them the most and the worst.

In the end, as a society, we all fail and come off as completely selfish, but as a community who share in this hobby, we come off as hypocritical and manic. With many of us crying our crocodile tears over the loss of Eddie Guerrero, anytime we see the tell-tale signs of an impending shortened life of a worker, we tend to turn a blind eye to that situation.

The shocking passing of Eddie still lingers in the air, but the fact that he's more beloved now in death than he was for the majority of his life is telling of us as a community. It's no wonder we're looked down upon as we look to be the type that latch onto popular figures in their passing rather than worry about these men heading down that path. As a matter of fact we only further encourage their life style of heavy travel and brutal road schedules by being so demanding of shows coming to our towns when the clear cut alternative is supporting our local independent wrestling scene and patiently waiting out for the bigger shows to roll through our town.

The supply follows the demand, and seeing as the demand is so high that these performers are traveling around the world within the span of days, with almost no time to adjust and rest, it's easy to understand how some find an out in drugs to alleviate the pain of everyday work. But in this vicious cycle when the signs are clear as day that a worker is clearly suffering under these influences and needs an actual break from the grind, many think that those who voice out about those individuals needing time off are simply babying these workers. That somehow the value of them as a performer far exceeds their value as a human being.

We turn a blind eye to Kurt Angle and the issues within Jeff Hardy and William Regal, but continue to press on about how we "miss" Eddie Guerrero. The slogan of holding onto fond memories of Eddie seems to be all that we care about, as a community, as all we can do is talk about the past while ignoring the here and now of those who'll end up victims to the same fate of the Curt Henning, Richard Rood, Sherri Schrull, Elizabeth Hulette, Shayne Bower, Anthony Durante and the cast of others that have gone far too early, most with the aid of narcotics. I guess we love our "martyrs" more so than we actually enjoy their presence in the flesh, after all we are a community that thrives more on nostalgia than actually trying to enjoy the current. We're the same community that complains about a D-X reunion "tour" but eat it up and enjoy it over a more progressive turn and alternative that was growing more available on that one network the WWE's RAW stopped by on for a coffee break.

We ignore the signs and look only to the fallen figures that were more popular. The fact that we're entering into our third year anniversary of Eddie's death and people are still holding up tributes to him and his WWE-ized memory but turn blind eyes and deaf ears towards the growing problems should be a telling note of what kind of community we are.

Many look to scapegoat steroids as if it were the be-all and end-all of drugs that cut lives short within this industry when you still have healthy, aged examples of those who knew the dangers and how to properly use and cycle the hormones. The real enemy here is all of the other crutch drugs that these wrestlers use to numb the pain of everyday living. But it's hard to try and be compassionate about these workers when you couldn't care less for them until it's too late and they're now just a distant, fading and tarnished memory.

The way it stands, no other wrestler has ever been immortalized in their passing to the extent Eddie has become, and all people can do to justify his passing as being more meaningful is the logic that because he died in a time when he was still highly relevant and on the cusp of reaching stardom again as a champion. We basically spell out our own fucking shallow nature and vanity with such logic. That the life of these performers matter more to us when they're on the cusp of being relevant to the world as a whole as they near the top of the bigger company within the whole industry via the route of a championship role. Should they fall from the graces of our television screen and then pass on then they're just not nearly as missed, apparently. At least that's the logic one would draw from such a stupid answer.

So while we can all shrug off the nonsense of us being a community filled to the brim of fat, sweaty, closeted homosexual virgins who enjoy "fake" sports, it's harder to knock down some of these other complaints levied against us as we give [the rest of society] the ammunition to fire upon us. We give them the basis to create these labels for us. And while all of society can be depicted as being stupid we as a small community within the system have to learn to suck it up and accept that we are the dumb breed following the trend of wrestling. We as a community are rightfully labeled by these outsiders, and then further justifying the label by our own peers.

A field of elites who are anything but, a series of know-nothings pretending to be smarter than they actually are, and a snobbish field of anonymous trolls rummaging throughout our community. Intolerance is not only a common trait within members of this community; it's almost become a requirement. From the complete ignorance and nonacceptance of others opinions to the brutal belligerence of others cultures and the reality of a world beyond their narrow and naïve scope, this community earns this label in stripes.

We prove ourselves arrogant by holding up American televised companies as not only being the most important, but note that anything outside of American television, a company isn't worth noting. A majority of us look down upon an international scene as being inferior. We note any talent that isn't exposed on American television as being a "bush league" worker, and any love shown towards these individuals makes you a "smark" or an elitist snob. The irony there is that these people are just as elitist and as snobbish as the Puro marks who look down upon anything other than Japanese pro-wrestling.

Companies like AAA and CMLL work outside of our borders draw more ridiculous notions of being unimportant despite both having exposure on American television on Spanish networks such as Galavision, and being able to draw numbers comparable to any [non-Wrestlemania] WWE event.

Dragon Gate and NOAH hold televised events and tend to outdraw the bigger Japanese [pro-wrestling] companies in AJPW and NJPW in house show attendance, but they would be classified as being under a company such as TNA all because they lack American exposure.

We have members in our own community that can't even accept TNA as being a relevant company because they're so tied up in some necessary allegiance to the company that survived the Monday Night Wars. That somehow you can only watch and support one promotion regardless of whether you agree with its current direction or not despite the fact there are alternatives to watch and enjoy. That somehow one cannot find enjoyment, or discuss, nor by any means praise, anything that happened in front of a live crowd of upwards 3,000 people, or an international crowd who do not reside in this part of the world.

We all tend to hold true to our own narrow views, but some hold to it and expect others to follow it. We look to diminish one another with labels and titles such as "mark" or "smark" as if these terms were demeaning of some nature. We label those who are perceived as nerdy and pompous as being "smarks", as if to state they're elitists who try to impose their intelligence upon others by being the "cool" kids who are rebellious against media products and only look to praise the independent and international scene. And those who are looked down upon as dumb, and who are viewed as buying, ignorantly, into affiliations with one company or another as being "marks".

If one is to talk down about TNA, they're labeled as one of two things: a WWE mark or as a ROHbot. On the opposite spectrum, if one were to bash WWE, the most turned to insult to put down any argument against the company is to label the offender as a TNA mark. The same could be said of ROH and those who blindly defend it at all points by detracting the detractors with the labels of mark for either of the two [American] media products.

Perhaps many didn't catch the memo that we're all marks of this industry. We'd certainly have to be in order to keep supporting it in the fashions that we do. We all still find enjoyment of the product, and we all still come back for more. Our thoughts and opinions filled with both the kayfabe and non-kayfabe aspects of this industry. We return back to this industry at every chance, discussing, arguing, watching and stealing from it.

The truth is we, as a community, are all marks. We're all the targets this industry thrives and dies by, and considering what kind of actions we take to get our dose of a wrestling fix, we may be the very thing killing off this industry. Streaming live events, stealing events through downloads, and then in the small instances provided forth by WCW and now with TNA, we look to leech off of free seats as opposed to pay to attend live shows. It's almost no wonder why those in the industry tend to look down upon us, especially when this bunch of thieving dolts is voicing out. Demanding that their voices be heard to better a product for their own entertainment value, but yet are giving nothing back to the company to believe they're a worthwhile consumer for their product.

There is always more to be said of us and how ignorant we all truly are. Arguments about how quickly we are to criticize the younger generation of fans, claiming them to be ignorant when it's really us who forget how close minded we are currently, and how close minded we were in our youth. That we all had our own heroes growing up that would be looked down upon by the older fans of that time. How we ignore the turnabouts of creating new stars, and tunnel out visions to believe that a World Champion should be just a good in-ring wrestler, ignoring what made stars out of men like Steven Austin and The Rock, which weren't their performances in the ring. We forget what launched Hulk Hogan into legendary status, or one of the key attributes that solidified Ric Flair as "the man". But at this point I'm certain I already wrote about this aspect of why we're a dumb nation [Scripted Through Sin 6.03.08: Light Work Load Week ].

In the end, it's a wonder how anyone would want to call themselves a member of this community.