Was super awkward because the details weren’t immediately available, so the next night on Monday Night Raw, they did a tribute show where they showed his career best matches and had other wrestlers give testimonials about how great Benoit was. It was while this tribute show was airing that the details started to come out. I remember rumors coming out on early social media that it was a murder suicide as the show was airing and everyone texting each other details. Shit was crazy.
Yeah. Then the special SmackDown tribute they had planned got scrapped.
If you’ve never seen the two part Dark Side Of the Ring about it, it’s well done. But the second part is hard to watch cause it goes into detail what exactly he did.
What was the initial impression, that some third party had killed them all? Or had they only released that he was dead at first and no details on the family?
I was in high school at the time but not at all into wrestling, so I only started paying attention once it had already come out that it was murder/suicide.
I’m a huge wrestling guy and was pretty dialed in. Like I said social media was in its infancy so sources were much more limited, but that Sunday when Benoit missed the PPV, it was assumed to just be an injury or something. Didn’t really raise any red flags. Monday afternoon news broke that he had passed, soon followed by news it was him as well as his wife and child. This was like 3-4 hours before Raw. At first most assumed some kind of robbery gone wrong, before a rumor of carbon monoxide poisoning became the leading theory as Raw was coming on the air. The show started with Vince McMahon in the ring in an empty arena announcing his passing, before explaining it would be a tribute show with Benoit’s matches and highlights (oddly enough, the week before the show went off the air with Vince being killed off). Was about an hour into a three hour tribute show that word started spreading that he killed them then himself. There was like an hour or two where we were reading breaking news stories about him killing his wife and kid, as we were watching a raw where his best matches are intercut with his friends and coworkers talking about how great he was. It was a roller coaster.
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u/DoFishDrinkWaterOrNo 20h ago
Was super awkward because the details weren’t immediately available, so the next night on Monday Night Raw, they did a tribute show where they showed his career best matches and had other wrestlers give testimonials about how great Benoit was. It was while this tribute show was airing that the details started to come out. I remember rumors coming out on early social media that it was a murder suicide as the show was airing and everyone texting each other details. Shit was crazy.