5. CHRIS BENOIT
Aliases – Pegasus Kid
Hometown – Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Debuted – 22nd November 1985
Died – 24th June 2007
Titles Held – WWE World Heavyweight; WCW World
Heavyweight; WWE Intercontinental; WWE United States; WWE World Tag Team; WCW World Tag Team
Other Accomplishments – Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame Class of 2003; won WWE’s Royal Rumble in 2004; won NJPW’s Super J Cup in 1994
EDITOR’S NOTE: This Top 100 list was initially compiled in April 2007 – two months before Chris Benoit killed his wife, son and then himself. While his place among the “Top 100 Wrestlers of The Modern Era” is no doubt tainted by this tragedy, and he may not have been included on the list if it was created after June 24 of that year, we have decided to leave Benoit on our list, in the #5 slot for which he was originally chosen. Following is an excerpt from Pulse Wrestling writer Scott Keith’s book, DUNGEON OF DEATH: Chris Benoit and the “Hart Family Curseâ€, including the chapter entitled “The Life of Chris Benoit” as well as the introduction to the following chapter, “The Death of Chris Benoit.” Rather than repeat all of the tragic details of the double-murder/suicide, we are instead asking that you make a donation to the the Nancy and Daniel Benoit Foundation for Battered Women and Abused Children, if you choose. (Donations can be sent to the foundation c/o Decker, Hallman, Barber and Briggs, 260 Peachtree St. Suite 1700, Atlanta, GA 30303.)
The Life of Chris Benoit
“That same night, there was a knock at the dressing room door. When I opened it, there was this little kid, maybe 12 or 13 years old standing there. I knew his face because he was always at the Stampede shows. He was a nice enough kid, and he told me he was working out — he showed me his muscles — and he said, ‘When I’m older, I want to be a wrestler, exactly like you.’ I said ‘OK, very good.’ His name was Chris Benoit, and when he grew up, he became a terrific wrestler.”
– Tom “Dynamite Kid” Billington reflects on meeting Chris Benoit for the first time in Pure Dynamite
They always said that he would never be a star, but in the end he will be remembered as the most famous professional wrestler in history, although not for anything positive. They always said that he didn’t have charisma, but his death drew the attention of media all over the world and served as the ultimate “heel turn” in a business filled with fake storyline twists every day.
The guy I knew as Chris Benoit, who was the best wrestler in the world more often than not and never had a bad word to say about anyone, was a totally different person than the guy he’ll be remembered as, and I guess that makes it easier to disconnect the two of them. I prefer to think of them as two different people, one guy who lived from 1967 until 2007 and the other guy who was created in 2007 and met with a vile end after doing horrible things to the people he loved. I think it was slightly easier to cope with the end, for me at least, because Benoit was obviously coming to the end of his run in the WWE by 2007 and we as fans were kind of mentally prepping for him not to be around any longer at some point.
Growing up in Western Canada as a wrestling fan, you couldn’t help but get sucked into the world of Stampede Wrestling, and all the kids at school had their own favorites. Some liked the various Hart brothers, although by the time my fandom came into full swing most of them were gone and the territory was down to Bruce Hart and younger brother Owen Hart. I didn’t see the fascination there, but I cheered for Owen anyway because he was exciting to watch in the ring. Some years later, he became my second-favorite wrestler in the world to watch, but at the peak of his career he was forced to perform a death-defying stunt, and couldn’t defy death as easily as he could defy gravity. Other friends of mine liked Brian Pillman, who was a teammate of the Harts and won over the Calgary faithful with his own high-flying moves and gritty underdog story. Some years later, those high flying moves took too much of a toll on his body and he took too many pills trying to fight the inevitable end of his career, and died as a result. Still other friends longed for the return of the greatest tag team to ever pass through Stampede Wrestling — the British Bulldogs — but when they did, it was a shell of what they used to be. And ultimately, they self-destructed just as surely as everyone else in wrestling seemed to. And when all his family had split apart or died, the guy who had engineered the whole Hart family dynasty in the first place, Stu Hart, watched his wife pass away and then lost all hope himself before dying of what many consider to be a broken heart as much as anything.
So it’s the story of Chris Benoit, mostly, but if you look a little further back at the lives that he touched and the people that influenced him, you could almost say that a curse hangs over the Hart family and the promotion they built from the ground up. So it’s also the story of those people, and as many others that I can cover who had a dream like Stu Hart, only to see it crushed by the heartless machine of professional wrestling. But let’s save the sadness for later, shall we? Like I said earlier, I prefer to remember the good person inside Benoit, not the bad one who came out later.
Born in Montreal on May 21 1967, Benoit moved to Edmonton at a young age and, like many other young kids at that time, instantly became a fan of Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling (or Klondike Wrestling as it was known back then) and specifically the Dynamite Kid. Although he always held himself up against the Kid as a standard, he easily topped anything that the Kid ever accomplished in the business and improved upon it greatly. He would never admit that, of course, because that was the kind of guy he was. Despite being small and young, he emerged from the Hart Dungeon at age 18 and almost immediately became a homegrown star, winning the International tag team titles with Ben Bassarab, a title which he would go on to hold four times (with Keith Hart, Lance Idol and Biff Wellington) during his career in Stampede. As a side note, his tag team partners also met with pretty bad ends, as Bassarab ended up serving a prison sentence for dealing drugs, which ended his wrestling career, then Lance Idol died of mysterious causes in the early 90s, and of course Biff Wellington died a few days before Benoit did. As of this writing, Keith Hart is still alive and healthy. Whew.
Chris Benoit also held the British Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight title four times during his 3-year run with the company, most notably during a period when he was trading the belt with Johnny Smith. That particular rivalry, which saw the formerly clean-cut Smith turning on Benoit and going heel, actually set the stage for a later feud featuring Benoit teaming with Davey Boy Smith to take on his idol Dynamite Kid and Johnny Smith in a sort of “battle of the British Bulldogs”. The feud that was supposed to revive Stampede again at the end of its run. It didn’t, but it’s hard to blame Benoit for that. Although he was becoming highly respected by his peers even at a young age, Benoit was always overshadowed by the only person in the territory who was even more talented: Owen Hart.
To try and forge his own name, Benoit started touring Japan in 1987, originally under the name “Dynamite Chris” (which he hated) and then later under a mask as the Pegasus Kid. Although he initially hated being low man on the totem pole again, he would grow to love the country and would build his career around trips there. To say Benoit took the Japanese by storm would be an understatement, as he was trained again in the New Japan rookie camp and was instantly treated like a star because of his resemblance to Japanese legend Dynamite Kid. I should also note that the New Japan camps had a brutal reputation, often working new recruits nearly to death and engaging in extremely strict discipline routines. This of course bears no small resemblance to the same treatment that Benoit would have endured as part of Stu Hart’s Dungeon, and goes a long way towards showing why his personality may have been the way it was. While jumping back and forth between Japan and Calgary, and later Mexico, he was earning a reputation as one of the top young workers on the international scene. He won the first ever Super J Cup in 1994, defeating Tiger Mask’s protégé The Great Sasuke in the finals. That match was notable for not only being off-the-charts great, but for also being a blow-by-blow tribute to the matches between Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask that defined the light heavyweight style in Japan years earlier.
But while the Japanese loved him, American audiences were indifferent. With Stampede long dead by 1992 and Benoit trying to break into the North American market again, he was limited to tryouts and one-shot deals to get a foothold. It is little remembered that the WWF actually wanted to sign him after giving him a tryout match against Owen Hart of all people in 1993, but his Japan commitments prevented that from happening. WCW was easier to work with, in that regard, thanks to their deals with New Japan, and so Benoit appeared for them doing weird stuff like a four-star tag team match with old partner Biff Wellington against Brian Pillman & Jushin Liger, or a four-star singles match in the opening match of SuperBrawl III against 2 Cold Scorpio. Apparently, however, having great matches and a cult following of hardcore fans just wasn’t enough to crack the elite ranks of WCW, where top-tier talent like the Shockmaster, the former Tugboat who debuted on live TV by tripping and falling through the wall of the set, or “Evad” Sullivan, whose imaginary rabbit friend was a better worker than he was, were pushed to the main event. However, while doing yet another oddball one-off show, a AAA-WCW collaboration called When Worlds Collide in 1994, Benoit finally earned enough attention to get a full-time gig in the US.
That gig was in upstart promotion ECW, as Paul Heyman was a smart judge of talent and knew that Benoit had a following built in. In fact both the NWA (which was largely a joke at that point) and ECW were bidding for his services, and Heyman stole Benoit out from under the lame duck NWA, along with Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko. Heyman’s plan was to build the company around Benoit, and to that end he was made the #2 guy under ECW champion Shane Douglas, as Douglas formed a team with Benoit and Malenko that became known as the Triple Threat. It was kind of a Four Horsemen for the Gen-X set, and it was during that period when Benoit earned his first gimmick, the hard way. He was wrestling Sabu, who was known for taking crazy bumps, and Sabu decided to use a strange headfirst landing off a simple suplex. This resulted in Sabu breaking his neck, and Heyman immediately put his marketing genius into action and dubbed Benoit “The Crippler,” finally giving him a “hook” after years of only having great wrestling matches as a gimmick. And once he was a star for the fledgling ECW and had a gimmick ready-made, WCW was ready to come calling again before Heyman could build his company around Benoit. Plus Benoit couldn’t get a work visa thanks to Heyman’s lack of organization, so he couldn’t come back to ECW even if he wanted to. It is of course ironic that WCW stole Benoit, Guerrero and Malenko out from under ECW and Paul Heyman complained loudly about it, because Heyman had done exactly the same thing to the NWA in the first place! Chris debuted in the fall of 1995 as a full-timer for WCW, although still occasionally jumped back to Japan to win the Super J tournament in 1994. When the Four Horsemen reformed for the millionth time in 1995 with his friend Brian Pillman as the third guy, Benoit was brought into the group as the fourth Horsemen, although rarely did interviews. But it was with that group that the next phase of his life would begin.
The Horsemen were feuding with Kevin Sullivan, who was booking WCW at that point, and Kevin wanted to have a major feud with Benoit because the matches would be great and he’d look like a million bucks while wrestling him. They had a classic, genre-defining crazy brawl at Great American Bash 96, which was Benoit’s first big push and saw him pinning Sullivan after suplexing him off a table on the top rope. I should also note that at one point they fought into the women’s bathroom, resulting in every brawl that WCW put on after that having to do the same spot. It’s one of the rare matches I’ve given the full five stars to, because it set the stage for every “hardcore” match that came after it.
However, to continue the feud, they did a weird deal. Here’s the setup: Nancy “Woman” Sullivan was married to Kevin Sullivan in real life, but her role on TV was valet to Ric Flair and the Horsemen. But everyone “knew” that Nancy was married to Kevin, so they started taping vignettes whereby Benoit would be romancing Nancy, at which point they admitted that the Sullivans were really married. That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that Kevin was so obsessed with the realism of the angle that he demanded that his wife accompany Benoit on the road and backstage, just in case someone saw them and reported back to the internet that they might be having an affair “for real”. Well, Kevin Sullivan proved to be too smart for his own good, as Chris and Nancy really WERE having an affair for real, which only made the feud that much hotter. Unfortunately, Kevin found out about it and his marriage collapsed, at which point Benoit moved in with Kevin’s wife and things started getting bad for him in his business life.
First, the Four Horsemen fell apart thanks to an injury sustained by Arn Anderson. Then Benoit got involved in a lengthy feud with the debuting Raven and ended up losing the majority of the matches against his flunkies to build up the big blowoff between them. The matches they eventually had were great, but now Benoit was being manipulated by politics where he hadn’t been before. The Benoit-Raven feud somehow turned into a Raven-DDP feud with Benoit also involved, because DDP was smart enough to raise his stock by having great matches with Benoit. However, Benoit was the guy who always ended up doing the job there (taking the loss to keep the other two strong) and it left him almost totally directionless as a result, despite wrestling for the US heavyweight title on a regular basis without ever winning it. However, by the midway point of 1998, WCW figured out that they could get another guy over by using Benoit, and booked a best-of-seven series between Booker T and Benoit to determine who the #1 contender for the TV title was. This series quickly became the stuff of legend, drawing great ratings for Nitro and newbie show Thunder, and Benoit’s fortunes appeared to be rising. However, he lost the series in the end and still had no titles to show for his years of service.
The problem was politics, in that WCW was a very political place and Benoit didn’t get involved in it. Once he stole Kevin Sullivan’s wife away there was little chance of fair treatment, and he didn’t have powerful enough friends to stand up for him. Things got worse when Kevin Nash took over booking in late 1998, immediately putting the WCW World title on himself and sending the promotion into a downward spiral that it never recovered from. Nash’s feelings on Benoit and his smaller friends were well known, as he was quoted in one backstage meeting as describing them as “vanilla midgets” who could never get over. Benoit finally got a major title, winning the WCW World tag team titles with longtime partner Dean Malenko as a part of the final failed iteration of the Four Horsemen, but he was clearly going nowhere as long as Kevin Nash was in charge. Nash was finally cut loose in August, and Benoit was given a push by the temporary committee in charge of the promotion, as he won the US title from comedy act David Flair before dropping it to Sid Vicious in a ludicrously booked match at Fall Brawl 99. I say “ludicrously” because everyone knew going into the match that Sid would win the title, since Sid was getting a main event push and didn’t even need the title or the win. And the match was even worse than expected, because of Sid again. Before the match, agents specifically told Sid that at one point Benoit was going to lock him into his finishing move, the Crippler Crossface. Sid would then escape, but at no point should he tap on the mat because that would indicate submission. And what did Sid do when Benoit grabbed his hold at the crucial point in the match? He tapped the mat like crazy.
Benoit’s highest-profile match came because of a sad circumstance, the death of Owen Hart. With Bret off for months to grieve and recover, the new management wanted to do a big match to pay tribute to Owen while they were running Nitro in the arena that he had died in. The natural matchup was Bret Hart v. Chris Benoit, and the result was a modern classic, the longest match in the history of the program at nearly 30 minutes long and an easy five-star classic that was carried by Benoit. Fan sentiment on who should have won was split harshly, with many (myself included) thinking that this would be Bret’s big chance to make Benoit into a giant star in Owen’s name, but it wasn’t to be, despite Bret’s best efforts to make Benoit into a star during the match. The front office just had no interest in making him into a star…until Vince Russo came along.
At this point Benoit was booked as a part of a strange group called “The Revolution,” a stable molded in the image of the Four Horsemen, with guys who were supposed to be angry about being held down by the old generation and stood up to do something about it. It consisted of the old ECW Triple Threat of Shane Douglas, Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko, plus Perry Saturn added in as a fourth. The funny thing is that everyone in the group really was getting sick of their treatment in WCW, and although they were “pushed” with token wins like Benoit’s US title reign, clearly the office had no use for them and were determined to “prove” that they weren’t over enough to justify spending further time on.
Vince Russo’s new regime changed all that, as he’s always been in love with the “young punks rising up against the establishment” theme, and he really loved Benoit. He immediately began pushing Benoit as a top star of the promotion, sending him all the way to the finals of a tournament for the WCW World title, but there just too many flaws to overcome. First of all, Russo’s booking is notorious for endless run-ins and storyline twists that are forgotten the next week, all of which rendered Benoit’s in-ring storytelling an academic point. No one cared about any of the wrestling and Benoit had nothing to work with. Second, the tournament itself was a freakshow, featuring 32 people in a promotion where they could barely find screen time for more than 12, and including managers and endless stipulation and comedy matches that killed any sense of drama that tournament might have had. Russo was clearly trying to replicate his greatest success in the WWF, the one-night Survivor Series 98 tournament that made the Rock into the WWF champion and a main event star, but WCW didn’t have the Rock, or Steve Austin, or a lot of guys that might have helped to pull it off. Finally, with WCW dying faster by the day as 1999 drew to a close, Russo was out and Kevin Sullivan was rumored to be back in as booker, and Benoit had had enough.
Clearly with Sullivan back on top no one was going to get a fair deal and mutiny was the word of the day backstage. Wrestlers like to talk shit a lot, but this was serious stuff because Benoit knew that if he was stuck in the promotion any longer his career would be ruined, and it was time for a change. After lots of big talk, a huge group of wrestlers planning a walk-out turned into Benoit, Douglas, Malenko, Saturn, Eddie Guerrero and Konnan. Things were getting worse for the promotion while having to deal with this, as Bret Hart was scheduled to defend his WCW World title against Goldberg at January’s Souled Out 2000, but he suffered a concussion. And then Goldberg decided to punch out a window in a limousine during a pre-taped vignette because he apparently thought that using his fist was just as good as using a piece of pipe, and he cut his forearm up all to hell and he couldn’t wrestle either. So they decided to run with Jeff Jarrett as champion, but then he suffered a concussion while wrestling three retired former stars in one night as a part of Russo’s brilliant booking plans, and he couldn’t take it. Even former UFC fighter Tank Abbott was pitched (which was what got Russo fired) and down the line went the title, like Judge Harry Stone on Night Court getting his judge job because no one else was home on a Sunday morning, being offered to guys who were smart enough not to want any part of it. Finally they essentially begged Benoit to take it, thinking that he cared enough about a belt to forget his threats, but to his credit Chris held his ground and said that if they put the title on him he’d throw it back at them and still leave. So they booked it anyway, a decent match where Benoit defeated Sid Vicious by submission (this time, Sid was SUPPOSED to tap the mat), and the next day asked him to stay after installing Sullivan as the new booker. Benoit was never even offered a chance to drop the title, and was so insulted by their treatment that he literally throw the title in the garbage can of the office and walked out with Saturn, Malenko, Guerrero and Douglas. Konnan also tried to walk, but when the WWF didn’t offer him or Douglas a deal they mysteriously walked back to WCW again.
And now, suddenly, Benoit was a hot commodity. The team that were immediately dubbed “The Radicalz” by the WWF marketing machine showed up on RAW in the front row and challenged top babyface stable D-Generation X on the spot. Of course, the honeymoon was short-lived, as D-X squashed them in a series of matches on Smackdown, culminating with World champion HHH beating Chris Benoit in Benoit’s debut match for the company. Apparently Benoit needed to “learn how to work” all over again. This has long been a source of bitterness for me and many others, because Benoit was an international superstar before HHH even began his TRAINING. It was looking like the same politics as in WCW, but in this case Benoit started having great matches with everyone and he was quickly pushed as a threat and people decided that after 15 years in the business maybe he DID know how to wrestle. He got his first major title in the WWF quickly into his run, winning the Intercontinental title from Kurt Angle at Wrestlemania 2000 in a three-way match with Chris Jericho. He even got a shot at the main event at Fully Loaded 2000 in July, facing the Rock in a hell of a good match where he appeared to win the WWF World title before the decision was reversed. But although he was drawing good numbers and having great matches, he always had the stigma of being WCW attached to him, and was never able to break through. A brief feud with HHH at the end of 2000 produced another great match, but Benoit’s reward was another trip to the midcard for the Intercontinental title again instead of getting the big belt. Finally, in 2001, with the “Invasion” underway and former ECW owner Paul Heyman heavily influencing things, Benoit and Jericho were teamed up to win the tag team titles from Steve Austin and HHH, a match that was one of the best in RAW history and was intended to finally propel both guys to the main event for good. They followed up with a pair of singles matches pitting Benoit against Steve Austin for the World title on RAW and Smackdown, the latter of which was by far the greatest match in the history of that particular program and was taped in Benoit’s hometown of Edmonton, Alberta. It almost succeeded in making them stars, but then HHH tore his quad muscle during the tag title match, derailing any Benoit v. HHH program right out of the gate, and then the news got worse for Chris, even as the WCW invasion seemed to be tailor made for him to break out as a star. Benoit was in another main event, a three-way against tag team champion partner Chris Jericho and WWF World champion Steve Austin at King of the Ring 2001, but Vince McMahon completely gave up on the match before the show started and booked a total squash by Austin, as he single-handedly beat the team who had been tag team champions just days before. Benoit still took a crazy bump on the back of his neck during the dead match, because that’s what he does, but he suffered the consequences.
In June of 2001, doctors informed him that he needed neck fusion surgery after years of suplexes and diving headbutts, and he’d have to miss a year of action during the period when his career should have been taking off. He missed the entire WCW invasion (which some might argue was a good thing anyway) and returned to almost no fanfare a year later, moving to Smackdown as tag team champions with Kurt Angle to build up a main event feud between them. Again, Benoit wasn’t going to win, but Paul Heyman was the guy in charge and pushed hard enough for him that they were able to do a strong match at Royal Rumble 2003; a match that Benoit drew a standing ovation for. Clearly he was being positioned for bigger things, but the creative team changed again and Chris was out in the cold, stuck back in the tag team ranks and feuding with Rhyno in a pointless storyline that was leading nowhere for him. Oddly enough, at this point he was actually voted into the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame for his years of great matches and technical expertise. I say oddly because he was still an active wrestler and also a guy who had never won a World title or been on top of a promotion before. However, he was voted in by his peers on the strengths of his work and being able to adjust to a multitude of different styles — everything from brawling to mat-wrestling to the vague “WWE Main Event Style” that dominated the new century. And for a while, that seemed like it would be his biggest honor in the sport.
But by the fall of 2003, change was in the air again. While I was chatting with a friend of mine on the writing team, he mentioned that they wanted to push Eddie Guerrero to the main event against Brock Lesnar, and they also “had plans” for Chris Benoit. Benoit quickly lost a great match to Smackdown World champion Brock Lesnar around that time, which I thought was the end of it, but little did we know that Lesnar was trying to get out of his WWE contract and they needed someone to carry the main event while they prepped newcomers Randy Orton and John Cena for the job. Benoit started feuding with Smackdown “general manager” Paul Heyman and the deal was that because he lost his title match, he’d never ever ever ever get another title match again, unless he happened to win the Royal Rumble in January. And even then he was being forced to enter at #1, so you might as well just forget about it. And indeed, as was hinted by the setup, Benoit won the Rumble, going over 60 minutes and setting a longevity record in the process, thus earning a shot at the World championship of his choice at Wrestlemania XX. This, by the way, was clearly the greatest moment of my wrestling fandom, the kind of thing that we as Edmonton wrestling fans had been waiting for many years to witness: Chris Benoit being cleanly and definitively allowed to win the big match.
Then, at Wrestlemania, he won the bigger match, making HHH submit to the crossface in a triple-threat match with Shawn Michaels also involved, winning his first legitimate World singles title. Early in the build for the match it was looking a repeat of the DDP/Raven/Benoit debacle from WCW where a third person (Raven in that case, Shawn in this case) was inserted into a feud that had been meant to get Benoit over, but the victory just made it all the sweeter. It was a fantastic match, the best three-way match ever in my opinion, and ended the night with Benoit celebrating with fellow World champion Eddie Guerrero to a sea of confetti in a scene that will sadly never be seen on WWE programming again. He defended the title at Backlash in his hometown of Edmonton in a rematch of the Wrestlemania main event, in another great match, and actually went on to defeat HHH in subsequent rematches, in the process doing something that no one else in the sport outside of Batista can claim to have done: Definitively won a feud against HHH.
Sadly, if that was the climax of his career, the rest was the anti-climax. Benoit was told from the start that his reign would be a transitional one, because they wanted to get the title onto Randy Orton, and as promised he lost the title cleanly to Orton at Summerslam 2004 in yet another great match. It didn’t help Orton, who was a flop as champion, and Benoit kind of faded back into the midcard again, having hit his peak and satisfied with it. He was moved back to Smackdown in 2005 and spent a good chunk of time as the US champion, occasionally working great matches with new guys like MVP and Ken Kennedy and seemingly on the fast track for a career as head trainer whenever he decided that he had had enough of the business. By June of 2007, the “draft lottery” sent him to loser brand ECW (once a fiercely independent promotion, now the dumping ground for the WWE’s failed experiments) and he was scheduled to defeat hot newcomer CM Punk to win the ECW World title at Vengeance 2007 and hopefully elevate him to the next level in the process.
On the night before the show, he called into the office to say that he wouldn’t be there, and that’s when the world fell apart.
The Death of Chris Benoit
“C, S. My physical address is 130 Green Meadow Lane. Fayetteville Georgia. 30215
The dogs are in the enclosed pool area. Garage side door is open”
– Chris Benoit’s ominous text message to co-workers and friends.
I was working on Monday, June 26 2007, when my wife called me and told me that she had just heard that Chris Benoit was dead, along with his whole family. My immediate reaction was that she had confused him with former partner Biff Wellington, as I had been having a conversation with her the night before about Wellington’s recent death and how Benoit had likely missed the PPV on Sunday night because of it. However, the sudden rash of text messages on my cell phone only confirmed the worst — it was indeed Chris who had died, with the rumor being that everyone had carbon monoxide poisoning in the new house, and it was a horrible tragedy. Of course, it certainly turned out to be a tragedy, but not what we expected.
Scott Keith’s DUNGEON OF DEATH: Chris Benoit and the “Hart Family Curseâ€, published by Citadel, is available at Amazon.com.
The entire Top 100 Wrestlers feature can be found here.
