Chris Benoit

Chris Benoit was great friends with Eddie Guerrero and when Eddie died in November 2005, Benoit went into depression. His colleagues said that Eddie’s death changed him on a deeper level and he was never the same after that.

Chris Benoit had married twice in his life. His first wife was Martina, with whom he had two children - a boy and a girl.

Benoit later started an affair with Nancy Sullivan, wife of his ring opponent, Kevil Sullivan. Nancy gave birth to Benoit’s son and the couple got married in 2000. Nancy filed for divorce in 2003, stating that she was being mistreated and accused Benoit of behaving violently. However, she took her charges back some time later, but this led to bitterness in their relationship, which lasted until his death.

Christopher Michael Benoit was born in Montreal, Canada on May 1967 and spent most of his childhood in Alberta. His father says that he was sort of obsessive as a child, totally in love with the idea of being a wrestler and started preparing himself by the age of 12. In high school, he won numerous awards in wrestling and bodybuilding and had unwavering focus on becoming a world class wrestler.

Tom Billington and Bret Hart were his inspirations as a kid and he attended several wrestling shows, where these two performed and he slowly became a huge fan. He imitated both the wrestlers while training and even incorporated Bret’s finishing move ‘sharpshooter’ as one of his very own finishing moves when he later started wrestling professionally.

Chris Benoit started his professional wrestling career in 1985 at the Stampede Wrestling Promotion, and his attachment with Bret Hart as well as Tom Bellington’s wrestling style became apparent as he perpetually used their moves sharpshooter, diving headbutt and snap suplex to spark fears in the hearts of his opponents. Due to his ferocious speed inside the ring and physical strength, he earned the nickname ‘Dynamite’.

In his ring debut in November 1985, Benoit participated in a tag team match and ended up winning, pinning one of his opponents down with a sunset flip.

The run at Stampede turned out to be quite successful and earned Benoit enough credibility as a wrestler to be considered for the bigger leagues. During his initial period at Stampede, he ended up winning four British Commonwealth Titles and four international Tag Team titles. In 1989 came the time to bid goodbye to Stampede and Benoit made a move to Japan for New Japan Pro-Wrestling.

He fought in the New Japan Pro-Wrestling under the name ‘The Pegasus Kid’ and sometime later, he started wearing a mask. Throughout early 90s, he earned for himself a big name in the NJPW by winning Best of Super Juniors tournament twice and secured a win in the Super J-Cup Tournament. During the early 90s, he kept wrestling in Japan, Mexico and Europe where he ended up winning a few small championship titles.

In 1992, his stint at the World Championship Wrestling got him further credibility as a brilliant wrestler and in 1994, at the Extreme Championship Wrestling he gained notoriety after starting feuds with some popular wrestlers and earned the nickname ‘Crippler Benoit’. His first American title win came in form of ECW World Tag Team Championship in 1995 and owing to the talent exchange program which persisted between NJPW and WCW, Benoit kept constantly switching between the two.

On June 25, 2007 police discovered the dead bodies of Benoit family, which included himself, his 7 year old son and his wife. Benoit, before killing himself by hanging through a weight machine, had killed his son and wife.

Several tributes were given to Benoit by WWE and his father claimed in an interview that, he had been suffering from depression, resulting from brain damage since a long time. Harmful toxics were found in all three victims’ body.

When his brain was analyzed, it turned out that several blows he received on his head over the years had caused irreversible damage to his brain, which led to mood swings, violent behaviour outside the ring, initiating an uncontrollably psychotic behaviour.