Having had a day or two to let this simmer and sink in, I think the real holdup in my head is that it was Benoit that did it. I can grasp a father killing his wife and son. It's horrible, but I can understand it being possible. I think if it was any other guy in the WWE, I'd have accepted it by now. But it being Benoit is so out of left field for me, I just keep coming back to "Benoit? Really? Chris Benoit?"

We'll see what another day of simmering does.

A little something to lighten the mood, and a tribute to Nancy... sit back, relax and chortle as she seduces Mean Gene.

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To me that indicates that wrestling fans, no matter how jaded we act are really played at every turn. We buy the image of Christ Benoit as the ideal man larger then wrestling, a man able to stride past the bickering and small BS and remain real and true despite all the BS.

On top of a horrific act we have the entire Internet fanbase waking up in a jolt. This sounds like I'm some virtuos "I didn't buy that" guy, but I'm not. A lot of the problems is that we can't make the whole thing fit, we can't see THE Chris Benoit as a deranged murdering madman.

I think the way people are rallying against the mainstream news outlets linking this with steroids is...interesting. It's like people are trying to dissassociate the wrestling world and the rigours of the road (of which steroids are a huge part) from this. But Benoit lived and breathed wrestling, and there's a straight link in my mind between the industry and this tragedy.

For me it all comes down to the "Giant Scale" analogy. If you put JFK at one end of the scale, and Lee Harvey Oswald at the other, the scales don't balance out. How can a nobody be on the same level as a President? Same applies here. Chris Benoit on one side, and these murders on the other, and it just doesn't balance. Benoit was a guy you never really heard about causing backstage problems, or legal troubles, or having a bad attitude. Randy Orton could kill a hooker, and while we would all be a bit shocked, it wouldn't have the same fan reaction that this is getting.

And when it comes to the steroids, I think the fan backlash at the media is more with the fact that the media has already labeled Benoit an uncontrollable juicer who killed his family due to roid rage, when tox reports have not even come back to verify if Benoit was even on steroids at the time. I know that's why I am pissed at CNN and FoxNews.

Well...uh...he probably was an uncontrollable juicer. As I've mentioned already, steroid use is just one of those things that go hand-in-hand with pro. wrestling because, what with it being non-unionised, they have to keep working (and steroids help heal up nagging injuries) or they risk being fired without justification (ask Test).

I'm just seeing this whole thing as a result of a quite probably obsessive, maybe depressed man driven to the end of his tether by trying to bust his ass for an industry that doesn't really give anything back to its employees. I'm not absolving Benoit of blame for this, but it seems like obvious cause and effect to me.

I could be wrong, of course, but I'm in no hurry to defend wrestling as a whole in this, because I've always thought that it was a horrible, seedy, nasty business run like a school yard by roided up bullies. There's nothing honourable or respectable about it and a psychotic episode actually doesn't seem far fetched as an end for the ultimate product of that industry.

Regarding the whole steroid thing, I really don't think there's any way it was "roid rage". Way too premeditated. Way too deliberate. At least, if the time lines we've been given are right. However, caused by wear and tear from the industry? I could see someone like Benoit cracking. Hell, I could see it happening to Benoit more than anybody. By all accounts, no one was as dedicated to the craft than he was. He wouldn't be able to step away to clear his head. So I guess I could see the industry driving him to suicide once his body started breaking down, and he couldn't perform anymore.

The murder part though, no.

Okay, yeah, I agree with that. It was premediated, clearly, since he did it over a period of days.

I think the problem with the media coverage is that, one, it's clearly not a fit of roid rage, as Matt said, and two, there isn't exactly a great relationship between media and pro wrestling/fans, and that's going to go to the extreme here, with the media doing its sensationalist bullshit and making up half the shit they report, and wrestling fans having to put up it now on a national or international scale, with misinformation and ignorance flying around something that's already really fucking bad.

What? Where did I say it was justifiable or, worse, that these things might be an excuse?

Saying that there is a motivation beyond "Argh! I am psycho killer Benoit: being of pure evil!" doesn't mean I think it was any less horrific or contemptible - if anything it's worse because he did this awful thing for a reason that he thought out ahead of time rather than just going insane and killing them in a moment of blind rage.

The rights and wrongs aren't really up for debate here - he killed his wife and child. What I'm discussing is his reason for doing it, because I'm invested in the man to a certain extent and that makes me curious about the whole situation.