Some of you know that I worked as a personal trainer when I was in college - one of the things about working in that culture is that I was introduced to entire worlds that I was completely oblivious to, primarily the worlds of bodybuilding, powerlifting, mixed martial arts and professional wrestling. Most of the individuals in those worlds - well, let's just say that there are good guys and not-so-good guys.
Chris Benoit was one of the good guys. I had the opportunity to meet him twice - once as an up-and-coming wrestler in the now-defunct World Championship Wrestling and most recently in the Atlanta airport a few years ago just before he won the WWE world title at Wrestlemania XX. We were heading to the same gate in Atlanta and we had the chance to talk for about five minutes - most of which was him telling a rather funny story about his son, Daniel, who was four at the time.
I had never seen or heard anyone who had anything derogatory to say about Chris - it was always about his integrity, his respect and how polite he was to everyone, not to mention how much he loved his wife and children (he had two other children from a previous relationship). So to hear last night that Chris apparently killed his wife and son this weekend before killing himself sometime Monday was disheartening to say the least.
More details continue to leak out and by all accounts so far, the picture won't be very pretty. In some sense it's not surprising because we live in a very messed-up world...but it doesn't make this seem any less surreal.
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