Ladies, or lack thereof, and gentlemen, tonight I will explain why the WWE is more responsible for the death of Chris Benoit than for that of Eddie Guerrero. I intend to do that in two ways, firstly by showing that they were responsible for Benoit's death, and secondly for showing that they weren't to blame for that of Eddie Guerrero.
I will begin my argument by making my own contributions, before addressing those of my opponent. I don't mind that my opponent will be slow, you only have one freshers week in your life, make the most of it. When you get to your last year, it becomes more acceptable to eat cereal and post on a wrestling forum in your boxers.
Anway, onto my argument...
Steroids didn't make Benoit kill his wife...
But the impact that sustained drug abuse had on him probably had an impact on it. The WWE may not have had a talent wellness policy before Guerrero died, but they weren't imposing it when Benoit died, despite the fact they should have been doing so. Benoit bought steroids in February 2006, it was later shown, and yet, the WWE didn't pick him up on that in over 16 months before he murdered his family, which seems very odd, doesn't it?
A little time off wouldn't go amiss
By all accounts, Chris Benoit moved into himself and struggled to cope with the death of Eddie Guerrero. Seeing as the wrestlers are away from home and on the road more than 200 days a year, it would surely have been noticed that Benoit was unstable, to say the least. The fact that this wasn't picked up on by anyone in the company, from talent relations to the company doctors allegedly carrying out these wellness inspections, suggests to me that they are neglecting the wellbeing of their talent, which is a bad move in any business, especially one as intense as professional wrestling.
Brain of an 85 year old with Alzheimers
That title was the description of Benoit's head after 20 years of head cracking chair shot action. It has been hypothesised that this brain damage led to the dementia that cause Benoit to kill his family, as it has been seen in 4 NFL players who also caused harm to themselves and others.Christopher Nowinski said that Benoit was one of the only wrestlers stupid enough to take a chair shot to the back of the head. This raises two questions: firstly, if some nobody wrestler like Nowinski is aware of the dangers of a chair shot to the back of the head, and most of the talent is, then why the fuck were the WWE letting him do take those shots?
Secondly, and perhaps more pertinantly, even without a wellness policy, the WWE should have been giving their talent regular medicals, to make sure they aren't going to die in the ring, or give their opponents AIDS and stuff. A sport like wrestling should treat a head scan as pretty essential in such a medical, afterall, brain damage and aneurysms are what will kil most people that die in the ring.
They should have known something was up
Benoit had a history of beating his wife, who had opened divorce proceedings twice against him for his violent behaviour. When Benoit started acting bizarrely and missing shows, the WWE should have tried to find out exactly what was wrong. Benoit was scheduled to fight on PPV, and they should have sent a doctor to diagnose the problem in his family, or at least called him to see where he was. In the end, he called them and described what was wrong with his family. He said he was at a hospital, but didn't say where, not to mention the fact he changed his story between speaking to a co worker and talent relations. The WWE didn't act, didn't question him, even though he was clearly troubled on the phone, as proven by Chavo calling him back.
That's it for now on Benoit, we move on to them not being to blame for Guerrero.
Guerrero was clean when he died
This is something that may suprise you, but there was nothing that shouldn't have been in Guerrero's system that shouldn't have been there. The WWE cannot be held responsible for what happened to Guerrero in the past. IT was drug abuse that killed Guerrero, but several years after the fact. If I died tomorrow because I breathed in asbestos at a factory job I had three years ago, it is not my current employer's fault. Its the same here.
1999 and all that...
Guerrero's problems began after he was rushed back from a car accident in 1999. That was when he worked for WCW, not WWE. It could be argued that Benoit's problems stemmed from his pre-WWF days too, but there is a problem with that. When Guerreo's problems came to light, he was put in rehab, then released. It was only when he returned much cleaner that he was given his job back. That is the WWE showing some responsibility.
Those are my arguments for the time being, I will now address my opponents...
SK said:
This means that they weren’t strongly trying to stop their wrestlers from taking any kind of drug, this is completely irresponsible by the WWE as the wrestlers weren’t checked up on therefore leaving themselves completely vulnerable. This for me is where the WWE becomes more at fault for Guerrero’s death rather than Benoit’s.
There are two problems with this. 1 Guerrero wasn't taking drugs when he died. 2. Benoit was when he died. It is true that there wasn't a wellness policy before Eddie, but it is also true that they didn't enforce it at all before Benoit died, which is probably worse, because the talent would be reliant on a wellness policy that wasn't even there.
The WWE are obviously also at a level of fault for Benoit’s death, however, the WWE talent wellness program was implemented before Benoit’s death, meaning that the WWE did actually try to cut down on wrestlers taking steroids and other dangerous drugs. Purely by implementing this program, the WWE become less at fault because this shows that they had clearly outlined what drugs were legal, and were actually trying to stop wrestlers from using them.
I think I'm correct in saying that they punished 1 person before Benoit died. It later emerged that at least 11 had been in receipt of drugs before he died, seemingly proving that the wellness policy was a waste of time until Benoit died.
Before Guerrero’s death, the number of wrestlers within the WWE must have been a lot higher, obviously there is no way knowing, but you’d have to assume that the wellness program certainly deterred wrestlers from taking steroids in fear of being fired. Now, this does make sense as well, Vince doesn’t want wrestlers dying in his company due to steroid use, I mean WWE openly suspended/released 11 performers immediately following release of their names in conjunction with anabolic steroid purchases. In this context, this means that before Guerrero died, Vince wasn’t as worried and didn’t check as much whether wrestlers used steroids. This puts the WWE at huge fault for the death of Guerrero, at least when Benoit died, the WWE were trying to stop steroid use, now while the talent wellness program isn’t 100% reliable and wrestlers aren’t constantly tested, they were at least making some effort to stop wrestlers taking illegal steroids.
The problem being that those guys should have failed drug tests. Those 11 all took drugs before Benoit died, but didn't get punished until after he did. The wellness policy before Benoit was a complete and utter dud. Afew developmental guys and Orton were the only suspensions before Benoit died, and in the time since we have seen over 20 times that figure. I sincerely doubt usage has gone up since then, so we have the only possible outcome being that the wellness policy wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
I leave this debate with this closing statement. My opponent has based his entire argument on a useless wellness policy, whereas I have looked deeper into the circumstances of both deaths. It seems apparent that the on the one hand we have the sudden death of a performer against a suicide of an unbalanced, unhealthy man. The WWE should have seen the signs with Benoit, and they didn't, and as a result, I have shown that the WWE were more responsible for the death of Chris Benoit than that of Eddie Guerrero.
