A lot of news has been passed around that David Benoit, son of Chris Benoit has said he wants to wrestle and maybe even call himself Chris Benoit Jr. I, like several wrestling fans out there, remember the day when we found out that Chris had murdered his wife and son and all the feelings from that happening.
Chris Benoit had a lot of fans at the time of the murder/suicide that occurred and when we heard the news it made us all think about if we wanted to do this anymore. Some gave up on wrestling for a while, but a lot of people blamed themselves and their cheering for him over the years somehow made that happen. Ultimately it didn’t but there was a lot of thinking about it during that time. I had to think about my fandom at the time too. Heck, I still have the Chris Benoit DVD collection the WWE released before any of that happened. I don’t think I’ve watched it many times since then, but I still have it. It took me a long time to even watch ANY matches with Chris Benoit in them. Not for any reason like I wasn’t cheering what happened or anything like that, but I didn’t want to be reminded of that weekend. I remember enough of that day and finding out the terrible news, I don’t need any reminders of it.
But as for David. I’m not against him wrestling. He did not do any of those things and he is free to wrestle or not. He is not his father or did anything of the bad things that Chris did. I wouldn’t blame him for anything like that and neither should anyone else out there.
But here is the thing. If he calls himself Chris Benoit Jr., I wouldn’t pay to see him wrestle either. Calling himself by his real name of David Benoit is one thing, but naming yourself after your father after the terrible things he is known for is seen as a grab for attention no matter what YOU are doing as a wrestler. Calling yourself that will just have you carry that dark cloud above your head and no matter what you do in that ring, there will always be that part that will never go away. You are inviting people to remember those bad times and dark things that were done. As a wrestler, there is NOTHING you are going to do to change that or erase those memories that live on in people’s minds.
I can understand he is in a weird position. And even with those kinds of things in your family name, I still think he should give wrestling a try if he wants to. But I am in favor of using your real name instead of calling yourself something with that cloud around it. If you want to “put on an image” and become a character, you can do a bunch of other things besides calling yourself something like that. Wear a mask, cover yourself in facepaint. By the look of the pictures that float around, it isn’t exactly a mystery who you are probably the son of. There isn’t much to change that, for better or worse. But in the wrestling business, you can change your name a bunch of times, So please don’t change it to something like that.
It probably doesn’t matter to many, but let me be one to say that you don’t need that kind of thing to make it. Work hard and be talented on your own and chances are with a good enough teacher, you probably will.
