Theory for Benoit Murder - Suicide: Concussions

Qualifier: I know professional wrestling is fake. I'm only comparing it to real fighting because the effects of repeated head shots, whether from pounding or kicking or headbutting or from getting hit with chairs, is the same whether it's part of a show or part of a sport. Repetitive head trauma isn't good. Period.

I wrote a couple weeks ago about head injuries and their significance in fighting and how fighters are judged. It's my position that head injuries are far more damaging both acutely (including fatally) and over an average fighter's lifetime than punches below the belt. The incidence of dementia among fighters is so grave and alarming that I believe head shots should be banned just as punches below the belt are.

Today brings news about further medical review of professional wrestler Chris Benoit's brain tissue. Sports Legacy Institute is the same outfit who had brain tissue from NFL player Andre Waters examined following his suicide that showed advanced brain damage more common in a man twice his age.

Benoit's brain showed the same degenerative processes that doctors working for the institute found in the brains of two men who had played pro football and committed suicide, Cantu said. There were abnormal protein deposits caused by trauma to Benoit's brain, Cantu said.

There's not much evidence linking repeated brain injuries to sudden changes in behavior that could explain why someone would over the course of a few days kill his family and then commit suicide (much less in a very peculiar and demented manner). But there are established links between repeated brain trauma (e.g., concussions) and mental illnesses like depression, and between mental illness and sudden violence.

Chris Benoit's brain was diseased from repeated trauma, his testosterone level was ten-times higher than normal, and steroids were found in the house. Which -- the brain injuries or the increased testosterone -- played a greater role in this senseless murder-suicide? Did he also have some kind of serious mental illness? Or together was it all a lethal combination?

What I do know is those of you uncultured enough to actually enjoy watching boxers knock each other out or wrestlers pound each other over the head with chairs are entertained by watching people kill themselves. Less frequently, it's a quick and sudden death -- a "ring injury" chalked up to one of the risks of the "sport." All too often, though, it's a prolonged, senseless, and barbaric death -- one that robs your heroes and villains of their faculties and senses, not to mention stripping them of their humanity and dignity.

There's nothing noble about that whether it's boxing, MMA, or fake wrestling. You may as well throw people to the lions, you savages.