Plague of Strength

I think it goes without saying at this point that humanity is a colossal dumpster fire, and we have few redeeming qualities as a species beyond the fact that dogs and cats like some of us… and we have a propensity for culling our own numbers when need be. This series is about those people- the people who take it upon themselves to trim the fat from our numbers, either out of a desire to do the world some good or just because they’re crazier than a bag of wet cats (likely the latter).

Certainly, their selections do not always seem immediately beneficial, because when someone has snuffs the life out of a kid you can’t be certain that kid was going to grow up to be Pol Pot or not. I think at this point in our collective development, however, you know there is going to be a relatively even chance that they’re going to be so willfully ignorant that they’re an anti-vaxxer, a Flat Earther, or a Young Earther, and quite frankly all of those people are poison. Or they could be a future NXIVM cultist, a school shooter, a virulent racist, a xenophobe, one of the 56% of Americans who think the Arabic numeral system shouldn’t be taught in schools, or some other manner of pointlessly negative and useless individual with whom the world is likely better off without. And as you’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omlette and the above reasons a person shouldn’t exist, it seems like an acceptable risk taken to just get people off the planet as expeditiously as possible, because it’s a near certainty it’ll be justifiable in the aftermath.

The Killer Workouts series will highlight the people whose workouts might not have killed anyone (rhabdo rarely does), but the people who came up with them sure as fuck did. We’re talking jacked motherfuckers who turned into vicious slaughterbeasts for one reason or another and the workouts that had them looking good while doing humanity a service few openly appreciate (like thanking the cartels for wiping out that family of psychotic, almost-certainly-sex-trafficking FLDS cultists in Mexico last week). Yeah, it’s a dark topic, but frankly 2020 is looking like it’s going to be a pile of hot garbage and a little true crime action might be just what we need to distract us from the fact that everybody hates everybody and apparently no one gets their news from actual news sources anymore.

Speaking of which, he’s the story of the jacked-as-fuck, double-murder-suicide pro wrestler with hate in his heart and damage in his brain, Chris Benoit.

Chris Benoit Vital Statistics

Height: 5’10”

Weight: 220lbs

Best Lifts: 450lb bench press; insane enough muscular endurance to do 500 and 1000 Hindu squats (bethaks) pre-match at least twice a week on top of his regular heavy training and insanely heavy wrestling schedule.

Number of victims: 2

Date of Murder: June 22-27, 2007

Date of Arrest: December 23, 2005

Date of Birth: May 21, 1967

Victim Profile: His wife Nancy and their 7 year old son Daniel

Method of Murder: Ligature strangulation / Suffocation

Location: Fayatteville, Georgia, USA

Status: Comitted suicide by hanging himself on June 27, 2007

Chris Benoit, known colloquially as “The Canadian Crippler” was an obscenely thick-necked maniac who chased chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) like most 80s wrestlers chased pussy and cocaine, and who was so named because prior to breaking his own neck, he broke a bootleg version of the Iron Sheikh’s neck in the ring. This spine snapping psychopath headbutted his way through the wrestling ring for a career that spanned 22 years, four countries, and two continents, and ultimately ended in a double murder and suicide that was almost certainly the direct result of the fact he had more concussions in two decades than most three-man tag teams could accrue in ten years.

As a Canadian kid, Benoit grew up idolizing the legendary Hart wrestling legacy. He’d ride his pet moose, munching on maple leaves drizzled with syrup, following the Harts from town to town as they dominated the Canadian wrestling scene until joining their school as a teenager. From there, he kissed his moose goodbye and slapped her on the flank, sending her off into the great wilderness that is Canada and descended into the Stu Hart’s infamous Dungeon, where he promptly adopted the flying headbutt as his signature move in what can only described in hindsight as the worst decision anyone’s made since Donald Trump’s parents decided to carry that fat-bodied, mushroom-dicked halfwit to term.

Benoit made his debut in Stampede Wrestling as part of Stu Hart’s crew in 1985, then took his show on the road to Japan, Germany, and then Mexico, where he wrestled for a few years. After a brief stint in the WCW, Benoit managed to snag a tryout with the WWF, but ended up in the ECW instead. For those of you who are unaware of the ECW, it was literally every awesome thing about wrestling, overlaid with more insanity than any organization without “asylum” in its name has ever managed to corral in a group of human beings. If you filled Arkham Asylum inmates with steroids and meth and then set them loose in a wrestling ring, you might match the lunacy that ECW embodied.

We’re talking about people like Sandman, whose gimmick was “get drunk as fuck and hit motherfuckers with a a bit of wood;” Tara Chaos’s buddy Balls Mahoney, a fat dude in flannel who’s gimmick was literally being half of “The Hardcore Chair Swinging Freaks;” the maniacal, super-dickhead, ultra-stiff-promo cutting Dudley Boys; New Jack, who is a terrible wrestler and an even more lovably awful person, who caught a felony for stabbing the shit out of a guy in the ring, was sued for cutting another guy’s face half off in the ring and then telling the crowd he hoped he guy would die, and whose in-ring feud with yet another wrestler left him half blind and brain damaged and culminated in an actual attempted murder in the ring. These were not pretty boy bodybuilders who got greasy and threw each other around- these were genuinely unhinged people trying to commit grievous bodily harm to one another on a nightly basis… and whom The Canadian Crippler thought it a good idea to dive into face first, night after night.

There’s no evidence of what Benoit’s level of mental acuity prior to entering the ring was, but it’s safe to say that after a decade of nonstop head injuries he was not a bright man. Literally no thinking person in a potential fight to the death with desperately mentally ill people with profound brain damage and no job prospects beyond said fights would ever decide that using your forehead as your main weapon is a sound plan of attack. It’s about as sensible as trying to fight a grizzly bear with a cherry popsicle. Or suggesting that putting more firearms with a higher ammunition capacity into the hands of a populace that is demonstrating unprecedented levels of mental illness and a marked decline in IQ is going to be an effective method of countering the increased rate of mass shootings. Or using suffocation instead of the Heimlich as a means for aiding a person who’s clearly choking on their dinner. As I said, this man pursued brain injuries with a fervor most 20-something chicks lack even for posting half-naked selfies that in no way resemble their actual appearance and most evangelical church-goers lack for judging and refusing to aid their fellow man. In short, if he’d been hitting himself in the head with a ball-peen hammer all day long, he likely would have injured his brain less than he did in the ECW.

By 1995, Benoit had run the ECW gamut with aplomb, injuring himself and others enough to get himself a spot on WCW’s roster, in spite of the fact he cut the least interesting promos in history and appeared to be borderline retarded when speaking. Five years later, he’d won the WCW heavyweight championship and almost immediately jumped ship due to internal politics, landing a spot on the WWF roster with his best friend Eddie Guerrero. Over the course of the following five years, both Benoit and Guerrero struggled with substance abuse issues as they stayed on the road incessantly wrestling with the WWE. By 2005, Guerrero’s heart gave out, allegedly from his ridiculously heavy steroid use, and he died. In the aftermath of his friend’s death Benoit was an absolute trainwreck, but managed to hold it together for another two years, until another friend’s overdose death. Upon hearing Sherri Martel died of an overdose on oxys on June 15, 2007, Benoit, whacked off his face with Xanax and hydrocodone, fucking lost it and went on a small killing spree.

As one would expect from a man who was willing to dive face first into the chest of a hypermuscular man from 20 feet in the air, The Canadian Crippler was not one for half measures. Seven days after the death of Sensational Sherri, Benoit apparently waited for his wife Nancy to fall asleep face down, then jammed a knee in her back, wrapped an extension cord around her throat, and strangled her to death. He then followed that up with the suffocation death of his son, who he seems to have drugged with Xannies prior to smothering him. From there, called Eddie’s Guerrero’s brother and informed him he’d missed his flight and couldn’t make it to his next event. After seemingly following that with calls and texts to everyone in his phone to give them his address, Benoit went into his gym, wrapped the cable for his lat pulldown around his neck, pulled the stack as high as it would go, and dropped it. Though not exactly poetic, the man managed to go out with a piece of equipment that gave him the life he wanted to end, so it was a fitting way to snap his own massive neck as a method of rage-quitting life.

By this point, you might wonder what the fuck the point of this article is, because I’ve just described a man with profound brain damage and likely depression issues, coupled with severe substance abuse issues, and his descent into murderous madness, which has nothing whatsoever to do with training. But you’re wrong- the insane dedication Benoit had for collecting brain injuries paled in comparison to his dedication to the gym and dieting. Both Benoit and Eddie Guerrerro transformed their physiques completely after becoming friends (which they did in Japan after The Crippler knocked Guerrerro out cold) by becoming completely obsessive about their diet and training.

“Benoit was obsessed with the business, and, as Jericho recalled, this translated into his training. Even as a trainee, the Edmonton native put extreme effort towards ensuring he was in top physical condition at all times. Unsurprisingly, Benoit took his craft extremely seriously. Laziness wasn’t an option.

Y2J described his former acquaintance as “1000% dedicated to training.” He stated that when he, Benoit, Dean Malenko, and Eddie Guerrero were travelling together, Eddie and Benoit would regularly wake up at 7am to train on their days off, while he and Malenko relaxed until midday.

Chris and Eddie would spend ages stressing over the nutrient content of even the smallest snacks, and according to Jericho, Benoit would drink a cup of coffee and take two aspirins and an ephedra supplement before every workout, just to ensure he’d get as much as possible from each session” (Murray).

The reasoning behind this was simple- Benoit was a little guy from a pro wrestling perspective at that time- tiny, even. Though he’d bulked hard with Guerrero and stood 5’10” and a lean 220, he was tiny compared to guys like the 6’2″ 300lb Barbarian, 6’7″ 300lb Hulk Hogan, or even the relatively slender Macho Man at 6’2″ and 240lbs. He was constantly second guessing himself and his performances, and fought hard for every ounce of muscle he managed to wedge into his frame, which was no easy feat when he was constantly on the road and wrestling four nights a week… yet that didn’t matter to some of the bigger names.

According to Chris Jericho, who was about the same size as Eddie and Chris, a lot of the heavyweight wrestlers flat-out refused to work with them, despite their obvious skills. 80s-sized wrestlers like Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart and Hogan would make the matches shitty when they were forced into a match, because they “couldn’t match the smaller guys for athleticism, and would actively hold them back to maintain their slower, easier working style” (Murray). And though it seems shitty, it makes sense when you consider the fact that Neidhart was a former NFL player with a 600 pound bench who was four inches taller and over 60 pounds heavier than Benoit. So to him, matching the two men was essentially an insult- it was like throwing a feisty Jack Russell into a pit to fight a rabid mastiff and expecting the result to be both believable and not an absolute slaughter.

“Booker [T] even balked at working with Dean [Malenko], Eddy [Guerrerro] and me, complaining, “I ain’t no cruiserweight,” as if he would get leprosy from touching us.

There wasn’t a lot of cross-pollination among the cliques- it was almost like regressing to high school, where you had to be careful who you talked to and where you sat in the lunch room.  Once I sat down in catering at Hogan’s table and he looked at me like I’d whipped him across the face with my Jack Johnson” (Jericho).

As you can imagine, that led to in-ring intensity being more than matched by his gym intensity, because he had a massive chip on his shoulder and a shitload to prove as one of the littler wrestlers in the big two organizations. Though Benoit had started lifting in high school, his indoctrination to the 1980s North American wrestling training began in 1985, when he joined Stu Hart’s Dungeon. There, Benoit was a little guy among giants, and they trained and ate heavy in order to pack as much mass on as they could. Literal giants like the aforementioned Jim Neidhart trained there, as did another 600+ lb bencher, 6’4″ 325 lb Superstar Billy Graham, and those guys dictated the pack’s behavior when it came to eating and training- it was eat up and move weight or get the fuck out.

Benoit packed on some mass in his year with the Harts but his real physical transformation began when he started training at the New Japan Dojo in 1986. In the year he trained there, Benoit’s training methods and diet changed drastically- he stopped eating like a fat kid and training like a powerlifter, and started eating and training more like a cross between a bodybuilder and an old-school catch wrestler.

“We usually trained from ten in the morning until 1 in the afternoon. When I went there it was August and August and September are really warm over there and the New Japan dojo doesn’t have any air conditioning and they don’t have any heating in the winter, so you’re training basically in the weather outside. They make you do squats and run and do push-ups and bridges.

After the first day, the next day I had trouble walking down the stairs to our rooms because it was such a shock to my body because I was aching all over. I pushed myself to get out of bed and continue on.

[During the other hours, I slept most of the time. It was such a shock to my body, not only the training but the food that really burned me out for the whole day. I went from eating meat and potatoes to rice and fish and different vegetables. It’s a lot different than the diet I had been eating at home. Right now I’m real strict with my diet. I eat a lot of rice and a lot of fish and a lot of chicken. I love going over to Japan because I fit right in there when it comes to diet” (Keller).

Benoit then parleyed the training methods of the Japanese into a sick warmup for his wrestling performances that practically killed other wrestlers who tried it- he would do between 500 and 1000 Hindu squats (bethaks) pre-match (usually twice a week), alternating sets of 100-125 Hindu squats with 50-60 speed squats. To get a pump on pre-match, he would do an ultra-fast version of his entire week’s training with a ten pound dumbbell or ten pound plates to get a pump. He’d follow that with a bunch of neck isometrics to avoid ending up like the hapless ECW wrestler Sabu (who broke his neck at least twice in the ring)… and that was all prior to going into the ring for some hyper-physical wrestling.

Like most wrestlers of that era, their lifting schedule depended heavily on their travel schedule, but even 70+ year old WWE owner Vince McMahon can be found in hotel gyms at 2AM hitting the weights hard as shit to this day (and they were gassed up as fuck in Benoit’s era). Benoit, like all of the other wrestlers of that era, trained like a bodybuilder, hitting the weights four to six days a week, depending on their schedule. He’d tack that onto 30 minutes of running stairs or using a stair climber after hitting the weights, and then would do the aforementioned squat and pump workout on his “off” days.

As to his weight workouts, they were pretty standard- similar in form, function, and style to the Ultimate Warrior’s training routine. Using a bodybuilding split along the lines of chest/tris, back/bis, shoulders/traps, legs, Benoit would hit everything but arms (they’d only get nine sets) for 15-18 sets of 8-12 reps, supersetting everything he did and giving himself insanely short rest periods- usually 30-60 seconds. Therefore, he’d do a set of bench presses to the neck for eight to ten reps, then immediately grab dumbbells and do flyes to failure at around 12 reps. Though he needed to be strong, looking good mattered as much or more, so he rarely trained for strength, though he was a regular 450 bencher when the guys decided to throw down and see who could move the most weight.

And all of that training turned Benoit into the perfect woman-child-and-self killing machine. Well, not precisely, though they made the actual killing far, far easier. Though anyone who still visits this site from racid shitheaps of anti-intellectualism like Reddit or the No Fap fuckwit capital Bodybuilding.com are going to screech “STEROIDS” at the top of their lungs no matter what, Benoit was on HRT after letting himself crash off gear- his levels weren’t ten times higher than average like his former training partner, Eddie Guerrerro. Instead, it was because his endless string of flying headbutts had reduced his brain to fucking mush.

Post-mortem tests showed “that Benoit’s brain was so severely damaged it resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient” and that ” drugs, most notably steroids, were not a causal factor” in the killings (ABC News, Giannangelo). They added that basically anytime you hear about a former pro combat sports or football player doing something ultra crazy, like that fucking dipshit War Machine’s attempted murder on Christy Martin, it may well be because they took took many shots to the head. I’m not suggesting that excuses their actions or mitigates them, but I make the point simply because “roid rage” is definitively not the answer to why they did what they did.

“Bennet Omalu, MD, MPH, a leading forensic neuropathologist, the Chief Medical Examiner of San Joaquin County, CA, and founding member of the Sports Legacy Institute examined Chris Benoit’s brain as part of the Sports Legacy Project and had also examined the brains of Mike Webster, Terry Long, Andre Waters, and Justin Strzelczyk all of whom were professional football players, died by the age of fifty, and displayed similar psychological and behavioral profiles.  Their brains showed evidence of CTE and two of the players – Long, and Waters – committed suicide.   Mike Webster died of a heart attack, but suffered from dementia, depression, and exhibited erratic behavior after retiring from football. When Justin Strzelczyk died at the age of 36, he had been telling relatives he was hearing voices from “the evil ones” and then led police on a 40 mile high-speed chase through central New York at speeds up to 100 mph on the wrong side of the highway, which resulted in an explosive crash and his death” (Sports).

In other words, run all the gear you want, but if you’re not planning on murdering some people because the neighbor’s dog told you to, avoid throwing anyone a flying headbutt. And if you want some horrible but hilarious bullshit advice from a nearly retarded, bull necked maniac, here’s a completely horseshit tip from Randy Orton. I say it’s horseshit because if you’ve ever attempted this, you’ve nearly choked to death in the effort:

“I learned a lot from [former WWE champion] Chris Benoit. He doesn’t like shaker cups because they get dirty and stink so quickly. So he’ll take two scoops of protein powder and put it in his mouth dry, then put a little water in and shake his head around. I used to look at him and think, “Damn, that’s hardcore!” Then one day I was like, “fuck this shaker,” and I started doing it the Benoit way.”

Now do as hardcore superstar and deathmatch legend Shlak says- blast the fuck out of your gear and remember,

“if you’re gonna step into the ring, you better bring a helmet!”

And as always, help a motherfucker out and hit up my Patreon if you feel like this shit is worth keeping porn-and-gore filled, rather than sanitized for advertising. If you already do, I really appreciate the support of strength sports counterculture- we’re the only motherfuckers keeping it alive at this point.

Sources:

ABC News.  Benoit’s Brain Showed Severe Damage From Multiple Concussions, Doctor and Dad Say.  ABC.  5 Sep 2007.  Web.  7 Nov 2019.   https://web.archive.org/web/20071002202822/http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3560015&page=1

Giannangelo, Stephen J.  Real-Life Monsters: A Psychological Examination of the Serial Murderer.  Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012.

Jericho, Chris.  A Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex.  New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007

Keller, Wade.  My Torch Talk with Chris Benoit from 15 years ago (Part 2). Originally published in Torch Newsletter #365 , 16 Dec 1995. Reprinted from original. Pro Wrestling Torch. 10 Dec 2010. Web. 7 Nov 2019. https://pwtorch.com/artman2/publish/wadekellerdotcom/45950.shtml

Murderpedia. Christopher Michael Benoit. Murderpedia. Web. 5 Jan 2020. https://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/benoit-chris.htm

Murray, Andrew. 10 Things We Learned From Chris Jericho’s Podcast On Chris Benoit’s Death.  What Culture.  21 Jul 2017.  Web.  23 Sep 2019.  https://whatculture.com/wwe/10-things-we-learned-from-chris-jericho-39-s-podcast-on-chris-benoit-39-s-death?page=5

Sports Legacy Institute.  Wrestler Chris Benoit Brain’s Forensic Exam Consistent With Numerous Brain Injuries.  Science Daily.  6 Sep 2007.  Web.  7 Nov 2019.   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905224343.htm

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