Benoit

Benoit : Wrestling with the Horror that Destroyed a Family and Crippled a Sport was published a few months after the Benoit family were found dead.

At the time, I didn't buy the book because I read a few reviews claiming that it was full of stuff I would have known already.

I saw it on sale the other day so thought it was time to try it out.

It was exactly what the reviewers had said. I didn't learn anything that I had already learnt from the coverage of the tragedy.

The book is made up of essays from four known wrestling writers.

Greg Oliver's essay highlights Chris Benoit's career as does the piece by Heath McCoy although McCoy's is mainly centred on Benoit's ascension from the Stampede promotion.

Irvin Muchnick focuses his attention on the death culture associated with wrestling using Benoit as the focal point.

Out of the four writers, I felt Steven Johnson's analysis of the media's reaction to the death to be the most interesting essay in the book.

Like I said, it's just a book that was a rush job printed to be the first one out about the Benoit deaths and it does tend to come across as an advertisement. I say this because all four authors have books by ECW Press which published this title. Space is given in the back of this book to promote the other offerings of these writers.

One of the things I raised my eyes to heaven over was Irv Mucnick making the obvious point that we'll never know what happened over that weekend yet, a few pages later, the publisher decided to shill Muchnick's next title - Chris & Nancy : The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide.