Thanks to John Roth for sending us this article:

Paul Heyman Speaks Out on WWE Star Chris Benoit's Tragedy

By John Roth
Feb 25, 2008

Former Extreme Wrestling owner Paul Heyman posted his first blog as part of the "Heyman Hustle" series running on the UK SUN website, and he couldn't have picked a more controversial subject. Heyman's choice of subject matter? The horrific Chris Benoit tragedy that rocked the WWE.

Paul Heyman Speaks Out on WWE Star Chris Benoit's Tragedy

In a blog entitled "I Have No Answers And Never Will" Heyman stated "Like many others, I spent a good part of last summer wondering what happened, speculating on the events that lead to the horrible tragedy on that awful weekend in June. But also like everyone else, I have no answers. My theories are exactly that. Just theories. The only people who can accurately tell us what happened, what caused the chain of events that lead to three people's lives being extinguished, are all gone."

***

Heyman, who brought Benoit to the original ECW promotion in 1994, only to see him jump (along with Dean Malenko and Eddie Guerrero) to Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling in August, 1995, also played a key part in helping Benoit's career in WWE. According to reports posted in the Wrestling Observer newsletter, Heyman persuaded WWE owner Vince McMahon to initiate a huge promotional push for Benoit and Chris Jericho in 2001, elevating them into a storyline against Stone Cold Steve Austin and HHH. Heyman was also the head writer for Smackdown in 2002, and got McMahon to sign off on Benoit and Eddie Guerrero being shifted from Raw to Smackdown, where Heyman, according to Inside Pulse, wrote the Smackdown show around "The Smackdown Six" of Benoit, Kurt Angle, Edge, Rey Mysterio, and Los Guerreros.

Heyman writes, "It's one of those things we're not supposed to understand, not supposed to be able to comprehend. Because we can't, even in our darkest moments, come remotely close to the very notion of harming our kids, let alone killing them. Even writing that felt awkward. It's like trying to wrap your mind around the emotions of a suicide bomber. You can't. You're not supposed to. You shouldn't WANT to be the type of person who understands. Like in this case. As I look back at all the media attention, I can submit to you it's a shame that missing in these stories is the tragic loss of three lives. "

***

Heyman, who according to WWE's Jim Ross is writing a couple of screenplays while working on the Hustle, concluded in what appeared to be a most painful perspective for himself. He wrote, "I wish I could offer some perspective that would bring closure for people, or a theory that could allow us to even begin to come to grips with it all. I don't have those words. I've been searching for a way to describe the anger, or the hurt, or the confusion we all feel trying to get past this enormous tragedy. I've given up."

There is more here and continuing, "It's just something, as my mother taught me many years ago, you have to live with, accept, and simply deal with for the rest of your life. The only perspective I can offer is not a comforting one. On that fateful weekend in June last year, in that house in Fayetville, Georgia, three people lost their lives. Two didn't have a choice."

Tags:

Comments are closed.