As the furor over what took place over a week and a half ago in Atlanta with Chris Benoit and his family continues, the WWE continues to try and conduct business as usual, taking the stance they had no idea Chris was capable of doing what he did. That's fine. The company has taken the road of simply saying that they are going to wait for the reports to come out of what was in Chris' system at the time of his death, and if it turns out that he didn't have steroids, or even if he had a small amount, the WWE is going to feel it's off the hook. Only if there is a massive amount of steroids in Chris' system is the company really going to have to answer to authorities as well as the media that pounds them with questions.

There is another underlying question though when it comes to the WWE, and that is - what as a employer could they have done to avoid the Benoit tragedy. I truly find it hard to believe that a locker room like that of the WWE had no idea whatsoever that Benoit was not going through some serious depression, as well as had no clue that he and Nancy were having problems. Everyone continues to state how private a person Chris was, but even the most private people show emotion at one point or another. And if you go back and watch the RAW with tributes from the other wrestlers, it sounds like Chris did have those that he liked to hang around with as well as talk to.

Maybe now it is time for the WWE to look long and hard at itself in the mirror and take larger steps to stop its performers from getting to the point where Chris got. Let's face it, the wrestling business is non-stop. There is no offseason, it's a "go, go, go" business where one to three times a week a persons body is put through a tremendous amount of pressure to perform. And let's not forget the pressure that goes along with being a headliner on a major show or TV each and every week. Sometimes you almost have to sit back and wonder how the best of them really do it without cracking under the stress of it all.

So now with the ever growing backlash that the company is taking, the company should look to take some serious steps that would take some of the intense pressure off of its talent. They also must do whatever it takes to take the drug issue more seriously. How many have to die before the company starts to treat steroids as well as other drugs for what they are - illegal substances? Allowing an employee to take something either to gain a certain look, or to keep him or herself going simply goes against what the sport should be about. It is unfortunate that right now that is the focus of where everything is, but that is the sad truth of what wresting has turned into.

There is no real clear cut solution as to what should be done to make sure events like the one that took place last week does not happen again, but there are some things that the WWE should consider doing so that they can at least appear to make a better effort in trying to protect its image and more importantly, protect its talent from a tragic event. The first suggestion is some sort of mandatory offseason. I realize you can't just not have wrestling for a month or two out of the year, but what you can do is force talent, no matter what status they hold, to take a break. And by break I mean out of the year, a wrestler should be forced to take at least 4-6 weeks off. Maybe three sets of two weeks, which now a days is not all that much when your on the road for 250 days a year.

No one is going to lose their fever for a popular wrestler if they don't see them on TV for a few weeks a year. You have the popular injury angles that you can run, or maybe the fictional suspension, or whatever you come up with, it can work. Getting a guy away from the sport for a few weeks a year is not going to hurt the sport, but it can do a lot to help the wrestler. Another suggestion, and this one is a bit more extreme, is to totally rotate rosters every week. This would mean that in week one you have a set of wrestlers on RAW, ECW and SmackDown, and then the following week you have a totally different set of guys. I think that in a way was what the draft a few years ago was supposed to be, but that vision has been so blurred that you can see a wrestler on RAW Monday, ECW Tuesday, and then on SmackDown Friday. Now I realize that ECW and SmackDown are taped on Tuesday, but still, it sometimes seems like the rosters are thin, even with three brands and three shows.

Another thing the company has to do, is no matter what the results, they have to take the drug issue more seriously. If that means suspensions, firings, or rehab for guys - so be it. The list of young wrestlers that have died over the years continues to grow, and at some point, if not already, the WWE is going to be held responsible for the overlooking of those deaths. In the past two years, two major superstars - Eddie Guerrero and now Chris Benoit have been taken away from us by the problems that the sport continues to overlook.

This is not an issue that can be fixed overnight, nor is it something that will be able to be handled by simply doing one or two things. There must be major overhauls in the systems that are in place by the way the company handles its talent. Until that is done, more wrestlers lives are going to be put at risk by the lives they lead, and the lifestyle that the WWE continues to ignore.

Posted by Matt Loede on Friday, July 06, 2007 at 6:51 AM | Permalink