Benoit

I've been a wrestling fan for 18+ years (for some reason I'm using Wrestlemania V as a reference point), I was a kid obviously as I'm 24 now and most people specially here in Hull, England they expect you to grow out of it by now...

I have many happy memories of watching wrestling, in the early 90s enjoying Bret Hart and The Hart Foundation, The Rockers, Ric Flair, Ted Diebse (booed like hell for him) and others.

I was a teenager during the Monday Night Wars period or the WWF Attitude period. It was a great time to be a wrestling fan we had WWF, WCW and ECW (Bravo would show ECW over here in the U.K.) which introduced me to a variety of different wrestlers, many I'd never heard of before and just completely blown away by, among them.

• Chris Jericho
• Eddie Guerrero
• Dean Malenko
• Chris Benoit

Loved um all and others (like Rey, Booker T and RVD), If anything they strengthed my love for wrestling those years (and it actually became cool again during this time period) and where all in WCW (minus RVD) when I was the beginning of my peak of being a wrestling fanatic- 1998. Jericho jumped ship to the WWF in the Summer of 99 with one of the greatest debuts in wrestling history and Guerrero, Malenko and Benoit (along with Perry Saturn) jumped ship in 2000, making me an incredibly happy bunny.

I was going to talk about my memories of some of these guys in the WWF (later WWE): Jericho becoming the first ever Undisputed World Champion, Benoit winning the Royal Rumble, Eddie winning the WWE Championship from Brock Lesnar and Benoit and Eddie at celebrating at Wrestlemania XX after Benoit had just won the Heavyweight Title.

The moment of Benoit and Eddie celebrating became more touching when Eddie Guerrero died in November 2005, I will not go into details here, but the death as a wrestling fan touched me and the image I'd keep in my mind forever...

Or so I thought. Last Monday. After Benoit cancelled his appearence at the Weekends House Shows and Vengeance PPV because of a family emergency, Benoit was found dead along with wife Nancy and his 7 year old son Daniel...Benoit had killed them both then killed himself, I don't want to go into the gory details, there's enough places on the internet that will tell you what probably happened step by step and I don't want to talk about if it was roid rage or too many concussions.

I wanted to talk about Chris Benoit: a wrestler I looked upto, he was arguably the most gifted technical wrestler wrestling today, a wrestler who I cheered for endlessly when I saw live, a wrestler I tuned into see regularly during the Monday Night Wars and beyond, a wrestler I shed a tear when he and Bret Hart fought in memory of Owen, a wrestler I so much wanted to be World Champion because he deserved it, a wrestler I choked up most when he spoke of his friendship with Eddie, that Wrestlemania XX ending, hell his matches against Jericho or Booker T which I loved so much.

But those memories are not gone, there tainted...tainted forever, Chris Benoit, a performer I looked up is a child killer, a murderer, plain and simple. It's knocked me for six honestly, it's hammered home the world is a bad place- stuff like this happens, stuff like this happens from people you'd never think. Benoit used to stand for what is right in wrestling now he stands for what's wrong in the world.

I'm not trying to write anything here that hasn't been said before I just wanted to get written down the events and how they effected me like many wrestling fans, and it's probably the most major wrestling incident ever...