Muchnick lays bare the murder-suicide of Chris Benoit, his wife Nancy,
and their seven-year-old son, Daniel. The Benoit murder-suicide in 2007
was one of the most shocking stories of that year in any realm, and a
seminal event in the history of wrestling. Featured on episode SE7ENTEEN
of the My Favorite Murder Podcast "Irvin Muchnick is hell-bent on
discovering the essence of the cover-ups, the nuts and bolts of the
investigations..."-- Wrestling Observer "The Ultimate Historical
Edition" extends the 2009 true crime account by connecting it to it to
someone who was then a bit player in the wrestling world: Donald Trump.
A new introduction reflects on Trump's business ties to WWE's McMahon
family, how wrestling "attitude" came to define the populist, demagogic
Trump presidency, and their similar scandal management playbooks.
Muchnick -- the author of Wrestling Babylon and a co-author of Benoit:
Wrestling with the Horror That Destroyed a Family and Crippled a Sport
--drilled down deep into public records and interviewed dozens of
witnesses, inside and outside wrestling, to put together the
authoritative account of the events of the gruesome June 2007 weekend in
Fayette County, Georgia, during which World Wrestling Entertainment
superstar Chris Benoit murdered his wife Nancy and their seven-year-old
son Daniel, before proceeding to kill himself. But this book goes beyond
the crime itself to answer some of the most important questions behind
it. The biography of Benoit, a wrestler's wrestler, makes it clear that
his tragedy was a microcosm of the culture of drugs and death behind the
scenes of one of North America's most popular brand of sports
entertainment. The author probes the story of the massive supplies of
steroids and human growth hormone found in his home -- all prescribed by
a "doctor to the stars" who got indicted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, and all dismissed by a WWE "wellness policy" that
promoted everything except its talent's wellness. The Benoit case led to
unprecedented scrutiny of wrestling's overall health and safety
standards, by Congressional investigators and others, and this book is
the primary source of what they found and what they should continue to
look for.
