Below are a couple of top news stories of the day, featuring Vince McMahon, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Chris Benoit and Jeff Jarrett.
• The Mr. McMahon docuseries on Netflix covers Chris Benoit and the 2007 double murder-suicide involving Benoit, his wife Nancy, and their son Daniel. Initially, WWE aired a tribute show to Benoit before details of the tragedy emerged, leading to criticism.
In the documentary, Vince McMahon dismisses the idea that CTE or steroids influenced Benoit’s actions, saying that Benoit just went nuts. Here’s what McMahon said:
“There is no correlation between taking steroids and what happened to Chris Benoit. Human beings are flawed. Chris went nuts. It happens in every form of life and everything. So that’s the only thing I can take away from it.
This doctor came up with this ridiculous statement of, ‘Okay, here is why Chris Benoit did this. There was some sort of trauma to his head.’
Things were shown where Chris would dive off the rope and hit someone with his head. That’s a complete work. It looks like there’s damage, and there’s not. We know what we’re doing. We don’t hurt each other.”
Chris Nowinski, founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, analyzed Benoit’s brain and believes Benoit suffered from CTE.
However, Stone Cold Steve Austin also downplayed the role of CTE, saying:
“I worked for a long time, I got dropped on my head one time, I got concussed there. But other than that I can’t remember having too many concussions in the business of pro wrestling. My take on that has always been if you’re just wrestling and you got a bunch of concussions you’re probably doing something wrong. I’m not a CTE guy, I just don’t believe in it.”
WATCH: Vince McMahon Forces Trish Stratus To Strip:
• Netflix has released all 6 episodes of the Vince McMahon docuseries today. Prior to this, McMahon issued a statement where he said the series is misleading.
Current AEW wrestler Jeff Jarrett had the following to say about this:
“Okay, that last line, ‘I hope the viewer will keep an open mind and remember that there are two sides to every story.’ Well, I’m going to kind of contradict that statement. I think there’s always three sides.
What is fascinating about all of this is the timing of it. Now, it’s being released on a Wednesday. Does Netflix usually release new episodes on Wednesdays? I’m not the biggest Netflix watcher.
It’s interesting that they’re releasing it on a Wednesday. The timing of it is very, very interesting.”
AEW Dynamite: Grand Slam takes place tonight.
