RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Sports and Wrestling Pulse Wrestling's Top 100 of the Modern Era

needs to be reseen.

actually, hogan probably isn't even second place. this site is filled with smartierer and internettier fans than even you guys -- my ultimate prediction is flair taking the top spot, and the selection of austin for #2, hogan for #3. not that they like austin at all, or could even credit him, but their hatred for hogan is so blinding, they kick him down from spite.

. THE ROCK

Real Name: Dwayne Douglas Johnson
Aliases: Flex Kavana, Rocky Maivia
Hometown: Hayward, California
Debut: 1995
Titles Held: USWA World Tag Team Championship (2X with Bart Sawyer); WCW Championship (2X); WWF/E Championship (7X); WWF Intercontinental Championship (2X); WWF Tag Team Championship (3X with Mankind); (1X with The Undertaker); (1X with Chris Jericho)
Other Accomplishments: 2000 Royal Rumble Winner; Slammy Award for New Sensation; Sixth Triple Crown Champion; Observer Newsletter’s Best Box Office Draw in 2000; Best Gimmick in 1999, Best On Interviews in 1999 and 2000, Most charismatic from 1999 to 2002, Most Improved in 1998; Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame Class of 2007; PWI Match of the Year in 1999 (vs. Mankind in an “I Quit” match); PWI Match of the Year in 2002 (vs. Hulk Hogan); PWI’s Most Popular Wrestler of the Year in 1999 and 2000; PWI Wrestler of the Year in 2000; PWI ranked #2 of the 500 best singles wrestlers of the year in the PWI 500 in 2000

Quite frankly, alongside Shawn Michaels, The Rock is my favorite professional wrestler. No man could quite so electrify a crowd, quite so bring millions of people to their feet, or quite so get those millions… and millions of people to chant his name simply by tilting his head to the side and wishing it so.

Born into a family of professional wrestlers, The Rock had plenty of time to learn the business. I think my favorite story of The Rock as a kid was that of the time he gave a piledriver to a fellow student in order to prove that professional wrestling was indeed real.

Originally born in Hayward, California, as a young boy and man, The Rock had already been accoustomed to traveling across the globe, living in places such as Auckland, New Zealand, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He joined the family business in 1995, being trained by his reluctant father. With help from Pat Patterson, The Rock had several try out matches before being signed for a short period to Jerry Lawler’s United States Wrestling Association, wrestling under the name “Flex Kavana”.

The Rock made his debut in the WWF under the name “Rocky Maivia” only to have the fans completely turn on him with “Die Rocky Die!” chants. God I loved those. I still remember being in awe at how much the crowd hated Rocky and how he just kept smiling at them like an idiot. It still makes me grin. It wasn’t until The Rock turned heel, joining the Nation of Domination, that he finally came into his own. His promo work was getting better day by day and I personally always enjoyed his work a lot more than that of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin (who seemed to just say the stuff again and again). Yes, The Rock did repeat himself and his catch phrases, but he did a lot of funny and unique changes that still remain memorable today. In fact I still believe that without The Rock, there would be no “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Rocky was the perfect foil for Austin to play against and they complemented each other perfectly. Why else would these two guys faced each other three times at Wrestlemania?

In fact from all the wrestlers who have come and gone, if you were to hold a vote amongst the loyal wrestling fans as to who they would like to see return for one last match or program, The Rock would be near the top of the list, if not the top. A lot of people were reminded of how much they missed this legend when he gave his lengthy speech that inducted his grandfather into the WWE’s Hall of Fame. I know I did. Man I wish he was still around. I think my favorite memories of The Rock stem from his promos on Stephanie McMahon and HHH, when he was calling her a whore. Those were the days. Just awesome and hilarious promos that made me refuse to miss a single episode of Monday Night Raw.

The fact that The Rock is the only professional wrestler in the history of the WWE to have a show named after him and that says it all. Smackdown. What more could say how much a bigger role he played in the history of professional wrestling than that. In fact I still don’t believe that the company was ever able to recover from losing him. Orton seems to be coming into his own but he still seems unable to make us smile the way The Rock used to. They tried to mold Cena into a Rocky-variation and they might have succeeded if they hadn’t watered down the character for the debut of The Marine and he never recovered. Other than those two guys currently, they have literally no one who can entertain us the way The Rock could back then.

I think later in life The Rock will return to the ring in a manager role but never again in an in ring capacity and that really is a shame. I don’t think there was anyone who literally was quite as electrifying to watch in an in-ring capacity than when The Rock did his hope spots. I still remember being a kid and begging my parents to order the Rock vs. Mankind vs. Ken Shamrock PPV match and them making it clear that it just wasn’t happening. I also remember jumping with excitement the next day when I heard that The Rock had managed to pull out the victory. That was the kind of effect The Rock had on me and millions of other kids. It wasn’t that we loved The Rock. We wanted to be him. Hell I still want to be him…. Don’t you?

6. BRET HART

Aliases: The Hitman, The Excellence of Execution
Hometown: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Debut: 1976 (Stampede), 1984 (WWF), 1997 (WCW)
Titles Held: WWF Champion (5x); WWF Tag Team Champion (2x, with Jim Neidhart); WWF Intercontinental Champion (2x); WCW World Heavyweight Champion (2x); WCW United States Champion (4x); WCW World Tag Team Champion (with Goldberg); NWA International Tag Team Champion (5x, 4 with Keith Hart, 1 with Leo Burke); Stampede British Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight Champion (3x); Stampede North American Heavyweight Championship (6 times); WWC Caribbean Tag Team Champion (1x, with Smith Hart)
Other Accomplishments: Winner of Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s Match of the Year award in 1989 (vs. Ric Flair - May 7, 1989); WWF King of the Ring in 1991 and 1993; Co-winner of the Royal Rumble in 1994; Member of WWF Hall of Fame (Class of 2006); Stampede Wrestling Hall of Fame; Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame (Class of 2008); Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame (Class of 1996); Ranked #1 Singles Wrestler in PWI 500 for 1993/1994; Wrestling Observer Newsletter Feud of the Winner in 1993 (Jerry Lawler) and 1997 (Hart Foundation vs. Steve Austin); Two WON 5 Star Matches (vs. Owen Hart in Steel Cage at Summerslam ‘94 and vs. Steve Austin in a Submission Match at Wrestlemania XIII); Holds the record for most consecutive Wrestlemania appearances with 12; Placed 39th in CBC’s 100 Greatest Canadians List (Between Mario Lemieux and Avril Lavigne!); Author of autobiography Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling; appeared on television programs like the Simpsons, Mad TV, and Lonesome Dove: the Outlaw Years; Never injured an opponent in the ring (unlike some people (Goldberg)) during his career

Disclaimer: I’m going to ignore Bret’s run in Stampede because I’ve never seen any of it. I’m also going to skip right over his tag run with Neidhart because, as good as they were, you could not swing Hornswoggle around without hitting a good tag team in the WWF of the ’80s (even if he and Neidhart did help establish the big man/little man dyanmic teams from Cryme Tyme to LAX to Steenerico use today). And his family heritage should go without saying, so I will. I’m focusing pretty much solely on his WWF singles run, with a backhanded nod to his WCW run. So, you know, viva la career retrospective!

For a generation, “The Best There Is, The Best There Was, The Best There Ever Will Be” isn’t just a catchphrase; it’s the truth. I’m talking about my generation, specifically; fans who came to WWF in the period between the Boom times of Rock ‘n’ Wrestling and the Attitude era, the ill fated New Generation period. It was a pretty critical era in wrestling history, as Shawn Michaels came in to his own a singles wrestler and the rest of the Clique flourished, creating future stars like Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Sean Waltman. I have to jam Owen Hart’s rise from jobber to the stars to upper mid-carder in there, too, even if his connection to Bret had a whole hell of a lot to do with it.

It was a down period for Vince and co., though, both in business and in product. For every great moment or match, there were seemingly hundreds of lame gimmick wrestlers; enough for a couple guys to start a website about them that has become a cottage industry. Against that backdrop or Lex Expresses, wrestlers with second jobs ranging from hog farmer to garbage man, and Doink and his menagerie of midgets, Bret stood out like, well, a man in pink and black tightes. His no frills entrance (other than giving his trademark shades to a ringside fan, almost always a kid) and ultra technical in ring style stood out from everyone else on the WWF roster at the time, especially since other mat technicians like Mr. Perfect, Ric Flair, and Ted Dibiase had been phased out around the time I became a fan (fall of 1993). Hart was the last real bastion of guys who could have good matches with anyone, which is why he was one of the only people to make Yokozuna and Diesel not look terrible during their runs on top, and get top shelf matches with the few people who weren’t slugs on the WWE roster. That was pretty much just Owen and the Clique until Austin came along.

Which leads us to his oft discussed in ring style. He gets a lot of crap for how formulaic he was in the ring, most notably Ric Flair. Beyond the fact that it’s amazing that Flair would have the balls to call anyone formulaic (I say this as a Flair mark, mind you, but come on!), it kind of amazes me that anyone can knock in anyone else in mainstream American wrestling for having a formula for their matches. Everybody, from Samoa Joe to CM Punk to John Cena to Undertaker today to Ricky Steamboat, Randy Savage, Flair, and Hulk Hogan in the ‘80s and Austin, Goldberg and Rocky in the ‘90s, has a formula. Wrestling matches are largely built on formulas. The crowd knows what they’re seeing and act accordingly. Occasionally the formulas are broken and tweaked to get a crowd reaction or show that this is a really serious match (Savage dropping five elbows on Warrior at ‘Mania VII comes to mind).

Yes, Bret leaned on the infamous 5 Moves of Doom (a term made famous by one of Hart’s biggest fans on the ‘net, amusingly) too much and could dog it in the ring with best of them, but that doesn’t change the fact that he could make anyone he worked with, from Papa Shango to Fatu watchable, and dragged a blown up Davey Boy Smith through a classic at Summerslam ’92. Aside from excellent one off matches with the likes of Mr. Perfect, Flair, and the 1-2-3 Kid, he had memorable runs with everyone from his brother Owen to legends like Jerry Lawler and Bob Backlund.

He can also take credit for being a significant figure in the careers of both Stone Cold and the Undertaker. In the former case, he helped Austin move from the realm of underrated mat technician to bona fide megastar during their epic feud. Austin got his first chance to really cut loose in the ring(and one of his last, due to that neck injury Owen gave him) at Survivor Series ‘96, and things just kept escalating between them from there, both in ring and on the mic. Without Bret as a foil, it’s likely Austin never would have been able to develop the character that defined the WWE’s boom period. In the latter case, he was the first guy to prove you could actually have good matches with the Undertaker that didn’t involve flat out brawls or gimmicks (i.e., he was the first to have solid to great matches with him not named Mick Foley).

And, of course, there are his many matches with Shawn Michaels. Their rivalry spilled over from the ring to backstage and back again. As the two best workers in the company for the majority of their run as solo stars, they constantly jockeyed with one another for favor with Vince and to have the best matches on the card. They were also pioneers, having the first ladder and Ironman matches in company history. Neither of those matches really lives up to the standards set by later iterations, but that’s the problem with being a pioneer; you get there first, but everyone who comes after can improve upon what you did. In fact, their best match (at least by reputation) was probably the one that came the earliest in their series, and had the least gimmicks around it; a champion vs. champion bout for Bret’s WWF title at Survivor Series ’92 before either guy became so wrapped up in political maneuvering.

Their Ironman match is a particularly thorny thing to judge; it’s an impressive feat simply that they wrestled for over an hour, especially in 1996, but their unwillingness to take a fall for the duration of the scheduled 60 minutes, and Bret’s particular lack of interest in making any of Shawn’s submission offense look good, hurt the match a lot. Also, Shawn hitting the superkick on a leg that Bret all but tore off and beat him about the head with doesn’t sit too well. There were issues on all sides there. Of course, they had one last match that was notably disappointing, but more about that later.

Compared to the colorful performers who sandwiched is sporadic runs on top of the WWF, he was a throwback. Stacked up to the guys who preceded him, he wasn’t a larger than live superhero like Hogan or Warrior, a manic cartoon character like Savage, and he didn’t ooze charisma and style like Ric Flair. Compared to the guys that followed him, he wasn’t the bad ass that Stone Cold was or the verbally gifted showman the Rock was. He never had a gimmick with the mystique the Undertaker always carries in to any match, and he had to get all foreigny to get the kind of insane reactions John Cena gets. He couldn’t combine all of that showmanship and technical chops like Flair, Kurt Angle, Eddie Guerrero, and Shawn did at their peaks. It’s fair to say that he was never quite considered the worker that Benoit and Eddie were, either. And, of course, he lacked the freakish size and physique of the likes of Andre, Yoko, Batista, Khali, Big Show, and Goldberg (the oaf that ended his career with an errant boot). He and HHH share a year and change period where they were the guy in the ring, but Bret never had Hunter’s ability to drop dick jokes and come up with enough impressive sounding nicknames to choke Jim Ross. And he never married in to the family, either. Have to mention that. By law.

He was merely a gifted technician who told you what he was going to do and went out and did it. In any other medium besides wrestling, his catchphrase would be incredibly grandiose, but even ignoring the fact that the Rock and Flair blow him out of the water with their bravado, he made his boast sound less like smack talk and more like a plain statement of fact. He was relatively clean cut, (greasy hair aside) and he was one of the last wrestlers to see his role as top guy in the company to involve being a role model for children (although I have to think Cena and Mysterio have taken up that mantle). He has more in common with a Bob Backlund or Bruno Sammartino than anyone other significant figures you can compare him to in WWE history (it’s really weird going back and forth between the two abbreviations, but there is a distinction there, I think).

Sure, he has a famous name that helped him get a foot in the door (well, that and Vince bought Stampede). However, as history has shown, that will only take you so far. You have to be able to back it in a significant way to make it to the top, and Bret is right there with the likes of Eddie, the Rock, and Curt Hennig, in a place where he was able to transcend his famous name and be a cut or twelve above the likes of your Greg Gagnes and David Sammartinos. Jeff Jarrett is somewhere in the middle in my books; certainly good in his own right, but not an upper echelon performer, no matter how many rented NWA Titles he throws in my face otherwise. I have no idea where to stick Randy Orton, since I find him supremely underwhelming but have to admit he plays his role well. Also, he’s pretty damn young to even be in this conversation, world title reigns aside.

Unfortunately for Bret, it’s his throwback ideals that made him the odd man out in the birth pangs of the Attitude era, the singularly turbulent year of 1997. Bret still viewed things in black and white as shades of gray became the new direction of the company he’d been such a loyal hand for, causing the famous double turn at Wrestlemania, which set the wheels in motion for what happened in Montreal. It’s a shame, really that, for all his accomplishments in the ring, Bret is more remembered for the Montreal Screwjob to the majority of modern day fans. That pivotal moment, when Vince McMahon told Earl Hebner to “ring the fucking bell!”, transforming him forever from goofy announcer to evil corporate overlord of WWE, created the Mr. McMahon character that was one of the pivotal parts of the Attitude Era, but it was also the functional end of Bret’s career.

Sure, he went on to WCW and won all of their major upper card titles, but Vince proved prophetic when he said WCW would screw it up with him (not that you needed to be a prophet to predict WCW screwing up something that could have been huge). Bret was worth more to WWF as a member of the WCW roster than he ever was to WCW, as he was a pivotal, tragic figure in WWF lore but just another guy on WCW’s bloated roster. His main event push in ’99 wound up being too little, too late, and not just because Goldberg brained him a couple times at Starcade to end his career (even though he hung around working matches for another month; man, those were painful); in the grand scheme of things, he was just another older guy in a parade of them in WCW’s main event scene, and it was two whole years after the iron was hottest with him. Even the one thing he did in WCW that was worth preserving for posterity on his WWE produced career retrospective DVD, his tribute match to Owen with Chris Benoit, is tarnished for obvious reasons, even if Bret had nothing to do with it; that was pretty much the one thing that made his trip down south worthwhile, and now it’s compromised, too.

Despite all of the bitter irony and tragedy you can ring (and many people have rung) out of the end of Bret’s career, I can’t bring myself to consider him a tragic figure, even with the stroke and dressing up like this. I can’t entirely go along with the idea that he was screwed, or care even if he was in the final, Glazer-esque factual analysis. That’s partially because I think he was being a bigger diva than an army of bikini clad Hawaiian Tropics models with two hours of wrestling training from Fit Finlay in refusing to drop the title to Shawn. That said, I have to believe that even if he’d agreed to lay down for Shawn, the ending of the match would have been the same anyway, solely because it created Mr. McMahon. I don’t believe that was a happy accident.

But Montreal navel gazing aside, I mostly refuse to see him as victim because, no matter how pivotal he was in the biggest sea change in modern wrestling history, I’d prefer to remember him as the guy who could get a solid match out of anyone and great matches out of the best workers he was paired with. I have to imagine that he wants it that way. That’s a big reason why he’s at this place on the list, a rather fitting one to encapsulate his career. He was never considered the absolute best to lace on the boots, but he was certainly in the conversation. Even more so for anyone who was ever 12 years old and had to choose between him and Lex Luger as their favorite WWF babyface going in to Wrestlemania X.

we only have 5 left. there's still hogan, flair, stone cold, family murderer benoit, and hbk? maybe vinnie mahon makes the list? am i missing anyone else?

of those, what's your guesses for the order?

was curt henning worthy of being ranked so high on the list? i enjoyed the mr. perfect run, especially the very beginning with those cool promos, but is he really in the top 15 of all time?

As far as ring skill he would have to rank higher than Bret Hart. Bret has more belts but much like Nash he was champ in a down time. He had a heck of a run in the AWA before the WWF as well.

I'm beginning to think they might leave Benoit off the list. While a phenomenal in-ring performer, his lacking mic skills would move him lower down the list than top five in the minds of many. Combine that with the stigmatization of the Benoit name following the murder/suicide, and I think it might be a long shot that he even makes an appearance on this list. I haven't the foggiest as to who else would take his place in the top five....

Benoit was a helluva wrestler, but really only came into his own character wise in the WWE, so that only gives him a 3-4 year run as a complete wrestler, I don't see how he rates higher than many of these top 20 guys.

5. CHRIS BENOIT

Aliases - Pegasus Kid
Hometown - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Debuted - 22nd November 1985
Died - 24th June 2007
Titles Held - WWE World Heavyweight; WCW World
Heavyweight; WWE Intercontinental; WWE United States; WWE World Tag Team; WCW World Tag Team
Other Accomplishments - Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame Class of 2003; won WWE’s Royal Rumble in 2004; won NJPW’s Super J Cup in 1994

EDITOR’S NOTE: This Top 100 list was initially compiled in April 2007 - two months before Chris Benoit killed his wife, son and then himself. While his place among the “Top 100 Wrestlers of The Modern Era” is no doubt tainted by this tragedy, and he may not have been included on the list if it was created after June 24 of that year, we have decided to leave Benoit on our list, in the #5 slot for which he was originally chosen. Following is an excerpt from Pulse Wrestling writer Scott Keith’s book, DUNGEON OF DEATH: Chris Benoit and the “Hart Family Curse”, including the chapter entitled “The Life of Chris Benoit” as well as the introduction to the following chapter, “The Death of Chris Benoit.” Rather than repeat all of the tragic details of the double-murder/suicide, we are instead asking that you make a donation to the the Nancy and Daniel Benoit Foundation for Battered Women and Abused Children, if you choose. (Donations can be sent to the foundation c/o Decker, Hallman, Barber and Briggs, 260 Peachtree St. Suite 1700, Atlanta, GA 30303.)

The Life of Chris Benoit

“That same night, there was a knock at the dressing room door. When I opened it, there was this little kid, maybe 12 or 13 years old standing there. I knew his face because he was always at the Stampede shows. He was a nice enough kid, and he told me he was working out — he showed me his muscles — and he said, ‘When I’m older, I want to be a wrestler, exactly like you.’ I said ‘OK, very good.’ His name was Chris Benoit, and when he grew up, he became a terrific wrestler.”


- Tom “Dynamite Kid” Billington reflects on meeting Chris Benoit for the first time in Pure Dynamite

They always said that he would never be a star, but in the end he will be remembered as the most famous professional wrestler in history, although not for anything positive. They always said that he didn’t have charisma, but his death drew the attention of media all over the world and served as the ultimate “heel turn” in a business filled with fake storyline twists every day.

The guy I knew as Chris Benoit, who was the best wrestler in the world more often than not and never had a bad word to say about anyone, was a totally different person than the guy he’ll be remembered as, and I guess that makes it easier to disconnect the two of them. I prefer to think of them as two different people, one guy who lived from 1967 until 2007 and the other guy who was created in 2007 and met with a vile end after doing horrible things to the people he loved. I think it was slightly easier to cope with the end, for me at least, because Benoit was obviously coming to the end of his run in the WWE by 2007 and we as fans were kind of mentally prepping for him not to be around any longer at some point.

Growing up in Western Canada as a wrestling fan, you couldn’t help but get sucked into the world of Stampede Wrestling, and all the kids at school had their own favorites. Some liked the various Hart brothers, although by the time my fandom came into full swing most of them were gone and the territory was down to Bruce Hart and younger brother Owen Hart. I didn’t see the fascination there, but I cheered for Owen anyway because he was exciting to watch in the ring. Some years later, he became my second-favorite wrestler in the world to watch, but at the peak of his career he was forced to perform a death-defying stunt, and couldn’t defy death as easily as he could defy gravity. Other friends of mine liked Brian Pillman, who was a teammate of the Harts and won over the Calgary faithful with his own high-flying moves and gritty underdog story. Some years later, those high flying moves took too much of a toll on his body and he took too many pills trying to fight the inevitable end of his career, and died as a result. Still other friends longed for the return of the greatest tag team to ever pass through Stampede Wrestling — the British Bulldogs — but when they did, it was a shell of what they used to be. And ultimately, they self-destructed just as surely as everyone else in wrestling seemed to. And when all his family had split apart or died, the guy who had engineered the whole Hart family dynasty in the first place, Stu Hart, watched his wife pass away and then lost all hope himself before dying of what many consider to be a broken heart as much as anything.

So it’s the story of Chris Benoit, mostly, but if you look a little further back at the lives that he touched and the people that influenced him, you could almost say that a curse hangs over the Hart family and the promotion they built from the ground up. So it’s also the story of those people, and as many others that I can cover who had a dream like Stu Hart, only to see it crushed by the heartless machine of professional wrestling. But let’s save the sadness for later, shall we? Like I said earlier, I prefer to remember the good person inside Benoit, not the bad one who came out later.

Born in Montreal on May 21 1967, Benoit moved to Edmonton at a young age and, like many other young kids at that time, instantly became a fan of Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling (or Klondike Wrestling as it was known back then) and specifically the Dynamite Kid. Although he always held himself up against the Kid as a standard, he easily topped anything that the Kid ever accomplished in the business and improved upon it greatly. He would never admit that, of course, because that was the kind of guy he was. Despite being small and young, he emerged from the Hart Dungeon at age 18 and almost immediately became a homegrown star, winning the International tag team titles with Ben Bassarab, a title which he would go on to hold four times (with Keith Hart, Lance Idol and Biff Wellington) during his career in Stampede. As a side note, his tag team partners also met with pretty bad ends, as Bassarab ended up serving a prison sentence for dealing drugs, which ended his wrestling career, then Lance Idol died of mysterious causes in the early 90s, and of course Biff Wellington died a few days before Benoit did. As of this writing, Keith Hart is still alive and healthy. Whew.

Chris Benoit also held the British Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight title four times during his 3-year run with the company, most notably during a period when he was trading the belt with Johnny Smith. That particular rivalry, which saw the formerly clean-cut Smith turning on Benoit and going heel, actually set the stage for a later feud featuring Benoit teaming with Davey Boy Smith to take on his idol Dynamite Kid and Johnny Smith in a sort of “battle of the British Bulldogs”. The feud that was supposed to revive Stampede again at the end of its run. It didn’t, but it’s hard to blame Benoit for that. Although he was becoming highly respected by his peers even at a young age, Benoit was always overshadowed by the only person in the territory who was even more talented: Owen Hart.

To try and forge his own name, Benoit started touring Japan in 1987, originally under the name “Dynamite Chris” (which he hated) and then later under a mask as the Pegasus Kid. Although he initially hated being low man on the totem pole again, he would grow to love the country and would build his career around trips there. To say Benoit took the Japanese by storm would be an understatement, as he was trained again in the New Japan rookie camp and was instantly treated like a star because of his resemblance to Japanese legend Dynamite Kid. I should also note that the New Japan camps had a brutal reputation, often working new recruits nearly to death and engaging in extremely strict discipline routines. This of course bears no small resemblance to the same treatment that Benoit would have endured as part of Stu Hart’s Dungeon, and goes a long way towards showing why his personality may have been the way it was. While jumping back and forth between Japan and Calgary, and later Mexico, he was earning a reputation as one of the top young workers on the international scene. He won the first ever Super J Cup in 1994, defeating Tiger Mask’s protégé The Great Sasuke in the finals. That match was notable for not only being off-the-charts great, but for also being a blow-by-blow tribute to the matches between Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask that defined the light heavyweight style in Japan years earlier.

But while the Japanese loved him, American audiences were indifferent. With Stampede long dead by 1992 and Benoit trying to break into the North American market again, he was limited to tryouts and one-shot deals to get a foothold. It is little remembered that the WWF actually wanted to sign him after giving him a tryout match against Owen Hart of all people in 1993, but his Japan commitments prevented that from happening. WCW was easier to work with, in that regard, thanks to their deals with New Japan, and so Benoit appeared for them doing weird stuff like a four-star tag team match with old partner Biff Wellington against Brian Pillman & Jushin Liger, or a four-star singles match in the opening match of SuperBrawl III against 2 Cold Scorpio. Apparently, however, having great matches and a cult following of hardcore fans just wasn’t enough to crack the elite ranks of WCW, where top-tier talent like the Shockmaster, the former Tugboat who debuted on live TV by tripping and falling through the wall of the set, or “Evad” Sullivan, whose imaginary rabbit friend was a better worker than he was, were pushed to the main event. However, while doing yet another oddball one-off show, a AAA-WCW collaboration called When Worlds Collide in 1994, Benoit finally earned enough attention to get a full-time gig in the US.

That gig was in upstart promotion ECW, as Paul Heyman was a smart judge of talent and knew that Benoit had a following built in. In fact both the NWA (which was largely a joke at that point) and ECW were bidding for his services, and Heyman stole Benoit out from under the lame duck NWA, along with Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko. Heyman’s plan was to build the company around Benoit, and to that end he was made the #2 guy under ECW champion Shane Douglas, as Douglas formed a team with Benoit and Malenko that became known as the Triple Threat. It was kind of a Four Horsemen for the Gen-X set, and it was during that period when Benoit earned his first gimmick, the hard way. He was wrestling Sabu, who was known for taking crazy bumps, and Sabu decided to use a strange headfirst landing off a simple suplex. This resulted in Sabu breaking his neck, and Heyman immediately put his marketing genius into action and dubbed Benoit “The Crippler,” finally giving him a “hook” after years of only having great wrestling matches as a gimmick. And once he was a star for the fledgling ECW and had a gimmick ready-made, WCW was ready to come calling again before Heyman could build his company around Benoit. Plus Benoit couldn’t get a work visa thanks to Heyman’s lack of organization, so he couldn’t come back to ECW even if he wanted to. It is of course ironic that WCW stole Benoit, Guerrero and Malenko out from under ECW and Paul Heyman complained loudly about it, because Heyman had done exactly the same thing to the NWA in the first place! Chris debuted in the fall of 1995 as a full-timer for WCW, although still occasionally jumped back to Japan to win the Super J tournament in 1994. When the Four Horsemen reformed for the millionth time in 1995 with his friend Brian Pillman as the third guy, Benoit was brought into the group as the fourth Horsemen, although rarely did interviews. But it was with that group that the next phase of his life would begin.

The Horsemen were feuding with Kevin Sullivan, who was booking WCW at that point, and Kevin wanted to have a major feud with Benoit because the matches would be great and he’d look like a million bucks while wrestling him. They had a classic, genre-defining crazy brawl at Great American Bash 96, which was Benoit’s first big push and saw him pinning Sullivan after suplexing him off a table on the top rope. I should also note that at one point they fought into the women’s bathroom, resulting in every brawl that WCW put on after that having to do the same spot. It’s one of the rare matches I’ve given the full five stars to, because it set the stage for every “hardcore” match that came after it.

However, to continue the feud, they did a weird deal. Here’s the setup: Nancy “Woman” Sullivan was married to Kevin Sullivan in real life, but her role on TV was valet to Ric Flair and the Horsemen. But everyone “knew” that Nancy was married to Kevin, so they started taping vignettes whereby Benoit would be romancing Nancy, at which point they admitted that the Sullivans were really married. That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that Kevin was so obsessed with the realism of the angle that he demanded that his wife accompany Benoit on the road and backstage, just in case someone saw them and reported back to the internet that they might be having an affair “for real”. Well, Kevin Sullivan proved to be too smart for his own good, as Chris and Nancy really WERE having an affair for real, which only made the feud that much hotter. Unfortunately, Kevin found out about it and his marriage collapsed, at which point Benoit moved in with Kevin’s wife and things started getting bad for him in his business life.

First, the Four Horsemen fell apart thanks to an injury sustained by Arn Anderson. Then Benoit got involved in a lengthy feud with the debuting Raven and ended up losing the majority of the matches against his flunkies to build up the big blowoff between them. The matches they eventually had were great, but now Benoit was being manipulated by politics where he hadn’t been before. The Benoit-Raven feud somehow turned into a Raven-DDP feud with Benoit also involved, because DDP was smart enough to raise his stock by having great matches with Benoit. However, Benoit was the guy who always ended up doing the job there (taking the loss to keep the other two strong) and it left him almost totally directionless as a result, despite wrestling for the US heavyweight title on a regular basis without ever winning it. However, by the midway point of 1998, WCW figured out that they could get another guy over by using Benoit, and booked a best-of-seven series between Booker T and Benoit to determine who the #1 contender for the TV title was. This series quickly became the stuff of legend, drawing great ratings for Nitro and newbie show Thunder, and Benoit’s fortunes appeared to be rising. However, he lost the series in the end and still had no titles to show for his years of service.

The problem was politics, in that WCW was a very political place and Benoit didn’t get involved in it. Once he stole Kevin Sullivan’s wife away there was little chance of fair treatment, and he didn’t have powerful enough friends to stand up for him. Things got worse when Kevin Nash took over booking in late 1998, immediately putting the WCW World title on himself and sending the promotion into a downward spiral that it never recovered from. Nash’s feelings on Benoit and his smaller friends were well known, as he was quoted in one backstage meeting as describing them as “vanilla midgets” who could never get over. Benoit finally got a major title, winning the WCW World tag team titles with longtime partner Dean Malenko as a part of the final failed iteration of the Four Horsemen, but he was clearly going nowhere as long as Kevin Nash was in charge. Nash was finally cut loose in August, and Benoit was given a push by the temporary committee in charge of the promotion, as he won the US title from comedy act David Flair before dropping it to Sid Vicious in a ludicrously booked match at Fall Brawl 99. I say “ludicrously” because everyone knew going into the match that Sid would win the title, since Sid was getting a main event push and didn’t even need the title or the win. And the match was even worse than expected, because of Sid again. Before the match, agents specifically told Sid that at one point Benoit was going to lock him into his finishing move, the Crippler Crossface. Sid would then escape, but at no point should he tap on the mat because that would indicate submission. And what did Sid do when Benoit grabbed his hold at the crucial point in the match? He tapped the mat like crazy.

Benoit’s highest-profile match came because of a sad circumstance, the death of Owen Hart. With Bret off for months to grieve and recover, the new management wanted to do a big match to pay tribute to Owen while they were running Nitro in the arena that he had died in. The natural matchup was Bret Hart v. Chris Benoit, and the result was a modern classic, the longest match in the history of the program at nearly 30 minutes long and an easy five-star classic that was carried by Benoit. Fan sentiment on who should have won was split harshly, with many (myself included) thinking that this would be Bret’s big chance to make Benoit into a giant star in Owen’s name, but it wasn’t to be, despite Bret’s best efforts to make Benoit into a star during the match. The front office just had no interest in making him into a star…until Vince Russo came along.

At this point Benoit was booked as a part of a strange group called “The Revolution,” a stable molded in the image of the Four Horsemen, with guys who were supposed to be angry about being held down by the old generation and stood up to do something about it. It consisted of the old ECW Triple Threat of Shane Douglas, Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko, plus Perry Saturn added in as a fourth. The funny thing is that everyone in the group really was getting sick of their treatment in WCW, and although they were “pushed” with token wins like Benoit’s US title reign, clearly the office had no use for them and were determined to “prove” that they weren’t over enough to justify spending further time on.

Vince Russo’s new regime changed all that, as he’s always been in love with the “young punks rising up against the establishment” theme, and he really loved Benoit. He immediately began pushing Benoit as a top star of the promotion, sending him all the way to the finals of a tournament for the WCW World title, but there just too many flaws to overcome. First of all, Russo’s booking is notorious for endless run-ins and storyline twists that are forgotten the next week, all of which rendered Benoit’s in-ring storytelling an academic point. No one cared about any of the wrestling and Benoit had nothing to work with. Second, the tournament itself was a freakshow, featuring 32 people in a promotion where they could barely find screen time for more than 12, and including managers and endless stipulation and comedy matches that killed any sense of drama that tournament might have had. Russo was clearly trying to replicate his greatest success in the WWF, the one-night Survivor Series 98 tournament that made the Rock into the WWF champion and a main event star, but WCW didn’t have the Rock, or Steve Austin, or a lot of guys that might have helped to pull it off. Finally, with WCW dying faster by the day as 1999 drew to a close, Russo was out and Kevin Sullivan was rumored to be back in as booker, and Benoit had had enough.

Clearly with Sullivan back on top no one was going to get a fair deal and mutiny was the word of the day backstage. Wrestlers like to talk shit a lot, but this was serious stuff because Benoit knew that if he was stuck in the promotion any longer his career would be ruined, and it was time for a change. After lots of big talk, a huge group of wrestlers planning a walk-out turned into Benoit, Douglas, Malenko, Saturn, Eddie Guerrero and Konnan. Things were getting worse for the promotion while having to deal with this, as Bret Hart was scheduled to defend his WCW World title against Goldberg at January’s Souled Out 2000, but he suffered a concussion. And then Goldberg decided to punch out a window in a limousine during a pre-taped vignette because he apparently thought that using his fist was just as good as using a piece of pipe, and he cut his forearm up all to hell and he couldn’t wrestle either. So they decided to run with Jeff Jarrett as champion, but then he suffered a concussion while wrestling three retired former stars in one night as a part of Russo’s brilliant booking plans, and he couldn’t take it. Even former UFC fighter Tank Abbott was pitched (which was what got Russo fired) and down the line went the title, like Judge Harry Stone on Night Court getting his judge job because no one else was home on a Sunday morning, being offered to guys who were smart enough not to want any part of it. Finally they essentially begged Benoit to take it, thinking that he cared enough about a belt to forget his threats, but to his credit Chris held his ground and said that if they put the title on him he’d throw it back at them and still leave. So they booked it anyway, a decent match where Benoit defeated Sid Vicious by submission (this time, Sid was SUPPOSED to tap the mat), and the next day asked him to stay after installing Sullivan as the new booker. Benoit was never even offered a chance to drop the title, and was so insulted by their treatment that he literally throw the title in the garbage can of the office and walked out with Saturn, Malenko, Guerrero and Douglas. Konnan also tried to walk, but when the WWF didn’t offer him or Douglas a deal they mysteriously walked back to WCW again.

And now, suddenly, Benoit was a hot commodity. The team that were immediately dubbed “The Radicalz” by the WWF marketing machine showed up on RAW in the front row and challenged top babyface stable D-Generation X on the spot. Of course, the honeymoon was short-lived, as D-X squashed them in a series of matches on Smackdown, culminating with World champion HHH beating Chris Benoit in Benoit’s debut match for the company. Apparently Benoit needed to “learn how to work” all over again. This has long been a source of bitterness for me and many others, because Benoit was an international superstar before HHH even began his TRAINING. It was looking like the same politics as in WCW, but in this case Benoit started having great matches with everyone and he was quickly pushed as a threat and people decided that after 15 years in the business maybe he DID know how to wrestle. He got his first major title in the WWF quickly into his run, winning the Intercontinental title from Kurt Angle at Wrestlemania 2000 in a three-way match with Chris Jericho. He even got a shot at the main event at Fully Loaded 2000 in July, facing the Rock in a hell of a good match where he appeared to win the WWF World title before the decision was reversed. But although he was drawing good numbers and having great matches, he always had the stigma of being WCW attached to him, and was never able to break through. A brief feud with HHH at the end of 2000 produced another great match, but Benoit’s reward was another trip to the midcard for the Intercontinental title again instead of getting the big belt. Finally, in 2001, with the “Invasion” underway and former ECW owner Paul Heyman heavily influencing things, Benoit and Jericho were teamed up to win the tag team titles from Steve Austin and HHH, a match that was one of the best in RAW history and was intended to finally propel both guys to the main event for good. They followed up with a pair of singles matches pitting Benoit against Steve Austin for the World title on RAW and Smackdown, the latter of which was by far the greatest match in the history of that particular program and was taped in Benoit’s hometown of Edmonton, Alberta. It almost succeeded in making them stars, but then HHH tore his quad muscle during the tag title match, derailing any Benoit v. HHH program right out of the gate, and then the news got worse for Chris, even as the WCW invasion seemed to be tailor made for him to break out as a star. Benoit was in another main event, a three-way against tag team champion partner Chris Jericho and WWF World champion Steve Austin at King of the Ring 2001, but Vince McMahon completely gave up on the match before the show started and booked a total squash by Austin, as he single-handedly beat the team who had been tag team champions just days before. Benoit still took a crazy bump on the back of his neck during the dead match, because that’s what he does, but he suffered the consequences.

In June of 2001, doctors informed him that he needed neck fusion surgery after years of suplexes and diving headbutts, and he’d have to miss a year of action during the period when his career should have been taking off. He missed the entire WCW invasion (which some might argue was a good thing anyway) and returned to almost no fanfare a year later, moving to Smackdown as tag team champions with Kurt Angle to build up a main event feud between them. Again, Benoit wasn’t going to win, but Paul Heyman was the guy in charge and pushed hard enough for him that they were able to do a strong match at Royal Rumble 2003; a match that Benoit drew a standing ovation for. Clearly he was being positioned for bigger things, but the creative team changed again and Chris was out in the cold, stuck back in the tag team ranks and feuding with Rhyno in a pointless storyline that was leading nowhere for him. Oddly enough, at this point he was actually voted into the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame for his years of great matches and technical expertise. I say oddly because he was still an active wrestler and also a guy who had never won a World title or been on top of a promotion before. However, he was voted in by his peers on the strengths of his work and being able to adjust to a multitude of different styles — everything from brawling to mat-wrestling to the vague “WWE Main Event Style” that dominated the new century. And for a while, that seemed like it would be his biggest honor in the sport.

But by the fall of 2003, change was in the air again. While I was chatting with a friend of mine on the writing team, he mentioned that they wanted to push Eddie Guerrero to the main event against Brock Lesnar, and they also “had plans” for Chris Benoit. Benoit quickly lost a great match to Smackdown World champion Brock Lesnar around that time, which I thought was the end of it, but little did we know that Lesnar was trying to get out of his WWE contract and they needed someone to carry the main event while they prepped newcomers Randy Orton and John Cena for the job. Benoit started feuding with Smackdown “general manager” Paul Heyman and the deal was that because he lost his title match, he’d never ever ever ever get another title match again, unless he happened to win the Royal Rumble in January. And even then he was being forced to enter at #1, so you might as well just forget about it. And indeed, as was hinted by the setup, Benoit won the Rumble, going over 60 minutes and setting a longevity record in the process, thus earning a shot at the World championship of his choice at Wrestlemania XX. This, by the way, was clearly the greatest moment of my wrestling fandom, the kind of thing that we as Edmonton wrestling fans had been waiting for many years to witness: Chris Benoit being cleanly and definitively allowed to win the big match.

Then, at Wrestlemania, he won the bigger match, making HHH submit to the crossface in a triple-threat match with Shawn Michaels also involved, winning his first legitimate World singles title. Early in the build for the match it was looking a repeat of the DDP/Raven/Benoit debacle from WCW where a third person (Raven in that case, Shawn in this case) was inserted into a feud that had been meant to get Benoit over, but the victory just made it all the sweeter. It was a fantastic match, the best three-way match ever in my opinion, and ended the night with Benoit celebrating with fellow World champion Eddie Guerrero to a sea of confetti in a scene that will sadly never be seen on WWE programming again. He defended the title at Backlash in his hometown of Edmonton in a rematch of the Wrestlemania main event, in another great match, and actually went on to defeat HHH in subsequent rematches, in the process doing something that no one else in the sport outside of Batista can claim to have done: Definitively won a feud against HHH.

Sadly, if that was the climax of his career, the rest was the anti-climax. Benoit was told from the start that his reign would be a transitional one, because they wanted to get the title onto Randy Orton, and as promised he lost the title cleanly to Orton at Summerslam 2004 in yet another great match. It didn’t help Orton, who was a flop as champion, and Benoit kind of faded back into the midcard again, having hit his peak and satisfied with it. He was moved back to Smackdown in 2005 and spent a good chunk of time as the US champion, occasionally working great matches with new guys like MVP and Ken Kennedy and seemingly on the fast track for a career as head trainer whenever he decided that he had had enough of the business. By June of 2007, the “draft lottery” sent him to loser brand ECW (once a fiercely independent promotion, now the dumping ground for the WWE’s failed experiments) and he was scheduled to defeat hot newcomer CM Punk to win the ECW World title at Vengeance 2007 and hopefully elevate him to the next level in the process.

On the night before the show, he called into the office to say that he wouldn’t be there, and that’s when the world fell apart.

The Death of Chris Benoit

“C, S. My physical address is 130 Green Meadow Lane. Fayetteville Georgia. 30215
The dogs are in the enclosed pool area. Garage side door is open”


- Chris Benoit’s ominous text message to co-workers and friends.

I was working on Monday, June 26 2007, when my wife called me and told me that she had just heard that Chris Benoit was dead, along with his whole family. My immediate reaction was that she had confused him with former partner Biff Wellington, as I had been having a conversation with her the night before about Wellington’s recent death and how Benoit had likely missed the PPV on Sunday night because of it. However, the sudden rash of text messages on my cell phone only confirmed the worst — it was indeed Chris who had died, with the rumor being that everyone had carbon monoxide poisoning in the new house, and it was a horrible tragedy. Of course, it certainly turned out to be a tragedy, but not what we expected.

Scott Keith’s DUNGEON OF DEATH: Chris Benoit and the “Hart Family Curse”, published by Citadel, is available at Amazon.com.

i have 0 exposure to AWA, but even all that said, is he a top 15 guy? not an opinion-backed statement, i would never think so, but im sure i dont knowenough to properly judge.

being a general fan of my era, i'd name a handful of guys higher than perfect -- im just curious to know if there's, like, this remarkable portion of his history that i missed.

With rare exceptions(Ric Flair comes to mind), heels never had long runs or even any runs at all with the top titles.

maybe hhh and undertaker are the only other two i can think of. tho now i dont really remember undiestaker's title range while actually a heel.

Cena should be a heel or a tweener as his character shows so many heel traits, but they are totally overlooked, just so they can sell him to kids.

They also ignore the boos from a large majority of the adult audience. It used to be when a babyface started getting booed loudly, you'd turn him heel. Now, you just call him "controversial"....