Wrestling's Passed Away

Owen Hart is one of the most recent completely avoidable deaths in the "sport"...




Eddie Guerrero is still so vividly remembered...
(Though not as tragic as Chris Benoit - yes, that is Benoit wearing the Guerrero t-shirt that read "I'm Your Papi", not-so-subtly stealing from the Red Sox' Big Papi, David Ortiz...)




Art Barr was another little-known wrestler who died to little fanfare (same year as his good buddy Eddie Guerrero.)
On the clip above, he gets transformed into "Beetlejuice", a "wrestler to remember", by expert in stylization and characterization, Rowdy Roddy Piper...
Art Barr's career as Beetlejuice was as short-lived as Louie Spicolli's, The Wall's or Crash Holly's... Art Barr died of a drug overdose.




Wrestling is a very hazardous "sport" -
people get really hurt...

People really die.

And to see Vince McMahon fake his own death most recently
(on the June 11th 2007 edition of RAW)
and then give himself "memorial editions" of SMACKDOWN and ECW
similar to those that Eddie Guerrero, Owen Hart and others had...
well... It invalidates all the preceding ones
It cheapens the eulogies
It disrespects those wrestlers who really died
and their loved ones
who were foolish enough to be "touched"
by McMahon's honoring their deceased...

I think, in particular, of Vickie Guerrero
Eddie's widow
whose loss is so recent
and who was asked
no - make that mandatorily required
to be a part of the bogus memorial for McMahon


A whole new low
for the man who has sunk low on so many occasions before...





And to add to the bad taste this all leaves in the purist's
as in the traditionalist's mouth
ANOTHER DEATH IN WRESTLING OCCURRED
during this burgeoning silliest of all silly storylines
That of SENSATIONAL (aka Sensuous aka Sister) SHERRI MARTEL
And what does the WWE WEBMASTER do?
Why, he does as his boss tells him to do, of course!
He puts the very real sad news near the bottom of the page...
And keeps on top the bogus memorial announcement
(which will warrant a second 3-hour edition of RAW in 3 weeks)
and the appointment of a bogus Federal investigator
portrayed by some third-rate actor
(The only good things about this silly plotline really:
it gives work to some starving, unsuspecting, poor actor
and we get to see NO MORE of Vinnie Mac's hogging the spotlight
away from his so-called "superstars"...)

REST IN PEACE, SHERRI (1959-2007)




Maybe the Chris-Nancy-Daniel Benoit tragedy taught McMahon his lesson.

Some people never learn though...

Goodbye, Harlow Jean

LikeTelevision Embed Movies and TV Shows


Jean Harlow was only 26 when she died.
This Day in Hollywood - June 7th
Starring - Jean Harlow
The LikeTelevision History channel proudly presents, This Day in Hollywood - June 7th! On June 7, 1937 - Jean Harlow (Harlean Carpentier), one of Hollywood's first stars, dies at the age of 26. Best known for her roles in Platinum Blond, and Hell's Angels, she stars in Public Enemy with Jimmy Cagney. But it was Mae Clark who got the grapefruit in the face, NOT Jean Harlow! (It should have been Mae West! But I digress...)

The official cause of death was, according to IMDB, "uremic poisoning brought on by acute nephritis."

Truly tragic.

June Death Toll

...

This month, as we mourn the First Lady of La Revolucion and the Queen of wrestling at the very same time (more on them in the lugubrious comments section) and as we are stunned to learn of the untimely and gruesome demise of a Crippler, his Woman and his son, untimely and wasteful demises continue to pile up in the Middle-East. We, here at The Lugubrious Blog, invite you to check out this site here, for the latest numbers where it pertains to a body count more specific to IRAQ... There's also this site right here for more U.S. troops-specific data... We also want to give credit where it is due - even if it happens to be in and to the most unlikely places and people... The WWE did have this most distasteful and disrespectful parody of DEATH storyline going on at full throttle - and then, in the span of two short weeks, two wrestling deaths occurred in REAL LIFE (actually, four deaths really). This prompted the usually unscrupulous WWE to stop the inane storyline and discontinue the associated merchandizing as well. Where they had some fruits of their labor on sale (for the storyline was weaved only to make money - duh!) now we click on this silly bit of text (which reads: "Who blew up Mr. McMahon? Click here to admit your guilt and get your WWEShop Exclusive I DID IT t-shirt...") and we get this noticia: "The product you have tried to access is no longer available for purchase on this site." Good. The bogus demise of Vince McMahon - looks like he's going to hell all right... We can only applaud this initiative and be amazed at Vinnie Mac appearing to learn something (at last) and becoming a DECENT HUMAN BEING, for once! (In all likelihood, it is a temporary side-effect...) He seems to have definitively pulled the plug on his fake demise storyline - he does appear to have trashed it indeed and to have renounced, in the process, a chance to be making potentially millions in revenue (those "I did it - I killed McMahon" t-shirts would have sold well, I assure you...) not really because he had a conscience case and saw that what he was doing was disrespectful to past WWE wrestlers who had died and gotten only ONE memorial show (not a bunch of them as Vinnie Mac seemed to want for himself!) however he had just basically ignored Sherri Martel (pictured above) and her own untimely demise (because she was not under contract to him at the present time, he felt he could indeed ignore it and give it only a 30-second moment of silence before commercial break...) but then the most tragic horror ever imaginable happened; one of the wrestlers to be found on his payroll indeed was found dead, along with his wife and child, in an apparent triple murder that police suspect to be a double-murder and suicide - one that I suspect to be a triple murder disguised as a double-murder and suicide... Reality is often far stranger than fiction, folks... Yes... It is... Nothing that the WWE so-called scribes could come up with, at any given time, could EVER compare with this sort of thing. NOTHING. (Not even when they used the late Brian Pillman in a silly 'home invasion met with GUNFIRE' pathetic skit...) THIS is indeed the most shocking and revolting development ever in this sorry business... Too bad it involves, again, former WCW Horseman members... Pillman's former teammate in the elite Four Horsemen is the one who died this time. Chris Benoit (...) but most of all Nancy Daus (born Nancy Toffolini) and their son Daniel, aged 7, were also found dead and foul play was definitely involved... We may never know what really happened there - alas.  Benoit met Daus when she was still Mrs. Sullivan in WCW in the mid-1990s. She sided with him in a feud opposing the Horsemen and her estranged husband's Dungeon of Doom (the latter faction was nothing more than a mere attempt at a revival of his previous group of carnivalesque freaks, the Army of Darkness - it is a recurring theme in Sullivan's career for, you see, Kevin Sullivan is a satanist mainly based in New Jersey once upon a time and now to be found either in Florida or in his retreat home on Whidbey Island, eighty miles northwest of Seattle. Florida or Seattle is quite far away from the scene of the murder, you say - and you are quite right. But some things can be planted from afar - in a myriad ways...) The feud between Horsemen and Dungeon members had been ignited by another Horseman than Benoit; the by-then maniacal Brian Pillman, namely. But once Pillman high-tailed it out of WCW, the other Horsemen, especially Benoit, were left with this storyline that soon went out of control mixing up reality and fiction - with very real consequences. The Horsemen' perennial enforcer, Arn Anderson, found himself in the situation that required him to replace, impromptu, the crazed Pillman in a match against Sullivan when Pillman bailed out rather cowardly. Arn would have to replace Benoit in another match versus Sullivan when Benoit and Daus made it clear that they were involved in a very real way with each other - and that this was no longer make-believe. From that point on (and, it would seem, until the very end of their lives) Benoit and Daus fought their own fights against the Dungeon and Sullivan in particular, with occasional help from fellow Horsemen Ric Flair, Mongo McMichael and Arn Anderson. Nancy Elizabeth Daus was a sort of Morticia Addams of wrestling - while Christopher Michael Benoit, three years her junior, was a valiant footsoldier for her, the way she liked them it seems... She supported his decision to defect from the WCW to the rival WWE (still the WWF back then) just so both of them could get away from the backstage politics of one matchmaker/booker Kevin Sullivan, her devious ex, who exacted some kind of revenge that way, through his influence backstage... She supported Benoit through thick and thin, in both WCW and WWE, even though she had abandoned an active (meaning onscreen) role due to Sullivan's demands as a WCW booker, which he still was all throughout... (Sullivan had devised a pay-per-view event that would have required Nancy Daus, his ex, to be conveniently and humiliatingly topless before a live audience... She quit instead of giving him the satisfaction to further degrade her, as he had done so often back in the Army of Darkness days...) Nancy carried on supporting Chris Benoit until he finally achieved his goal (winning the world championship belt that Ric Flair had won so many times and others had held before him, in WCW, while he was always cast aside - a title he won as his good friend Eddie Guerrero, who had defected with him to the WWE, had himself won the WWE championship...) - and, from that point onwards, it appears that they had both peaked - and it would be all downhill from there. Guerrero died first (two years ago). Benoit lost and never again regained the world title. He was bounced around the two "brands" (no longer WCW and WWE but simply "SMACKDOWN" and "RAW" - the mere TV shows' given names...) and he had recently been "drafted" to the third (and third-rate brand too) - ECW. Benoit was scheduled to win the ECW world title on Sunday the 24th of June, during a pay-per-view "event" held in Houston - while his mentor of sorts, Ric Flair, competed not for a world title anymore but for the U.S. championship he has held five times before in his illustrious career... Mentor and pupil in reversed positions under a new pecking order - and both were okay with that. Thanks, McMahon. Benoit's other mentor of sorts, Bret Hart, was in Montreal that day, for some odd reason, the 24th being "la fête des Québécois" and I doubt Hart sympathizes with that "cause" at all... I have no clue regarding the whereabouts of one Kevin Sullivan -and commuting between Atlanta and Florida is fairly easy anyway- so you know who I will suspect of having disguised the triple murder as a double-murder and suicide, one way or another... A horrid crime that took place in a small suburban town around Atlanta, Georgia - in a fine home Benoit had bought upon marrying Nancy Daus while still in WCW. The home itself is almost TOO private, set about 60 metres off a gravel road and surrounded by a stone wall with a double-iron gate... I believe that satanists got the better of the "rabid wolverine" on the night he was scheduled to fight off a certain "C.M. PUNK" instead. He had cited "personal problems" as an excuse not to be in Houston and, according to police, apparently commit the unthinkable. Even if it was Benoit's hands that acted, I am of the opinion that it was someone else dictating the shots. Someone else who crept up inside his mind... Chris Benoit's nicknames in the world of wrestling were the "Canadian Crippler" and the "Rabid Wolverine". Kevin Sullivan's nicknames were the "Gamesmaster", the "Taskmaster" and the devil - and he vaunted that he considered himself a master at the game of chess, while implying the use of humans instead of chess pieces on a chessboard... I can easily picture Kevin Sullivan laughing with gusto upon hearing in the news about the Fayetteville tragedy... All circumstantial fluff, they would say, I am sure, since the Fayette County Sheriff's Department is "not actively searching for any suspects outside of the house," according to a spokesperson for the suddenly thrust into the spotlight department. Nothing and no one outside the house... Nor outside of the bodies and minds of Chris and Nancy... Yet, karmic imbalance is a fundamental basis of a major religion - and hexes have been scientifically researched and proven as very "real" too; certainly far more "real" than pro-wrestling is... Hexing can be achieved from a distance too. However, the police will likely only investigate in depth the steroid-induced paranoia that Benoit is reputed to have been suffering from - and not anything else that reeks of hocus-pocus... You'd have to be a mystic or a satanist to believe in that stuff - right? (Label me the former -and only the former- or be sued for libel!) Benoit and Daus were a torrid love affair and a tumultuous mismatch as well... They were a marriage of Boston and Montreal (never a good mix) made in Atlanta under extraordinary circumstances (when a mere wrestling storyline became reality!) - their passion was great but it crashed and burned tragically. Benoit was addicted to painkillers -like Pillman before him and countless more at the employ of Vinnie Mac's WWE- and he had mixed those in with drugs, steroids and booze. Nancy Daus was apparently threatening to file for divorce... Dissension and disarray reigned in that dream house just outside Atlanta... And their little boy, Daniel, a child born with a rare genetic disorder, was the innocent victim of all that. The police feels as though what happened is, basically, self-explanatory... Appearances are deceiving... The usually wretched WWE had the good sense to trash their nonsensical "Vinnie Mac is dead" memorial show and quickly wrap together a commemorative show focusing solely on Benoit's career - complete with footage from WCW Hogwild 1996 (when he faced another good friend in Dean Malenko) and even older footage from the days when Benoit wrestled as the masked "Pegasus" Kid (he really was destined to be a Horse...man!) back in Japan. And they wrapped up the three-hour show (again, originally planned to honor the "memory" of Vince McMahon...) with the match from 2004 when Benoit won the World Title - and he was met in the ring by his good friend Eddie - hinting at a reunion now, in the afterlife... Some testimonials were interspersed all throughout, too. As even an oaf like "Triple H" can say - we're all going there, sooner or later... We shall see if we truly "all go to the same place" though... Former WCW and WWE wrestler Bret Hart, who considered Benoit like family, commented on the tragedy by saying that "there had to be something else that caused all this" - it could not be just marital woes and the strain of having to care for a child with a deficiency. Current WWE wrestler and WCW legend Ric Flair abstained, until now (to the best of my knowledge) from commenting on this saddest of events; all he did say was that Benoit embodied what it meant to be a Horseman. He said that before learning all the details of the tragedy too... The fact is, Flair might even feel in part guilty as his Horsemen served as the stage for the very formation of this tragic couple; Nancy Daus had been the Horsemen manager in 1989 and 1990, when the Horsemen were comprised of Ric, Arn, Barry (Windham) and Sid (Vicious) - plus Ole Anderson. Benoit was far from the big leagues back then; but when he signed with WCW in 1994 (due to his accomplishments in NJPW, an associate of WCW) he was placed in the Horsemen line-up - and Ric and Arn were very happy to have such a great worker like him join them. Then "Woman" returned to WCW and rejoined Flair and his Horsemen - and Chris & Nancy's destinies were as locked, sealed and delivered as Sid & Nancy's... The hypocritical WWE knew all the sordid details of the tragedy by Monday evening and they still aired a tribute to Benoit and posted several more on their website - only to renege all that, recant their words and remove all of it a mere 24 hours later - not as THEY became privy to the details but as those details were finally allowed to be leaked to the newswires and released to THE PUBLIC by the authorities... In every damn situation, the damn corporate monster is a beast that wants to come out of it unscathed - no matter what type of business, it is the same hypocrisy that prevails... McMahon said on June the 25th, that Benoit was one of the greatest WWE superstars of all-time. He declared that knowing full well WHAT HAD HAPPENED in Atlanta... The next day, he removes all traces of this greatest superstar FOR all time - frowning upon his "great superstar" as if he were a monster. Furthermore, on June the 26th, on the Tuesday episode of ECW on the Sci-Fi Network, McMahon made one last mention of Benoit - only to say that there would be no further mentions of him and the "healing process had begun" - said process included hokey segments shot on the beach with one of the alleged WWE "divas" scantily-clad and cavorting not with boytoys but with children (obvious "we love kids, we don't kill them" jab at the critics who'd generalize) complete with new slogan: "(we -wwe?- are) LOVING LIFE"... We love life, eh? And yet, if Guerrero went to sleep never to awaken, it was because he overtaxed his body in order to stay in the WWE and keep up with the tempo set by McMahon's infernal schedule. If Pillman's heart gave in, it was because he abused the consumption of painkillers in order to keep up as well... And if Benoit apparently had an incident of "roid rage" (steroids abuse - mixed in with a lot of other things...) - it was also because of the WWE, which is, of course, interested in covering up and snuffing out all that steroids talk; they'd much rather say that Benoit was psychotic and a monster than admit to having driven countless guys to overuse steroids - with very dramatic consequences. For, if Benoit is going to hell - so are you, Vince. And so will the Kevin Sullivans of this world... Even if all that they do is rejoice about another's tragedy and ignominious end. 
 R.I.P. NANCY TOFFOLINI DAUS and R.I.P. DANIEL BENOIT ~ May God have mercy on your soul, Christopher.

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