25 biggest pro wrestling ‘what ifs’ of the past 25 years

22. What if Chris Benoit hadn’t died?

In what could be the most controversial and crazy thing to ever happen to WWE (and that’s saying a lot), Chris Benoit’s death in 2007 in an unbelievably sad murder-suicide involving his wife and son had a huge impact on professional wrestling and not just for the obvious reasoning that you just don’t kill your wife and child.

Following his death, WWE aired a tribute show to Benoit but after details of the gruesome scene emerged, the company distanced itself from Benoit and have more or less completely erased him from their history. His matches can still be seen on the WWE Network (with a disclaimer) but he’s never mentioned on television and there’s no trace of him on the website at all. As far as the impact of his death on the wrestling business, it changed things in WWE forever.

After winning the World Heavyweight Championship in arguably the best Triple Threat Match in WWE history over Shawn Michaels and Triple H, Benoit was pushed back down the card in the years that followed so the issue of him remaining at the top of the card isn’t even the issue here. The biggest impact his death had on WWE is how the performers were monitored and it’s extremely important. Drug use had been an issue in the wrestling business for a long time and the death of Benoit really brought it to light. The Wellness Policy that we know today had been implemented following the death of Eddie Guerrero (more on him in a minute) but the Benoit tragedy is the event that really made people stand up and shout that things needed to change. If the Benoit situation didn’t happen, perhaps WWE wouldn’t be protecting their athletes the way they do today.

Lastly (and don’t anybody think that I’m looking over what happened or making light of the situation in any way), didn’t you want to see where they were going to go with Vince McMahon dying in storyline?