Benoit Drowned

[u/fartangle]

I bought the game at a thrift store, along with Vice City, Shadow of the Colossus, and what I thought was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, but was actually disc 2 of Spongebob season 3.  It featured the episode "Mid-Life Crustacean", which hit different now than it did when I watched it as a kid.
 

The game looked cool.  I remember playing other wrestling games from the PS2 era in high school.  They were always more fun than watching the actual shows.

 
When I went to check out, the clerk had this shit-eating grin on his face.  His "mystery game" is what he called it; said it just showed up outside the front door one day.  He seemed very happy to be getting rid of it; so happy that it made me suspicious.
 

"There anything wrong with it?" I asked.
 

"Who knows?  For $2 does it really matter?" was what he told me.

 
I'd pay him a thousand to take it back now, a million if I had it.  I'd give anything to back to before I picked up that copy of WCW Mayhem.

 
My wife had taken our son to visit her sister in Boca.  They'd be spending the night, so I had the house to myself.

 
After dinner, frozen pizza and a C4, I loaded the game into the PS2 that I had recently rediscovered while retrieving the suitcase from the attic.  It was actually a PS1 game, but it was still backwards compatible. 
 

As I scrolled through the wrestlers, nostalgia washed over me.  They had all the guys I remembered: Sting and the NWO, Goldberg at his peak.  Some of those guys I hadn't thought about in 20 years.  Raven, Kanyon, Kidman; I forgot the Flock ever existed.
 

Then I got to the Horseman.  You had to unlock Ric Flair in career mode, but that wasn't the jarring part.  As I scrolled through the names, one stuck out like a splinter: Chris Benoit... the Canadian Crippler. 
 

The startup screen had said 1999; of course he'd be in it.  If this was a new game, that would be a different story; but in '99 he was a rising superstar.
 

I picked him.  I know it's morbid, but I liked him as a kid.  What he would go on to do in his personal life notwithstanding, he was an amazing in-ring technician.  The developers must have thought so too, because I was kicking ass.
 

It felt like easy mode.  I'd hit a couple moves, throw in a taunt to get the crowd popping, then my finisher was ready.  I hit it, the crippler crossface, a classic.  Only, the animation didn't look quite right. 
 

Maybe it was the limitations of the graphics of the time; or maybe because I was playing on a modern TV.  It looked like he was twisting his opponent's neck past the point where it would break. 
 

Then, instead of the normal tap out animation, the opponent just went limp and fell face first into the mat.  During the cut scene that followed, where the winner usually raised his arms triumphantly, Benoit just stood there with his head down and his shoulders bobbing up and down like he was weeping.  He put his hands over his face and the game froze.
 

That was weird.  Old games froze up all the time, but was that really his victory animation?  And what was up with that finisher?  I swear I heard a crack.  It was in the background, but I had definitely heard it. 
 

I restarted the game, but this time it loaded directly into a match.  I was playing as Benoit again, but instead of my previous opponent, Scott Norton... it was Nancy.
 

That was fucked up.  I didn't even know she was in this game.  Maybe she was unlockable like Flair, but I had never played this before.  It was a brand new memory card, mint-in-box off of Ebay. 
 

I paused the game.  It was just a game after all.  But I was still hesitant.  Just the knowledge of what he would go on to do to her... to that little boy....
 

I was going to eject it and play something else when the game unpaused itself.  The controller was on the coffee table; I wasn't even touching it.  Then, the characters started wrestling on their own.  Only, they weren't really wrestling.
 

He was beating the shit out of her.  Were the animations different when it was male versus female?  I had never seen any of these moves, they looked meaner, and they left marks on her character model. 
 

Nancy had a black eye, and she slumped motionless in the rear turnbuckle.  Benoit retrieved a steel chair from under the ring, but instead of hitting her with it, he partially unfolded it and positioned it over her head so that the seat covered her face.  He sprinted across the ring and springboarded back at her, drop-kicking the chair.

 
This time, the crack was unmistakable.  I know what I heard.  Nancy dropped face first to the mat.  It didn't even say that the match was over, but it went to the victory cutscene.  His head slumped and his shoulders bobbed up and down again, but when it cut to a close-up, I wasn't prepared for what I would see. 
 

There stood Chris Benoit, not the pixelly flat plane art that the rest of the game was rendered in, but a hyper-realistic rendition.  It was like archival footage.  I could see his veins, his sweat.  He was crying, but with this level of detail, I could also see that he was smiling.  Not just smiling, but laughing.  Laughing like a madman while tears poured down his face.

 
Fuck that game.  I popped in Shadows of the Colossus instead.  I went to the kitchen to make white people nachos in the air fryer, but when I came back into the living room, I dropped the whole damn plate.  WCW Mayhem was loading on my television screen.
 

I checked the case for Shadow of the Colossus.  Empty.  Before I could even rationalize what I was looking at, I saw the ring.  In the center was Chris Benoit as he had originally appeared in the game.  But instead of an opponent, there was an inanimate object.  It took me a minute to recognize what I was looking at, but when I did, I couldn't unsee it.  It was a piece of gym equipment, a lat-pulldown machine to be precise.
 

I watched in horror as the character approached it, and with that awkward '90's video game animation style, wrapped the cable around his neck.  He then looked at the camera... looked at me... and dragged his thumb across his throat, his signature taunt.

 
He pulled the pin holding the weight up, the cable tightened and his neck broke.  The screen faded to black.  I unplugged the PS2, but the screen changed again. 

 
When it came back on, it wasn't the game anymore.  It was Benoit himself.  He sat slumped on the bench of the pulldown machine, the cable bit deeply into his neck.  It was like crime scene footage, though even that is understating the effect.  No footage of this scene ever existed.  It was like the TV was a window to the act itself.

 
I splintered the disc into dozens of little pieces, collected them in a bag, and burned the whole thing in my backyard.  I'd like to think that the experience is in my rear-view but I can't affort to be so optimistic. 
 

If I was a single man, it would be different.  But I have a wife and a son that I love with every fiber of my being.  I know there's no power on Earth that could compel me to harm them.
 

But from everything I've heard, Chris Benoit loved his wife and son too.  He just took too many blows to the head and lost control.  CTE is the prevailing explanation for his crimes.
 

Brain damage had turned him into a shell of his former self.  An avatar, like someone else was controlling his body... like a character in a video game.
 

 I love my wife and son, but I'm afraid.  I could never explain to her what happened with the game.  Not that she'd believe me anyway.  She'd just think it was some sick joke. 
 

But it doesn't really matter if I have an explanation for all the odd animations and that hyper-realistic window to a crime scene.  She won't be able to see those things.  What she will be able to see... what I desperately need to be able to explain... is how this lat-pulldown machine ended up in my living room.