Chris Van Vliet interviewed Vickie Guerrero for his YouTube channel and they had an interesting discussion about Chris Benoit and his place in WWE. Van Vliet started it off by asking if she thinks we’ll ever see him inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
”I don’t think so, because he’s not even existing with the WWE as far as documentaries or history. It’s a sad situation. I loved Chris Benoit a lot. His family was our family. His wife Nancy, we were close friends. Their son, Daniel... you know, we were all really close. I wasn’t there when it happened, I don’t understand why it happened, but I still love him. He was... aside from all that, he loved us and he respected us.”
Van Vliet follows this up by making a particularly strange comparison, saying “I just feel like WWE is a place where there is often a lot of forgiveness. We’ve seen it with Shawn Michaels, we’ve seen it with Bret Hart. Obviously different situations but perhaps if enough time passes maybe it will heal some of these wounds?”
Guerrero answers with:
”I would like to see that. Aside from everything, Chris Benoit was a talented wrestler and he had his own legacy. I think it shouldn’t be ignored. It’s sad how things turned out, but I would like to see him inducted into the Hall of Fame.”
This is a subject of endless debate, the idea of ever being able to separate Chris Benoit, the wrestler who had one hell of a career in the ring, from Chris Benoit, the man who murdered his wife and son before committing suicide. Having said that, the WWE Hall of Fame is not a legitimate Hall of Fame in any sense of the imagination. It is quite literally simply a tool Vince McMahon uses to make money. Even if you can separate the two, as big of an ask as that may be, a WWE Hall of Fame induction wouldn’t be about honoring his wrestling career.
That should render the entire argument moot.
Something tells me it won’t.