For Sportskeeda’s UnSKripted podcast, our good friend and former PWMania.com writer Dr. Chris Featherstone recently spoke with veteran pro wrestler Jeff Farmer, also known to fans as nWo Sting. Farmer spoke on his friendship with the late Chris Benoit, whose murders of his wife Nancy Benoit (aka Woman) and their young son Daniel in June 2007 and subsequent hanging suicide shocked the pro wrestling community.
Benoit and Farmer got along well in WCW, according to Farmer. Following the tragedy that befell the Benoit family, medical examinations indicated that Benoit had CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). Benoit’s brain was found to be so seriously injured during tests that it resembled an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient. According to reports, Benoit had an advanced form of dementia that was similar to the concussion-prone brains of former NFL players, which resulted in depression and self-harm or injury to others. Chris Benoit’s father, Michael Benoit, thinks that the murder-suicide was mostly caused by brain damage. Farmer commented about Benoit’s brain damage as a result of the blows he received in the ring.
“I had a very good relationship with Chris, and he was always nice to me. I was always nice to him,” Farmer said. “In my opinion, what I think happened to Chris Benoit, and nobody’s really asked me about this that much, but I think he had some CTE from all the bumps he took. He used to do the diving headbutt all the time, and I think there was some possible brain damage from the business.”
Recent advances in CTE research have resulted in significantly safer regulations for professional wrestling and other sports. Farmer elaborated on Benoit’s situation and related problems faced by competitors in other sports.
“You see it in football, you see it in all these places, and these guys, they become different,” Farmer said. “They change. Their personality changes. They try to kill themselves. We’ve seen it in sports. That’s my only real explanation for that. Maybe that’s me trying to rationalize, but I think it was some type of brain damage from his career in wrestling. I always got along very well with Chris. He was a good guy to me.”
You can check out the interview below:
