During a recent appearance on the “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, Chris Nowinski discussed the role of CTE in the Chris Benoit tragedy, suggesting that it was key but not the sole factor in his actions in 2007.
Nowinski noted that studies have shown 93-95% of nearly 500 retired NFL and NHL players demonstrated signs of CTE. However, he also mentioned that the wrestling industry is now much safer than it previously was.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On if CTE caused the Benoit tragedy: “You can’t say that disease caused that single act, because … there’s so many other variables involved. That being said, I think we have maybe … 10 murders in the brain bank [that] all have sort of the same story: that they were fine, then they started having some mental health problems, then they went off and killed people.”
On the change in CTE awareness: “The big change over the last 10 years has been the recognition that CTE is a much bigger issue than we wanted it to be.”
On how the wrestling business is safer now: “Wrestling is dramatically safer than it used to be, ’cause they’re putting top down constraints on what can happen. We all want to be the star of the show, have the biggest bump, take the biggest risk, but if everybody does that, it gets out of control; people get hurt. So, I couldn’t be more proud of the way the wrestling industry has responded to this work in the last, you know, 12 years.”
On how things are different: “The only thing the public really knows is, like, the chair shots are banned to the head and all that in WWE. I guess in AEW, there’s different…it’s extremely rare…certain things need to happen to let it be allowed. I would say a lot of it is driven by different risk management choices from the performers themselves. So you are now empowered to realize, like, ‘I don’t need to go off the top of that ladder through a table if there’s another way I can get the same pop,’ sort of think about the reward in a more explicit sense and think about brain health.”
