Vince McMahon Claims CTE Didn't Affect Chris Benoit In 'Mr. McMahon' Docuseries

Vince McMahon has claimed that neither chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) nor steroids played a role in the Chris Benoit double murder-suicide and that Benoit simply "went nuts."

Addressing the June 2007 weekend on Netflix's Mr. McMahon docuseries, the former WWE CEO said:

"There is no correlation between taking steroids and what happened to Chris Benoit. Human beings are flawed, Chris went nuts. It happens in every form of life and everything. So that's the only thing I can take away from it," McMahon said.

"This doctor came up with this ridiculous statement of, 'Okay, here is why Chris Benoit did this. There was some sort of trauma to his head.' Things were shown where Chris would dive off the rope and hit someone with his head. That's a complete work...It looks like there's damage and there's not. We know what we're doing, we don't hurt each other," McMahon added as clips of botches involving Benoit landing on his head played.

Chris Benoit, over a three-day period between June 22 and June 24, 2007, murdered his wife Nancy and their seven-year-old son, Daniel. Chris Benoit then hanged himself.

Chris Nowinski, a former WWE wrestler who founded the Sports Legacy Institute (later renamed the Concussion Legacy Foundation), analysed Benoit's brain and noted that Benoit, without question, was suffering from CTE.

"I have seen the slides on Chris Benoit’s brain, he had CTE. There's no question about that. CTE is a disease you can see very clearly under a microscope, but everybody has fought us on this. The NFL has fought us on this, the NHL is still fighting us on this, FIFA's fighting us. Everybody is trying to fight us so I was actually surprised when I got a call from Vince McMahon saying he wanted to help," Nowinski stated in Mr. McMahon. 

Steve Austin, however, revealed in the documentary that he doesn't believe CTE is real.

"I worked for a long time. I got dropped on my head one time, I got concussed there. Other than that I can't remember having too many concussions in the business of pro wrestling. My take on that has always been if you were just wrestling and you got a bunch of concussions you're probably doing something wrong. I'm not a CTE guy. I just don't believe in it," Austin added.

Nowinski and WWE working together resulted in the banning of chair shots to the head on WWE programming.

The NHS summarises CTE as "a brain condition thought to be linked to repeated head injuries and blows to the head. It slowly gets worse over time and leads to dementia." Symptoms of CTE include mood changes such as suicidal thoughts, personality changes, behaviour changes such as aggression and mood swings, short-term memory loss, confusion, problems with movement, and difficulty with planning and organisation.

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