I Am the Crippler

Hello, internet, I've recently found my childhood journal and found a creepy entry from 2007 involving one of the most controversial happening in the history of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), Chris Benoit. If you don't know who Chris Benoit was, I'll try my best to sum it up to you. Chris Benoit was a former pro wrestler who had a career spanning 15 years and several title reigns to his name, including the World Heavyweight Championship which he won at Wrestlemania 20 against two legends in the buisness, Triple H and Shawn Michaels. However in the summer of 2007, he was discovered dead in his Atlanta home along with his wife and youngest son, which was ruled a double murder-suicide on the part of Benoit.

Now I feel I owe you an introduction, my name is Mike Johnson, I'm  the oldest of three and I'm currently in college at Louisiana State University for a degree in computer science. How I found this was I was visiting my family during my break and my mom had dug out some of my old stuff including my PS2 and GameCube, some games for each, and my old journal, much to my surprise. After spending some time going through my GCN games like Super Mario Sunshine and finding the Hanging Luigi in Luigi's Manshion I decided to read my old journal, Some things I remembered like that I got it on Christmas of '06, I used it to record my gaming progress, my work in school, and family events. I also got WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007 for our PS2; I easily put in 200 hours before spring.

During this time I recorded all the matches I had with my brothers, how my best was a hardcore match with Tazz vs Kane, which I as Tazz won, and how much progress I made on the story mode. I fell in love with the story mode and chose Chris Benoit as my character as he and the Undertaker were my favorite at the time. I went with wins and losses and after lossing the Royal Rumble, it's a 30 man over the top rope elimination match where the winner fights the World Champion on their brand at Wreslemania which is our Superbowl, I got a victory over Matt Hardy to get me to fight the Undertaker for the World Heavyweight Championship. I had that feeling of guilt because I needed the win but I didn't want to end the Undertaker's undefeated streak at Wrestlemania which was 16-0 at the time. After some time I got my pinfall victory over him and won the title.

I saw afterwards that the in-game WWE magiazine that both the Undertaker and I had mutual respect for each other which was a positive for me, but I soon got into a fued with his demon half-brother Kane. Prior to my Undertaker match, I had gained an on screen girlfriend who was Jillian Hall, who was there to see me win the World Championship. Now when the feud with Kane started, it turned up she was allied with him and abandoned me, which cost me my first match against him, but I won the next week in a tag match with Matt Hardy and me vs Kane and Big Show. After our match Kane and I got into a brawl in the parking lot which I nearly won but I botched a flying headbutt off of a firetruck and Kane got back up and he hit his chokeslam for a knockout victory. At first I was mad because I lost but I remembered each win or loss changes how the story progresses, so I wondered how that would change the feud.

However at this point of my game I had reached a point to where I couldn't progress because my brothers often played the game but didn't take care of it stopping any proggresion. So I decided to save up any money I could get, which was excruciatingly slow because at the time I was one of the few kids my age who didn't get an allowance, but after enough work and birthday money I got enough to get a used copy from GameStop. I had taken some time to see if I was rustly by doing exhibition matches with Chris and after a few I got back to the story mode. I wanted to hurry and get a match with the title because around this time IRL Benoit was set to face CM Punk for the ECW Championship that Sunday. So I took a break to watch ECW that Tuesday and I challenged my brothers some that week. I didn't get back untill that Sunday and I found out that during the brawl with Kane that I receved a concussion and would be out of action for a while, so I would have to forfeit the title. That part really ticked me off because I knew I most likey wouldn't simply get my rematch when I returned. So I spent my next few days at an actual house which I thought was a nice touch as compaired to the locker room I usually had, it still had many of the same features as the locker room such as the workout room where you could upgrade your character and a computer to check news.

One night there was a loud crashing sound in the house and I saw Rey Mysterio and Lita sneaking around in my house. I approached Lita first and got into a brawl with her, the fact I could fight her didn't surprise me as it is possible on exhibition, but what did surprise me is that she tried to run away but I fought her until I had a finisher and put her in the Crippler Crossface. However what I noticed is normally when you can't use a submision move to win in a match, such as if you're outside of the ring you would let them go, but Chris held on and held her in the hold for nearly a minuteand I saw flashes of another woman take Lita's place in the hold for a second or two at a time before letting her go. After this I chased after Rey and it went much like the encounter with Lita except when he was in the Crossface he flashed to what looked like a shorter person, which I wasn't sure if that was possible because he was the smallest person in the game at 5'6". After I finished Rey I heard voices from what sounded like Kane and the Undertaker saying "The gates of Hell have opened for you"  I walked around the house looking for something to progress the story, then I returned to the knocked out Lita and Rey and they were now the people I saw flash when I put them in the Crossface. Benoit fell to his knees and started bawling with his head in his hands. The voices of Kane and the Undertaker had grown louder and I walked arounds some more and found an action prompt in the house's library. Then I walked back to the people I now realized had been killed by Chris and he put a book by them which appeared to be a Bible by the gold cross on it. I walked around utill I went into the gym room where it went to a cutscene where Chris hung himself on one of the machines.

Then it was me in a room with fire in the background and a bottomless pit in the middle, Kane soon appeared and I tried to fight him but Chris had already taken max damage and Kane chokeslammed me into the pit. At this point I was legit terrified so I turned of the PlayStation and went to sleep. The next morning my parents had left a note out saying they both had to work and that I was incharge. All was fine until one of my brothers came and told me Monday Night Raw was almost on and we were talking about who we though won last night at the PPV. My heart sank when I saw what was next. "In Memory of Chris Benoit" I was nearly in tears upon seeing this and, then we saw Vince McMahon, the owner of WWE made even more odd that he had his on screen death a week prior, in the middle of the arena saying that Raw was cancelled and that tonight was a tribute to the life and career of Chris Benoit. However I went from sad to enraged when the next day on ECW Vince was once again on screen saying that the WWE would never speak of Chris Benoit due to newly found evidence that it was a murder-suicide.

After finishing reading my old journal I used the internet, something I didn't have when these events occured, and looked up ifthis happened to anyone else, which there wasn't. However I found that in the previous installment of SvR there is a story where it has Eddie Guerrero, a close friend of Chris Benoit, had a fued with the Undertaker which had Eddie chokeslammed into a casket and is closed, and two days after the release of that  game Eddie was found dead in his hotel room from a heart attack at age 38 Also if the storyline everyone else got on SvR 2007 had the Undertaker say to Chris Benoit,"Benoit, when your family mourns over your dead carcass, they will have no one to blame but you"  Today I still have the game and I still play it on occasion, I play the newer instalments but they don't have the same story mode like 2007 had. Who knows, maybe it'll be added back in another installment, maybe it'll be another wrestler's turn to say goodbye.

~Cameron aka PhenomGamer21