By Lance Pugmire, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 6, 2007
Professional wrestler Chris Benoit, who routinely slammed opponents with diving head-butts and also weathered strikes to the head with chairs during his World Wrestling Entertainment performances, suffered head trauma that doctors who studied his brain said could have contributed to his suicide and the killings of his wife and young son in June.
In analysis released Wednesday by the Sports Legacy Institute that studies the effects of concussions, one doctor who studied Benoit's brain tissue said the number of dead or damaged brain cells "was extensive, shocking in its extent."The damage was "something you should never see in a 40-year-old," Julian Bailes, chairman of neurosurgery at West Virginia University's School of Medicine, said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "We have great anatomical damage here from previous trauma. We think that's the leading cause" of Benoit's violence.
Benoit's father, Michael, approved the study of his son's brain."We needed an understanding," the elder Benoit said on television. "The person who did this is not the man we know and loved."
Questions of possible " 'roid rage" also persist.
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