AEW senior adviser and head play-by-play man Jim Ross recently spoke about Vice TV’s Dark Side of the Ring episode on the Chris Benoit tragedy on the latest Grilling JR podcast. Ross, who appeared in this season’s special on the inaugural Brawl For All tournament, revealed that revisiting the Benoit story opened up some old wounds that he thought were healed.
Ross beings by praising the show’s production value before diving into his relationship with the Canadian Crippler, including a story about getting Benoit paid at a time he was out for a year having surgery.
Great work by those guys. Production was good. The continuity, the writing, the editing was spectacular. Sad as hell. It opened a lot of old wounds that you’d think were healed, but really weren’t. I was very close to Chris. The hardest, tightest hug that I have ever received in my life was from Chris Benoit and he hurt his next. We were in Atlanta for TV. He was hurt, he was out. So he got the diagnosis and the specialist to see him. He got two options: I think if he had worked the front of the neck, he would be out for a year. If they went through the backside, he would be out half as long. But the second surgery was more temporary. It was a band-aid and with the way he worked, can’t band-aid that up. So I made the decision to do the surgery with a year out and he was very worried about that because he was assuming that he would not get paid. I think much to WWE’s credit, he got his check every week while he was out. We felt it was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do and we got him fixed. [After telling him he was going to get paid every week], he grabbed me, looked like he was going to give me a belly-to-belly suplex because it was so tight… I just thought it was a well-done story.
You can check out the full episode of Grilling JR here. (H/T and transcribed by Fightful)
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