#4 Praising the dead
An offshoot of the nostalgia trip is the idea that some people knowingly or subconsciously fall victim to praising the dead a little too much. This is certainly not exclusive to professional wrestling as people do it constantly with celebrities or even the regular average Joe.
The day before Michael Jackson died, he was laughed at as he had been for years, mocked for his odd quirks and called every name in the book. The day he passed away, those same people changed their tunes to suddenly become his biggest fan again. The jokes stopped and the praise rushed in to fill that void.
Whenever someone dies, a good amount of people just can’t help but feel like they “cannot speak ill of the dead” and have to overcompensate by changing tunes and thinking that person was greater than they ever were.
Criminals suddenly become absolved of their sins. Drug addicts go from being looked down upon to having apologists who pity them for “succumbing to their demons” and such. Everybody’s worst qualities aren’t mentioned as much and their best qualities are magnified immensely.
In Benoit’s case, since he didn’t die of natural causes or some sort of sympathetic fashion, this is nowhere near as prevalent as it would have been under other circumstances, but there are still some fans who try to argue that his death means he should be allowed in the Hall of Fame to honor a fallen ring warrior.
Defenders of Benoit should be careful not to become ensnared in eulogising him posthumously just because he’s no longer with us, but rather, try to stick more to the facts of what did and didn’t happen.
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