Death Grip

Benoit's own demise would come 19 months later. Over the course of three days in late June, police say, the 40-year-old Benoit (pronounced ben-WAH) drugged and killed his 7-year-old son, Daniel, then strangled his wife, Nancy, 43, in the family's home outside Atlanta. Although Guerrero and Benoit died under different circumstances, their lives had several parallels.

The two men had a long friendship, traveling together in a circuit that weaved through Mexico, Japan, Europe and the United States. As wrestlers, both lived in near-constant pain, coping with the bruising, often lonely lifestyle with such drugs as sedatives and narcotic painkillers.

For Guerrero, an admitted alcoholic and drug abuser, prayer became a tool to help tame his torments. He encouraged Benoit to try Christianity, and in the later years of their friendship, they sometimes read Scripture together -- in locker rooms and hotel rooms, on soul-searching road trips.

Over more than 10 years of friendship, Guerrero and Benoit lived a professional existence ringed with sudden death. Eight wrestlers or former wrestlers who had been close associates of Benoit and Guerrero died during this decade -- five from the kind of heart-related ailment that felled Guerrero. The oldest of these men was 51; the youngest was 27.

People looking for clues into Benoit's alleged homicide and suicide have wondered whether despair over his friends' deaths led him to a sense of fatalism. What role did drugs and the long-term effects of his violent line of work play in Benoit's tragic end?

Benoit "took Eddie's death the hardest," said Carlos Ashenoff, a longtime friend of Guerrero, who wrestled with him and Benoit under the ring name Konnan over some 15 years. "And then another close friend dies. And the friend of a friend. Everyone around him dies. And no one seemed to give a damn."

Said Ashenoff: "It's just one tragedy after another."

On July 27, prompted by the Benoit tragedy, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee asked WWE to provide information about steroids and drug abuse in pro wrestling. The committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), said he wants the company to respond by Aug. 24.

After Guerrero's death, WWE vowed to clean house. After Benoit's death, many question how much was actually done.

No Clear Answers

Why do so many wrestlers die young?

There has never been a definitive medical study of the issue, but there are expert guesses. Drug abuse might play a role, some insiders say, as well as the long-term effect of repeated collisions such as concussive blows to the head. The number of heart-related deaths, coming after a long period of heavy steroid use among wrestlers, also has been cited as suspicious.