Ben What?

In college, we followed professional wrestling religiously. From Monday night gatherings where we picked up the plot threads to the pay-per-views that sewed them up into new alliances, adversaries and champions, we watched all we could. It was male bonding par excellence.

Since I left college, it's the obituaries of the former stars that have struck.

I never touch the stuff anymore, but anytime one of the names from the past appears in the headlines, it's a death. Usually, it's a premature one.

These guys pump so many chemicals into their bodies for fleeting glory that they don't survive their forties.

The latest, in which the most modest and ordinary of wrestling stars ended his life on an unimaginably heinous note, struck hardest, because this one wasn't just another steroid casualty.

Ravishing Rick Rude, Curt "Mr. Perfect" Henning, Davey Boy "The British Bullgdog" Smith and Eddie Guerrero - those were steroid-punished bodies that gave out.

Now Chris Benoit, who strangled his wife, then smothered his seven-year-old son before hanging himself from a wire off his weight-lifting equipment ... well, the ugliness of professional wrestling is on display for all.

Everyone who liked Benoit did so because he was unassuming, a man who achieved high ranking in this brand of entertainment (because we all know it's scripted) on his own terms. And a lot of people liked him; he was young talent at a time when Hulk Hogan and older wrestlers were milking the spotlight as their bodies failed them.

When he jumped from the WCW to the WWF (the WWE since it finally lost a copyright lawsuit to the World Wildlife Federation), it was big news among its fans.

With a despicable, dirty conclusion to his life and two others, he managed to wipe it all away.

Blame it on 'roid rage all you want - he killed before looping the coward's line. And that's all he deserves to be remembered for.