WWE Chris Benoit Book Review: Dungeon of Death by Scott Keith

Scott Keith has been the foremost wrestling historian on the web (and in three books) almost since Al Gore invented the Internet. That's why I was looking forward to his book on the Chris Benoit tragedy: "Dungeon of Death: The Hart Family Curse."

I knew this would be hard for Keith to write, because Benoit was one of his biggest wrestling heroes. Keith managed to place Benoit's unthinkable act of killing his wife, child, and self in 2007 into a broader context of what is wrong with the pro wrestling business.

Keith writes about how Benoit, Eddy Guerrero and countless other wrestlers destroyed their lives through steroid abuse, drug addiction, and a relentless thirst for the unique high of success in the wrestling ring.

In fact, one of the biggest addictions these wrestlers face is an addiction to the wrestling business itself. Chris Benoit's body and mind were destroyed by years of abuse in and out of the ring, and yet one major source of his angst was the fact that Vince McMahon was no longer going to use him as a featured star.

Don't worry - the book isn't a complete downer. In fact, it provides biographies of many wrestlers, taking us down memory lane through the good times before reaching each wrestler's demise.

Bret Hart is one non-deceased wrestler Keith profiled. Bret is still alive, but he has endured the destruction of his entire family, beginning with the accident involving his brother, Owen.

Owen died in 1999 while performing a stunt where he was descending from the ceiling in a superhero costume. While Owen was one wrestler in the book who didn't bring his misfortune upon himself, he was unable to resist the siren song of the wrestling ring, which many wrestlers just can't leave behind in favor of a normal life.

Owen's death led to infighting in the Hart family, and Bret lost his parents to old age and his brother-in-law, Davey Boy Smith, to drug abuse.

After dealing with the Hart Family curse, Keith tells us what happened to many of our other wrestling heroes of the 1980s and 1990s, like Road Warrior Hawk, Brian Pillman, "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig, and Ravishing Rick Rude.

Even Miss Elizabeth, the delicate flower who managed the maniacal Randy "Macho Man" Savage, is no longer with us, as she couldn't stay away from the wrestling business and its destructive lifestyle.

At the end of the book, Scott Keith tries to put the loss of life into some kind of perspective and proposes some helpful ideas.

Keith covered the history of World Wrestling Entertainment and its now-defunct competitors in three previous books: "Tonight in This Very Ring," "Wrestling's One-Ring Circus," and "Wrestling's Made Men."

"Dungeon of Death" is the most serious and important book Keith has written yet, and it begins to make some kind of sense of wrestling's most unspeakable tragedy.