Racing To Detect Brain Trauma

Abstract

To finish off an opponent, Chris (The Canadian Crippler) Benoit sometimes used a move called the diving headbutt. This involved the professional wrestler scaling the ropes at the edge of the ring and launching himself headfirst toward a downed competitor below. Once Benoit’s head slammed into the other wrestler someplace—a shoulder perhaps—the match was over, the Crippler victorious. In 2007, after 22 years in the ring, Benoit murdered his wife and seven-year-old son and then hanged himself. Some in the wrestling community speculated that steroid use was to blame. Others pointed to a tumultuous relationship between the two-time world champion and his wife. A few conspiracy-minded fans even proposed that Benoit, 40 when he died, had been framed. But Julian E. Bailes Jr., then the chair of neurosurgery at West Virginia University, had other ideas. He wondered about the effects of all those headbutts. All the concussions. All the chairs ...