Chris Jericho Explains the Importance Chris Benoit Had on His Career, on Bringing David Benoit and Nancy Benoit’s Sister Together Years Later

AEW star Chris Jericho spoke with Jeffrey Harris for the 411 Wrestling Interview Podcast and discussed his involvement with Dark Side of the Ring’s season premiere episode looking at Chris Benoit. Jericho serves as the narrator for the full season two, which will look at the stories of Benoit, Owen Hart, Dino Bravo, the Brawl For All tournament and more, but he initially came on board when Chavo Guerrero was getting people to do interviews for the Benoit episode that airs Tuesday night (March 24) on VICE TV.

Speaking with Jeffrey, Jericho talked the importance Chris Benoit had on his own career and vice versa. You can check out the highlights below, as well as the full interview:

Jericho on the importance Chris Benoit had on his career and vice versa: “Exactly, and that’s kind of what I said in the documentary when I said — when you talk about Chris and his career, how great he was in the ring, it’s not glorifying a murderer talking about that because there has to be a point where you can separate the two and never forget what he did or understand it or not be completely serious about it, but there is also is a whole side of him in the ring which was pure genius. And it’s something that when I was working in WWE, and they would do — I think we did three of them, kind of the Jericho retrospectives on DVD, you can’t include those Benoit matches, and they were very important. They were very much an integral part of my career in the WWE, and those matches will never really be seen again. And it’s hard to watch even if they were. There’s a huge chunk of my career that was affected by that, not just from a friendship level, but from a professional level as well.”

On the stories of David Benoit and Nancy’s sister, Sandra Toffoloni, being lost in the 1ast 13 years: “Yeah, absolutely. I think that, specifically Nancy for sure. Nancy and David were innocents in all of this. And I think Nancy had a huge career behind her that gets forgotten because she is a victim, the wife that gets murdered by her husband. But once again, you have to separate her last weekend of her life with her amazing career. She was great at what she did. And I think that should be critically acclaimed and should be spoken about more.”

“So, once again, it’s one of those things where a lot of things get affected by this weekend. I mean David’s life definitely gets changed course huge when this happened to him. So, there’s a lot of things that we have to remember that are more than just about the death. It’s the people who are left behind, and the legacy that are left behind that are also tainted forever by what happened.”

Chris Jericho on what inspired him to bring Nancy Toffoloni and David Benoit together: “Well, I got them together — I had interviewed Sandra a few years ago for my podcast. I think that was the first time she ever really spoke publicly about what went down, and I wanted to talk to her once again, kind of more about Nancy than about Chris. You know, obviously the conversation goes there because Sandra was affected as well, but once she kind of came and spoke to me because I had never met her before either, I said, ‘Do you ever talk to David?’ ‘I don’t have his number.’ ‘Well, here’s his number.’ And I gave her number to David. I gave his number to her, and they started a relationship kind of contacting each other. It kind of came to a head by appearing on this show, and I think they’ve hung out a few times. I think, if anything, I feel really proud of the fact that I was able to bring them together after they hadn’t talked for, I don’t know, 10 years or whatever it was at the time. They should be together because nobody in the world was affected as much as those two were. So, it was really gratifying for me to see that they struck up a relationship that still exists to this day.”

In the full interview, Jericho discusses his involvement with season two of Dark Side of the Ring, the season premiere episode on Chris Benoit, his match with Jon Moxley at AEW Revolution and more.

And if you’re enjoying all of our recent interviews with names like Gail Kim, Alexander Hammerstone, Mance Warner, Lance Archer, and Ken Shamrock and want to support us getting more interviews with big names in wrestling, please leave us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, it only takes a few seconds to do and really helps us out!

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit the 411 Wrestling Interview Podcast on 411mania.com and please embed our podcast player or YouTube video.

0:00: Introduction
0:51: On being brought on for the episode and whether he had any reservations doing it
2:18: On the episode’s different approach to the Benoit story
3:25: On Benoit’s importance to his own career and Benoit matches not being included in WWE retrospectives
5:04: On Chris and Nancy Benoit’s family members participating in the episode and telling their story and bringing them together
9:29: On narrating the rest of season two’s episodes, being a fan of the show’s first season
10:24: On Dark Side of the Ring tapping into wrestling history and shedding a new light on wrestling stories
12:43: On losing the AEW Championship at AEW Revolution to Jon Moxley, Moxley being one of AEW’s early big stars

You can subscribe and listen to the 411 Wrestling Interviews Podcast via the above player on Transistor, or on the following platforms:
* Apple Podcasts
* Spotify
* Stitcher
* Google Play