What if the Benoit family tragedy never happened?

#3 WWE resists changes to protocol

WWE started taking head injuries a lot more seriously after Benoit's death.

One of the biggest upshots of the Benoit family tragedy was a shift in how WWE handled head injuries in terms of prevention as well as reactions to them. This was both a matter of protecting wrestlers as human beings, as well as an essential public relations move to demonstrate that the company had learned its lesson and strived to be safe. We no longer see chair shots to the head because WWE recognizes they’re particularly likely to result in concussions. Moreover, we regularly see wrestlers need to miss time now because of head injuries—most notably Daniel Bryan sitting out over two years for these reasons.

Maybe WWE would have made these changes anyway. After all, the company doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and couldn’t be oblivious to football facing similar conundrums about head injuries, besides a blooming body of research on the subject. Just the same, WWE isn’t exactly known for being progressive in its protocols and its entirely possible they would have been slower to make changes if they made changes at all in the absence of an incident as big as what happened to Benoit and his family.