MISSING MR. PERFECT
By Justin Henry

It’s been eight years since I was laying on my sofa, waiting for Monday Night Raw to hit the airwaves, anticipating mocking Scott Steiner for his sluggish work, as well as Triple H for his poor man’s Ric Flair impression in the early days of Evolution.

In an odd epiphany, just before Raw began, I realized that by spending the afternoon and evening hours job hunting and helping shovel snow for my older neighbors, I hadn’t checked any wrestling websites for a Raw preview.

Instead of cutting to the usual title screen, what appeared before my soon-to-be-disbelieving eyes was a still photo of “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig, with his year of birth and, horrifically, year of death.

My brother Josh, as big a Perfect fan as I, was in the other room (more annoyed with WWE than I was, and barely watching). I could barely stutter out my yell of “Dude, Mr. Perfect’s dead!”

We both wondered aloud: “What the Hell happened?”

Mr. Perfect was a part of the WWF when I first started watching in 1989. At the time, he was portrayed as an undefeated uber-athlete who was defined by his flawless execution in sport and leisure. Outside the ring, Hennig demonstrated perfect dives, golf putts, billiard precision, and the ability to get a perfect game in bowling (possibly with the aid of many film takes).

Between the ropes, Mr. Perfect would take whatever jobber or midcarder that was across the ring, and simply put on a clinic that was part sadist/part showoff. Just as Hennig would drill an opponent with a dropkick preceded by a high jumper’s leap, he would just as soon contort the poor soul’s face into a painful sneer with a bullying grasp-and-pull

I’d watched the man enthrall with gamesmanship, emote credible intensity, sell opponents’ offense like he’d been shot with a grenade launcher, and, of course, swat hundreds of wads of gum into oblivion.

How could a man that projected elegant flair and superior athletic prowess leave this mortal coil separated from his dignity in such disturbing fashion?

Or was it?

Then reality hit.

For those that don’t remember, in May of 2002, a drunken Hennig was over the Atlantic, flying home from a UK tour with many of his peers when he began to roughhouse with Brock Lesnar. Triple H apparently tried to end the scuffle, and Hennig, allegedly, knocked him into the door of the plane.

Vince McMahon had no choice but to fire Curt Hennig.

One of his last matches in TNA saw him stagger through beating David Flair with a wooden axe handle, and shove a ring crew assistant off the apron for no apparent reason. Hennig was the babyface at that point, it should be noted.

We joke about the likes Scott Hall and Jake Roberts and Matt Hardy and Chyna when they fall from grace, make fools of themselves, and become poster children for how to destroy a legacy. But Hennig, if not for some post-mortem whitewashing from fans willing to blur out the bad memories, not to mention a WWE Hall of Fame induction four years later, has survived the bad stories, even if he physically didn’t.

Curt Hennig’s greatness as a performer should never be forgotten, but neither should his descent. Neck and back injuries, being forced to return to the ring after an insurance policy expired, a diet of alcohol, steroids, and painkillers, not to mention the cocaine, led one of wrestling’s greatest heavyweight athletes off of a conveyer belt and into death.

It’s been eight years since I was startled by that graphic that opened Monday Night Raw, and the deaths in wrestling (save for Benoit and Eddie Guerrero) have startled me less and less as time has passed.

Curt Hennig may not have been “perfect”, but the positive memories he created for millions of fans like myself are perfect enough.