Teddy Long Recalls WWE Nixing Vince McMahon's RAW "Funeral" After Chris Benoit Tragedy

Viceland's Dark Side of the Ring had its Season 2 premiere episode this week and it told the story of Chris Benoit's double murder-suicide. Teddy Long had a long history with Benoit and was asked if he saw the episode when he joined The Wrestling Inc Daily podcast for an interview that will drop this coming Monday.

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"No, I didn't see it. I thought it was March 24," Long said before being reminded that we just celebrated March 24. "Oh Jesus Christ! It's moving on by me, I hope I ain't got corona [laughs].

"No I missed it but I wish I would have had the opportunity to talk those guys as I was right there and a part of all of that. With Nancy and Benoit, I drove with them a lot of nights. I broke in with Kevin Sullivan and him and Nancy were married at the time so I was there when the thing started with her and Benoit.

"Chris was such a nice guy and you would never believe something like that would have went down. Chris Benoit would give you the shirt off his back and also Nancy was the same way. If people can remember, she was the manager for Butch Reed and Ron Simmons before I got them. They were called Doom but they had the hoods on and I was the one that took the hoods off them. My thing was these are two pretty black men that you got covered up and let's get these masks off and let the pretty ladies see what they look like. So she had a chance to manage them before I got them."

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WWE broke the news of the deaths to the Superstars before a Monday Night Raw. Long was backstage for the surreal scene and recalled the eerily coincidental angle that was going on at the time.

"We were in Corpus Christi, Texas and were getting ready to do TV," Long said before bringing up that WWE was running an angle where Vince McMahon was killed on the previous week's Raw.

"That Corpus Christi TV was the day we were gonna have Vince McMahon's funeral. They had the coffin and everything there and that's when Vince came and broke the news to us and that's why we weren't able to do the Vince McMahon funeral.

"That was unreal man."

You can follow Teddy on Twitter @teddyplayalong. Teddy's full interview with Wrestling Inc will air as part of this coming Monday's episode of our podcast, The Wrestling Inc. Daily. Subscribe to get the latest episodes as soon as it's released Monday – Friday afternoon by clicking here. The latest episode, featuring FITE COO Michael Weber, via the embedded audio player below.

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