In the interest of full disclosure, I am thanked in this book's acknowledgments as I assisted the author with some of his research.  I can assure you that this has no bearing on my review, as I was thanked in more than one of Scott Keith's books and can assure you they were not very good, to say the least.

Ring of Hell, the second book about Chris Benoit released since he killed his wife, their 7 year-old son Daniel, and himself, is not perfect.  That said, it's a comprehensive and engaging read that is unlike any previous wrestling books and a must-read for all wrestling fans.

The book opens with a Bobby Heenan quote that paints the "everyone in this business must be a little bit crazy" picture and quickly dives into Benoit's childhood.  It starts with the basic idea that you're all familiar with: A shy, introverted, and small boy who was a causal wrestling fan in Montreal, he had trouble identifying with the larger wrestlers of his local territory. Upon his family moving to Edmonton, he became obsessed with the Dynamite Kid (Tom Billington) after seeing Stampede Wrestling on TV.  "Obsessed" is not an exaggeration, as Benoit, identifying with the short and (at the time) wiry Dynamite, decided that he had to be just like him. 

The format of the book takes shape here, as there is a wealth of background information about Stampede, the Harts, and Dynamite Kid. As Benoit moves around the world, each environment that he enters is described in great detail, so as to both inform the readers less familiar with some of the subject matter and to paint a picture of the strange world that assisted in the destruction of his psyche.  In Stampede, he's stretched by Stu Hart and then tormented by Bruce Hart to the point that Bad News Allen, who was mentoring Benoit and came to consider him "[his] adopted son," decided that Benoit needed to get away from Bruce. He made a deal for his protege to enter the New Japan Pro Wrestling dojo as a trainee while also getting $1,000 weekly salary. 

In one of the most talked about parts of the book (probably the most talked about chapter), Randazzo paints a Scary picture of the infamous "hell camp."  It's here where Randazzo’s reporting gets really impressive, as he gets on the record comments from former NJPW trainee and star Osamu Nishimura about the dojo experience as well as long-time foreign star Scott Norton and various unnamed background sources.  There is plenty of Benoit-specific material here about the time he spent in the dojo, but it really shines more as the first in-depth western look into the dojo system. 

This chapter paints such a convincing picture of the absolute torture of the 1980’s dojo system that it convinces the reader it had to have had a negative effect on Benoit's mental well-being.  Verbal abuse. Punishments of 500 additional Hindu squats for showing that they felt pain while doing 1000 of them. Sexual Abuse. Beatings so severe that they occasionally were fatal. All so you can learn to be good at pretending to fight.  Nishimura told Randazzo of how the only time he could enjoy was being in the bathroom or shower because he was alone.  As Benoit becomes a regular, well-treated roster member in NJPW instead of a "Young Boy,” Randazzo does a fine job describing the strange influence of the  Yakuza on all of Japan, especially pro wrestling. Randazzo does a fine job of reporting here, and I found it to be the second best chapter in the book.  We'll get to the best one later.

As Benoit becomes a star in Japan and gets the power that a top foreign star is given, he changes.  He goes from tormented trainee to backstage bully.  This is the point where the "Benoit was always off to some degree" slant that  Randazzo takes throughout the book starts going into "sadist" territory, from proclaiming "HAHA!  What a gay bitch!" to Chris Jericho when they saw a referee crying backstage (a story that was in the galleys of Jericho's book and deleted from the final version) to leading the foreigners in urinating on John Moore as he did push-ups after other abuse.  Meanwhile, the more sane part of Benoit became best friends with Eddy Guerrero, who is generally regarded in the book as a terribly nice guy with a horrible addiction problem.

Benoit is portrayed as enjoying the beginning of his American career.  He briefly worked for  NJPW's American affiliate,  WCW, during the Bill Watts regime and seemed to enjoy it, but got released after Ole Anderson took over and deemed him too small ("women's bones") to be a wrestler and too showy an  undercarder to be effective.  At this point the book focuses on the ECW atmosphere as it did with the others, though this one seemed to have relatively little influence on Benoit.  It's a real credit to Randazzo that he got Heyman to speak on the record in detail, with Heyman seemingly trying to be as colorful as possible.

At this point, we get what I feel is the weakest point of the book, the background material about WCW.  It felt redundant after years of newsletters, internet columnists, and message boards, a feeling that the rest of the book was lacking for the most part. The book sidetracks to discuss Brian Pillman, a friend from Stampede, when they briefly become partners in the Four Horsemen.  Much of the material is familiar after the  Pillman DVD and resulting Observer story, but  Randazzo paints a more disturbing picture than the other stories.  Pillman, who, like Eddy Guerrero found out late life that he was suffering from bipolar disorder, the disease that used to be referred to officially as "manic depression."  While there is what I believe is a relatively minor factual error here (I seem to recall that his ex who committed suicide, Rochelle, was never married to him as the book says), Randazzo illustrates that babysitting the troubled Pillman as he later did Eddy must have been hard on him, as the always wild Pillman spiraled out of control in the last 2 years of his life in a drug-fueled pursuit of financial security for his 6 children.  A few months before Pillman's death, Benoit's personal life experienced a fascinatingly weird change that became infamous for the rest of his life and got ridiculously creepy after his death.

The chapter about Kevin Sullivan, his marriage to Nancy, and how he drove her into Benoit's arms is fascinating, and I found it to be the best chapter of the book.  Like the dojo chapter, the detail on the subject is unprecedented, with an impressive profile of Nancy individually as well.  Seemingly subdued by marijuana much of the time, they became increasingly combative, but physically and verbally, and also cheated on each other regularly. The account of Kevin "booking his own divorce" by ordering Nancy and Benoit to travel together, grope each other in bars, etc. while having a storyline affair is different from what we've heard, as while the other wrestlers were angry at the trio of the  Sullivans and Benoit for their farce, and rightfully so.  The adulterous "couple" wasn’t legitimately involved for the bulk of the storyline.  Randazzo's sources all seem to believe that Kevin became convinced that they were, beat Nancy on a Japanese tour, and she decided that she should do what she was wrongfully punished for, with a synthetic testosterone-fueled Benoit seemingly unable to resist.

For the rest of Benoit’s WCW tenure and the beginning of his WWF/E run, most of the material is familiar, with the exception of Benoit threatening to break his fists on the ringpost in protest of Sullivan being appointed head booker in January of 2000.  When he and the other "Radicalz" jump, the book begins its deep examination of the McMahons and the culture of their company.  The WWE portion contains the most on the record quotes, mainly from former members of the writing staff.  Full of previously unreleased information that frames the company and the family that runs it as boneheaded in the way that only a wrestling company can be (Aaron "Jesus"  Aguilera getting fired for having the gall to use the services of the company chiropractor and trainer, who were really intended for the main eventers to visit in spite of them ostensibly being available to everyone) to creepy (Vince, Stephanie, and  HHH verbally abusing Linda in front of a writer, writer Dave Lagana’s sexual harassment of wrestlers, which the company allegedly knew about for a year before firing him).

Randazzo believes that after Benoit broke his neck (and worked with the injury for a month thanks to his crazy mentality that the company fed), the year at home with his new wife, Nancy, and year-old child, Daniel, was a major factor in his spiral due to the changes.  It was noted in the post-murder Observers that he refused to get off steroids while he recovered out of fear that he would shrink.  He made a comeback seemingly without losing a step in the ring while Guerrero's addictions peaked.  Again, the book seems to be generally made up of familiar material at this point as it covers his "lifetime achievement award" World Title reign and whatnot, and then Eddy Guerrero, his best friend, dies.  Randazzo does an excellent job examining the exploitative nature of tribute shows that seemed to be built around Benoit's tears which is one of the best-written passages in the book. 

No new ground is broken on the murders themselves, but Randazzo does an excellent job in going over the tribute show and how it was shaped by the Vince McMahon death storyline negating the value of the existing tribute show format in very interesting chapter.

Randazzo is pretty savvy, and comes up with some ideas that I haven't seen discussed but certainly seem to make sense (Eddy Guerrero spending time with Joanie "Chyna" Laurer as their addictions worsen, in her case due to the public crumbling of her relationship with Paul "Triple H" Levesque).  I can see why his writing style would annoy some, but I felt it fit with the goals of the book, which is largely centered around how the "HE WAS SUCH A NICE GUY AND PERECTLY SANE!!!!!!!!!eleventyone" spiels repeated ad-nauseum by his friends and co-workers was a bunch of crap, the act of a business circling its wagon desperate to cover up its complicity.  The criticism that the book reads like the infamous “sleaze thread” internet collection of salacious rumors in not valid in the least.  The book is written in a serious, blameful tone, not the writings of a semi-playful “OMG L@@K AT THIS STORY!” gawker.  Are many of the stories out there and at times amusing?  Sure, but the book’s tone stresses that it’s a symptom of the wrestling business’s collective insanity, not “boys will be boys” jocularity.  The book is flawed, with some minor errors, the WCW background section that seems like it will never end, and other things that I’ve probably pointed out already, but it generally doesn’t detract from the book as a whole.  If you’re a wrestling fan, it’s a must-read, especially if you enjoyed the recent “WWE writer’s room” issues of the Observer.  If you’re not, but you took an interest in the coverage of the murders, the wrestling business’s drug culture, and Benoit’s brain damage last summer, then I highly recommend it.