After a two year wait, Vice TV’s Dark Side of the Ring is returning.
The season will cover a range of topics in the 10 episode season, including the emotional rollercoaster that one of WWE’s most captivating and controversial couples, Chris Candido and Tammy “Sunny” Sytch, experienced when they became engaged in wrestling, the car accident that ruined Magnum T.A.’s career, wrestling’s most unhinged monster, Abdullah the Butcher, the troubled life of Marty Jannetty, Shawn Michaels’ former tag team partner, and much more.
Here to talk about the season is co-creator Evan Husney. We went in depth on the topics of the upcoming season.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
The Knockturnal: How did you approach the episode format for this season?
Last year, we were working on Tales from the Territories and we really wanted to try doing something different. You know, because we had done 30 episodes of Dark Side and had this opportunity to work with Dwayne Johnson and Seven Bucks, which was really cool. It’s no secret that my partner in crime with Dark Side of the Ring, Jason and I, we both love the territories of wrestling. And so we really just wanted to exercise our passion for that with Tales from the Territories.
It was a super fun side project to do. And it was really great to get back to Dark Side of the Ring. And it’s been interesting because so many of the episodes that are part of this season like Bam Bam Bigelow Tammy and Chris, Marty Jannetty, and Magnum TA, we’ve had on our wish list going back years now of episodes we’ve wanted to always do.
And so, it’s been great to finally be able to get to one of those. Tammy and Chris, which of course is the premiere episode on May 30th, is actually one we’ve been trying to put together since season two. Corresponding with Tammy Sytch through letter correspondence when she’s been in jail or, you know, trying to put this thing together one way or the other. And we would finally kind of just say, ‘you know what, let’s just go ahead and do it finally.’ And I’m super glad we did because I’m very proud of the episode. I think it’s extremely emotional. It’s very powerful. And I think it sheds a light on Chris Candido in terms of being just such an unsung talent in wrestling and so ahead of his time.
I mean, talk about a guy who was a smaller guy and his style was ahead of his time. You know, I think now his style and his size is something that’s more ubiquitous, you see, in wrestling everywhere. And so I think, if he were around today, he would still be such a huge influential part of the business.
The Knockturnal: What is the most challenging episode you and Jason produced for this season?
I think in terms of putting together these episodes figuring out who’s going to be the best voices to talk about it. I mean, we always hear from wrestlers that are saying, ‘Oh, you didn’t talk to us, you didn’t reach out to us for these,’ you know, stuff like that. A lot of guys were giving us a hard time and it’s like we only have so many days allowed in the budget. So we have to be very careful with who we pick to tell these stories. Jannetty’s episode, which I’m very excited about for people to see, has been one that’s been challenging to put together . It really walks the line between reality, what’s really happened, and also with the sort of fantasy world that Marty sort of lives in and perpetuates. And I think it walks the line between fact or fiction.
It’s kind of the Walter Mitty episode, if you will, of Dark Side of the Ring, as it is trying to explore and get to the real heart of who he is. So yeah, I think this season kind of takes us on some different journeys and we’re trying to balance different tones.
The Knockturnal: What can you say about the Junkyard Dog episode?
As you know, we’ve always wanted to tell the junkyard dog story. It’s always been one that’s on our list as well to to tell, you know, we’re huge fans. We cover a lot of Junkyard Dog stories on the Tales from the Territories episode, and I think it was very tough to find people who really, truly knew JYD beyond just being a wrestling colleague, you know, like that the family members who really knew who Sylvester Ritter was and what made him tick and what made him the way he was, that was a big challenge for us. And I hope we succeeded in that. You know, we’ve always tried to put that episode together, and it’s remained pretty challenging for us just to try and get those authentic voices for that program. But you are going to hear from a lot of different people that did work super duper closely with him.
The Knockturnal: In early December, early reports of the fourth season’s topics included Mike Awesome and Scott Hall. When the episode list was made public in the trailer, these two were not included. Can you clarify if those two episodes were ever produced?
It’s tricky because when something leaks, it is both bad and good. Sometimes when you’re exploring a story like Mike Awesome, for example, which is a story that I’d love to be able to tell. Mike Awesome was really one of my favorite wrestlers growing up as a kid. Like, seriously, like I was a huge ECW fan growing up. We were exploring that as a potential episode. And I think because of the leak, some people who are close to Mike just kind of got cold feet about what would come out and what would happen in the episode, what we’d cover and unfortunately, the episode kind of fell through for that reason or the access to that story did.
And so that was unfortunate, but that’s kind of what can happen when something leaks. And I would say the same story for Scott Hall in some respects, too. It was like there were some people we really wanted. It was a little bit different. Like there’s some people, we wanted to be able to tell a unique story with Scott Hall because his story has been told so many times and we wanted to find a unique angle. And I think that we did. And then the people that were sort of needed for that episode didn’t quite come through. That happens a lot where we try to put these episodes together. We try to get the right voices, and if we don’t have them, we just decide not to do them because we would rather not do them than do them with the wrong voices. And so the fact that it gets kind of leaked out there doesn’t help because then it creates false hope and you guys get all excited and then we can’t deliver. So yeah, but who knows? But as everybody knows in wrestling, never say never.
The Knockturnal: Did the Plane Ride from Hell episode’s reception factored into the stories you wanted to tell for season 4 of Dark Side of the Ring?
Wrestling is a very black or white binary concept of you having to either be putting someone over or you’re burying them. There’s no in between. You’re putting them over or you’re burying them. And it’s weird when it comes to journalism, when it comes to covering a story, you can’t cover those.
That doesn’t apply in this documentary context. It’s not about putting somebody over or it’s not about burying somebody. It’s about telling [the] story and what happened, and trying to capture that as best you can in terms of separating fact from fiction. It’s very complicated in this world. And so I think that for some, maybe there is a concept that the show is about putting people over or celebrating purely, which it’s not. It’s never been. Our show has always been about trying to get to the heart of each of these stories. And so you know, I think there’s some challenges with that where some wrestlers felt that’s maybe what the show was for. I don’t see it that way. I see Dark Side of the Ring as an unfiltered look at the stories that have happened in this industry. And to me, it hasn’t changed any way that I want to cover these stories.
I think that episode does a great job in terms of showing the different point of views that everybody has about that story. I think everybody who’s interviewed in that episode kind of has their own take on what’s happening from a modern day cultural lens to what happened in the moment and everything else. I think obviously it became very controversial and people started to walk back from the controversy, which I understand. But I think that to me, was a great example of the oral history of that subject.
The Knockturnal: Is the Bash at the Beach 2000 episode focused on the event, or the incident between Vince Russo and Hulk Hogan?
It is more focused on the incidents between Vince Russo versus camp Hulk Hogan. For us, I love diversifying the types of episodes we do every season where we’ll have something that is a profile about a wrestler, or will have something that’s like an event based episode like we did Collision in Korea for season three or the Montreal screw job for season one. And this is kind of that episode for this season where it’s such a breath of fresh air for us to kind of be able to live in a moment and expand a single moment into a full hour, rather than trying to cram someone’s full story into an hour. But for Bash at the Beach 2000, It’s a fun exercise for us to be able to investigate that story because there are a lot of twists and turns, separating fact from fiction.
None of the facts have lined up for 20 years plus. And there’s a big legal fallout so you have the stakes of that and you have WCW on the major decline, which is an interesting time period to look at and examine it with hindsight. But it also gives us a chance to play with a different tone. You know, someone doesn’t die in the end or this isn’t a unrelenting, tragic story. This is something dare I say, more on the fun side of the tone where we get to just look at big egos dueling it out. So I think viewers are going to find it eye opening and entertaining.
The Knockturnal: Vice Media’s bankruptcy made the news recently. Will this affect the Dark Side of the Ring series?
All indications that I have been briefed and told that this basically changes nothing for Dark Side of the Ring and for the health of the show. And for the show airing and all that stuff, everything’s on track and everything is just like it would have been in any other circumstance. So everything is business as usual.
Editor’s Note: Vice Media is filing for bankruptcy, not Vice TV.
