The cultural impact that Dark Side Of The Ring has had on the wrestling world isn’t lost on the duo behind the camera.
Dark Side Of The Ring producers Evan Husney and Jason Eisener spoke with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard ahead of the season 3B premiere on September 16, and the duo spoke about what to expect from the latest batch of episodes as well as the response to the series so far.
Linda Pillman, was featured in the season 3A episode about her brother, the late Brian Pillman, and won fans over after they learned about her own story. Since then, Linda got her own t-shirt on Pro Wrestling Tees, and got a few shoutouts on AEW television. The Pillman family appeared on television last week at AEW Dynamite in Cincinnati, even getting involved in a scathing promo by MJF, and Husney and Eisener spoke about how the show’s influence has really started to be seen in a huge way.
Evan: “Just this year [alone], has been super humbling to us. We never, ever in our wildest dreams thought that our show or the work that we would do would really start to influence the actual wrestling community in such a way that you would see on weekly cable television like that. So that’s just super cool but it also just shows us the power of the platform and that now, as we’re going forward and really keeping in check, we saw it with the Nick Gage episode. Man, that was surreal to see, like here comes our Nick Gage story and our narrator [Chris Jericho] is wrestling him on primetime cable television.
“And then to be able to see—just seeing Linda last night was so heartwarming and amazing because that’s our ideal scenario in terms of the outcome of these shows. I just remember hoping the best for Brian Jr. coming out of the ‘Pillman’ episode, but then also like in the back of my mind I just had this wish like if Linda walked out, down the ramp, she’d be so over right now. It was so cool just to really see that last night. It was just amazing, and CM Punk putting over the show as well, those are real mark-out moments for us, for damn sure.”
A similar situation took place after Nick Gage was featured on a subsequent 3A episode, ultimately leading to his own appearance on Dynamite as one of the “labours of Jericho.” Eisener talked about putting the episode together and said they had a feeling back then that Gage might end up on a new platform after the show aired.
Jason: “It was crazy. When we did the voice recording with Chris Jericho for the Nick Gage episode, he hadn’t really heard of Nick Gage before then. Like he was coming in and asking us questions about it. And I remember looking to Evan at some point while we were editing the episode saying, ‘I have a feeling Nick Gage is gonna wind up in AEW after this episode comes out,’ and it did and it’s surreal to see. It’s pretty cool.”
Dark Side Of The Ring returns to VICE on Thursday, September 16. The next episode features a look back at the infamous “Plane Ride From Hell” in WWE; listen to the full video interview above, or listen to the audio version below to learn more about why it was finally the right time to tell that story.
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