Dark Side Of The Ring is a very popular docuseries on Vice that not only chronicles the life and career of wrestlers that are either deceased and still living, but also goes more in depth into some of professional wrestling’s most controversial and darkest moments such as “The Montreal Screwjob” and “The Plane Ride From Hell”.
Not only am I a huge fan of the docuseries, but I also prefer Dark Side Of The Ring over the watered down and sanitized modern day WWE documentaries on wrestlers. Unlike modern day WWE documentaries, Dark Side Of The Ring goes more in depth on the person playing the character as well as controversial and disturbing aspects of his life as seen with The Ultimate Warrior episode from the 1st half of Season 3.
The only thing I heard about “The Plane Ride From Hell” incident in the past was that, then-rookie, Brock Lesnar and veteran Curt Hennig had gotten into a fight on a plane. But the recent Dark Side Of The Ring episode further revealed more disturbing and dark details about “The Plane Ride From Hell,” where a drunken Sean Waltman cut Michael Hayes’s ponytail off, white male wrestlers vomiting all over the place and then there’s the incident where a flight attendant was sexually harassed by a naked Ric Flair wearing his iconic robe when he forced her into touching his stick (you know what I mean). WWE went out of their way to protect Ric Flair by covering up his egregious actions towards the flight attendant by literally giving her millions in hush money and it would all go away, but for her, it didn’t because she carried the emotionally psychologically scars of Ric Flair’s egregious actions from 20 years ago and I applaud her for her bravery and courage for coming out and speaking truth about what she went through at the hands of Flair on that flight 20 years ago. I stand in solidarity with that flight attendant and end the good old “white boys only” club in professional wrestling.
There has also been certain episodes such as “New Jack” that became so difficult for me to watch that I couldn’t bring myself to ever watch them again because I got to learn about the much more controversial person behind the “New Jack” personality and what made him severely stiff and crazy in the ring. The “New Jack” episode caused me to have a very personal dislike towards these type of matches because of the over excessive violent nature of these matches. If you’re one of those wrestling fans out there that likes deathmatches, then more power to you because they’re definitely not my cup of tea. As a matter of fact I haven’t watched the “Nick Gage” episode and definitely won’t watch the “XPW” and “FMW” episodes because of the disturbing deathmatch images from all 3 episodes of Season 3.
The one legitimate critique that I have about The Dark Side Of The Ring series is that they don’t showcase more female wrestlers and managers they only do about 1 a season which to me is as egregious as AEW having 1 women’s match on Dynamite and Rampage every week. They can and should do more stories regarding the life and career of female wrestlers and managers.
Another thing I like about the docuseries is that it also shows the wrestlers in their happy private moments away from the lights, cameras, fans, and the ring when they’re shown being doing parents to their kids. DSOTR also allows professional wrestling fans to see certain wrestlers such as Ric Flair differently when they’ve committed egregious actions against other women and in the recent episode, the flight attendant.
The Conclusion, Dark Side Of The Ring is such a powerful and compelling documentary series that will make you emotional at times as well as cause rage trigger at certain people and make you feel sympathetic towards certain people like the flight attendant. If you do watch the show I must warn you, some subject matter may be a little too disturbing and rage triggering to you, so Viewer Discretion Is Definitely Advised.
By Kwame Shakir
