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Dark Side of the Ring


flyonthewall2983

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I love the DSOTR series as a whole but this season peaked with its first episode thus far. The garbage match one was just a turn off, I just don't like seeing that sort of thing. The Warrior episode was what it was. The Korea episode was somewhat of a non episode. Due to the subject matter I dare say the Jake Roberts episode will be something I'm not keen on viewing.  

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I knew the Grizzly Smith episode would be brutal, but the speculation that he might have had something to do with his daughter's disappearance still knocked me for a loop. At least on the episodes with exceptionally dark subject matter (Benoit, Pillman, Grizz), they go out of their way to try to end with some kind of silver lining.

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Man, I forgot they were doing an episode on the Dynamite Kid. Funny how it's almost like they undersold what a psycho he was by saying how Jacques Rougeau standing up for himself (and apparently getting Dino Bravo to have the mob threaten DK if he retaliated) seemed to fuck him up mentally. Dude seemed to be mentally incapable of dealing with the idea that someone would get tired of his bullshit. 

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Watching many of these DSOR episodes there's such a depressing through line of the abuse and pain - mental and physical - that the women, be it wives, mothers, sisters, daughters in these wrestlers lives suffer. In each instance the causes may be slightly different, it may be amplified by things like CTE or drugs or alcohol, but it causes those in the wrestlers home lives to become victims of some warped and toxic reality, and I'm continuously amazed by the strength and resilience, of those that have managed to build lives for themselves in the years since when you consider what they have experienced.     

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On 6/11/2021 at 1:24 AM, SirEdger said:

I mean, considering Dino Bravo's real-life link to the mob (former Montreal mob boss Vic Cotroni was legit Dino's godfather IIRC), I wouldn't even be surprised if that turned out to be true.

Dave was asked on WO radio last night if he believed that story and he was like "absolutely, I always wondered why Dynamite never got him back for that, and that story makes perfect sense" basically saying the only thing that could have prevented him from getting his revenge would be a threat to his family. 

It was also heartbreaking seeing Michelle express frustration on why people only focus on the bad things he did, which as his wife I can understand, but then she talks about him dragging her around the house by her hair and pointing a gun at her face. 

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When they started talking about how Dynamite would slip drugs in people's drinks, I thought they were going to mention what Diana wrote in her book that Davey Boy/Jim Neidhart/Dynamite would all give their wives roofied OJ to drink and then have anal sex with them while they were passed out. 

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The Hart family is genuinely one of the most fucked-up families the world has ever seen, and anyone who tries to justify or explain away Stu's actions as just a rough but kind man looking out for his kids needs to fuck all the way off. It is an absolute wonder that Owen was such a sweetheart, and that he found a really sweet girl who put up with his family for as long as she did 

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Just a note - if you're looking for this week's episode, its actually available for viewing under the name "Vice Versa: Chyna." The episode wasn't recorded on my DVR but I downloaded the Vice TV app on my Roku and it is listed there. You can read more about it here:

https://www.yahoo.com/now/vice-tv-gm-why-chyna-160000125.html

Any which way, I just turned it on. There's no Jericho narration and much more footage of Chyna telling her own story so it definitely is noticeably different than your typical DSOTR episode. 

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The Chyna doc is much more of a traditional documentary film compared to Dark Side. Its fantastic IMO. The interesting part is how the filmmakers used footage from a failed/abandoned documentary film that was shot in 2015-16 in order to capture what was going on during the last year of her life. There's much more to it than that but, the format is very refreshing and certainly emotional to watch. Its shown on the Vice Versa program BTW.

I was originally bummed when I head Dark Side wasn't going to cover Chyna but this film trumps anything the show would have done. I'm guessing since Vice had this in the wings they weren't fighting to have the D.S.O.T.R. episode made/shown. 

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It didn't help that the crew of the original documentary were varying shades of sleazy/out there themselves. Her manager comes off as especially exploitative. Spiritual advisors as a whole usually comes off as snake oil salesmen, and that guy was no different. The director seemed to be an addict himself and only helped enable Chyna's substance abuse. The producer seems like he meant well enough, but was a bit of an oddball, too. 

As a whole, her story felt a lot more deflating than many of the DSotR subjects we've gotten. She made her own choices, but her upbringing made her vulnerable to poor decisions. Coupled with her unceremonious boot from WWF in 2001 and the subsequent erasure of her from programming, even during the boom of the nostalgia era, and it almost felt like her fate was sealed 15 years before she finally passed. What a hopeless and dark road to travel for such an extended period of time. 

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  • 2 months later...

so um...the latest episode of this has already set off the biggest shitstorm i've ever seen from this series

Plane Ride From Hell, with actual new information since they got the flight attendant there to give more details on what happened.  That's now started a movement among the AEW fanbase to pressure them not to bring in Flair, and i had figured this could happen ever since that was announced as an episode.  Remember that AEW *right now* is running a high-profile storyline built on the assumption that their audience watches DSOTR, so they can't just ignore this.

Also Tommy Dreamer was a total victim-blaming asshole and appears to be getting almost as much shit as Flair atm.  The ep brought up Brock doing sex-pest things as well but we know their fans won't care a fraction as much.

BTW, one interesting bit from the flight attendant: Dustin was the only one who tried to stop Flair...

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As @KawadaSmile posted in the other thread, Flair has threatened to go out shooting on the Renee podcast. I agree that AEW will look terrible if they bring him in, ignoring the DSOTR episode, while running one of their main storylines around another episode. At the risk of sounding impossibly cynical though, this has never stopped promotions in the past if the wrestler has a big enough name, so AEW will have to show it's different from pretty much every promotion ever. 

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1 hour ago, funkdoc said:

so they can't just ignore this.

I originally posted that they can and should ignore this because most wrestling fans will turn a blind eye to Flair's "bad behavior" (something I still think is true). But that was before I started reading about the episode and the new details that have apparently come to light.

Edit: I'm reading Twitter now (I haven't seen the episode yet). Did Flair sexually assault someone? Yeah, that's not good at all, if that's what happened. I was under the impression that he just pulled his dick out and flashed everyone on the plane - not that that's much better, granted. Regardless, if he shows up, I still think he'll get a monster pop. Wrestling fans, by and large, are very hypocritical and tend to give a free pass to their favorites IMO.

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7 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

I don't watch DSOTR, so I don't really know what this one is about. Care to fill me in, bubba?

The MJF-Pillman Jr. storyline leans heavily into the DSOTR episode about Pillman. It's where MJF's whole Methanie thing comes from. The DSOTR episode discussed Brian Jr's upbringing and how his mom was an addict and didn't treat him well. MJF might even have mentioned DSOTR by name I think, and has certainly posted stills of Melanie from the episode on Twitter. 

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Oh, that kinda sucks. I mean, they can still have that storyline go largely unchanged, but it would for sure be some bad optics.

 

As for Flair, I think that even before whatever scandal came to light, they shouldn't bring him in. He looks in super rough shape, man. Like, Tully looks good for someone in his late 60s, but Ric looks BAD for someone in his early 70s. I just don't see any benefit besides a cameo, let alonge a managerial role.

But all this is moot with what's happened anyway.

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