Dark Side of the Ring

[The Thread Killer]

23 minutes ago, dawho5 said:

In a way I think that the whole 90s wrestling style (which I loved at the time and is absolutely aesthetically pleasing as wrestling, was a horrific experiment for the people involved. 

That’s exactly how I feel about 90’s AJPW. I absolutely loved that stuff when I first discovered it, now I feel guilty watching it because that style literally killed Misawa.

[dawho5]

I am the same way.  Loved watching it, but don't know how much I can go back.I feel like Misawa, Kawada and Kobashi especially were really into that DK style of working.  Between those guys, the NJ juniors and the WCW midcard that to me is what defined the style of wrestling that came after it.

As much as the action in the ring makes me want to say "for the better", I have to think that a whole generation of wrestlers is going to be paying within 10 years for not protecting their bodies.  Learn from the horror stories of the guys you are emulating.

[Dooley]

Back to "Who killed WCW?" , I mostly concur with TK and dawho. It's my POV that corporate decisions had way more to do with the company having the plug pulled than anything creative (even under Russo).

I think some others may be looking at it through a "wrestling lens". I listened to Cornette's review of episode 4, and it was borderline embarrassing how unable he was to see the forest for the trees.

The Disney tapings were a great idea not only from a financial perspective but it also gave WCW the chance to co-brand with Disney. House shows were hemorrhaging and it's not like the syndicated shows were being taped at some sort of hallowed grounds before that. Now, the scheduling...

On 6/30/2024 at 3:33 AM, NintendoLogic said:

The WWF couldn't get a deal for WCW because TNN had exclusive rights to all WWF cable programming. That was what killed Vince's first attempt to buy the company in 2000.

And TNN couldn't have found room for another WWF property ? At the time, WWF had a 2 hour block on Saturday night of velocity and confidential. There's no reason WWF couldn't have put a WCW show in that timeslot if they had been motivated to do so.

[JRH]

As for the claim that they cant get advertisers to buy time on wrestling, it might be interesting to find old episodes of Nitro or Thunder with the commercials intact (albiet, that's harder than you'd think) and see what advertisers they WERE able to get. I'm sure there would be at least some high-end stuff advertised.

[pmo]

22 hours ago, JRH said:

As for the claim that they cant get advertisers to buy time on wrestling, it might be interesting to find old episodes of Nitro or Thunder with the commercials intact (albiet, that's harder than you'd think) and see what advertisers they WERE able to get. I'm sure there would be at least some high-end stuff advertised.

From memory it was a lot of candy, zit cream, and 1-800-Collect type things.  Definitely not high brow.

[Al]

And government mandated anti-smoking advertisements.

[JRH]

Actually, here's a video with the commercial breaks from the 3/30/99 Nitro so we can look at what advertisers they were able to get:

 

[dawho5]

On 7/7/2024 at 8:10 AM, Dooley said:

And TNN couldn't have found room for another WWF property ? At the time, WWF had a 2 hour block on Saturday night of velocity and confidential. There's no reason WWF couldn't have put a WCW show in that timeslot if they had been motivated to do so.

Wasn't there some kind of copyright thing where other networks would not have been legally able to air Nitro?  I recall something along those lines.

To be fair to Cornette, he never looked at wrestling through the corporate lens.  Even when he was a part of it.  He recalled Bischoff being hailed as the "best wrestling booker" when it was specifically "best wrestling executive".  Given that Bischoff himself did not consider himself a booker I agree with that idea.  There are two headliners there, Eric Bischoff and Vince.  Everybody else kind of failed once it became a competitive business.

Cornette did bring up another great point, that some mistakes were glossed over.  And a lot of them were, on Bischoff's part, as well as a few others.  That being said, I have some mistakes of my own I don't voluntarily bring up.  Also, if I were to try to recall the exact circumstances of a thing that blew up in my face 20 years ago I'm 99.999999% certain that I would gloss over some things I did that contributed to the blowing up in my face part due to not remembering.  End of the day, he's a salesman who actually has learned a lot about the wrestling business through the years.

And Corny, for all his genius in the field of wrestling, made his share of mistakes over the years.  Not the same mistakes, but probably a similar percentage.  We all get in over our heads and make mistakes trying to cope.  To counter all of that, I truly love Cornette in all facets of what he does and will continue to follow him until he stops podcasting.  The man is entertaining, flawed and a genius.

All in all I think Bischoff has been vindicated over the years as others have tried to accomplish what he did.  He may not be the best ever booker or the most knowledgable wrestling guy out there, but he doesn't claim to be either.  He's a guy who likes the idea of producing a highly rated TV show.  And for 83 weeks, he did that very thing.

You can fault him for being a bit of a Hogan mark, sure.  Of course he loves Hulk Hogan.  When you put Hogan on TV, people watch.  Whether or not you like some of the things he (supposedly) did over the years or how he wrestled, he made the eyeballs show up to the arenas and the TV screen.  Isn't that kind of the whole reason wrestling actually existed post-1985?

I kind of hate that I feel that way.  1998 me would punch me in the mouth for all of it.  But there's more than my own personal taste out there.

[rainmakerrtv]

On 5/20/2024 at 9:50 AM, rainmakerrtv said:

 

Given who they have spoken with already, I figure it would be an easy lay up for them to have a pretty full roster of talking heads for Eddie Gilbert : JR (I believe he has said he doesn't want to work with Dark Side anymore, but he did appear on Tales From The Territories), Jimmy Hart, Missy, Madusa, Jim Cornette, Mick Foley, and now Todd Gordon. 

Called it (as did JRH)

[The Thread Killer]

New season starts on March 25:

Reported subjects:

-Hell in a Cell (What?!)
-Vader
-Tony Atlas 
-Ludvig Borga
-Billy Jack Haynes 
-Eddie Gilbert 
-Superstar Billy Graham 
-Daffney 
-Original Sheik 
-Muhammad Hassan

[Alucard]

I believe the HIAC one is specifically/mainly about Foley in 98 HIAC.

[The Thread Killer]

1 hour ago, Alucard said:

I believe the HIAC one is specifically/mainly about Foley in 98 HIAC.

Good Lord. How many freaking times can they re-tell that same bloody story?! Let’s ignore the fact that Foley wrote about that match extensively in his book.

- He talked about it in depth on his “Three Faces of Foley” documentary. 

- Then they covered it again on his “Hard Knocks and Cheap Pops” DVD.

- He did a One Man Show about it, which included a One Hour Live Special on the WWE Network.

- They covered it extensively on his A&E Biography.

- He did an episode about it on his podcast.

- Most recently, Foley and Taker did a rewatch of the match on the WWE channel on YouTube.

That’s not even mentioning all the other guys like Jim Ross, Bruce Prichard, etc. who have devoted podcasts to going through the match in excruciating detail.

And Foley actually has the balls to complain occasionally that he’s sick of fans asking him about it, and he’s tired of talking about it.

[El-P]

Yeah, HITC is major yawn material. Enough recycling tired WWE stories.

Some of the subject are very interesting (Eddie Gilbert), some are gonna be heartbreaking (Daffney), but there's no serious shady WWE business going on here, sadly. (the Muhammed Hassan should be interesting if they go deep into the racism aspect of the entire thing).

Ludvig Borga is pretty out of nowhere. What is there to say apart from the guy being, well, a neo-nazi (or just an over enthusiastic guy with autism vigorously sending hearts, ya know...) ?

[The Thread Killer]

On 1/31/2025 at 4:31 AM, El-P said:

Yeah, HITC is major yawn material. Enough recycling tired WWE stories.

Some of the subject are very interesting (Eddie Gilbert), some are gonna be heartbreaking (Daffney), but there's no serious shady WWE business going on here, sadly. (the Muhammed Hassan should be interesting if they go deep into the racism aspect of the entire thing).

Ludvig Borga is pretty out of nowhere. What is there to say apart from the guy being, well, a neo-nazi (or just an over enthusiastic guy with autism vigorously sending hearts, ya know...) ?

I'm curious about how deep they will go into the problems of Superstar Billy Graham as well.  I hope it isn't just a puff piece about "the poor guy introduced steroid abuse into Pro Wrestling and then fried his liver" and they actually get into all his other bullshit as well...his bizarre and almost obsessive love/hate/love/hate relationship with the McMahon family and the WWF, the false accusations against Pat Patterson, and his weird IRL feuds with other wrestlers like Dusty, Jericho and Abdullah.  That dude was basically the carny's carny and I hope they expose him for it.

And the Billy Jack Haynes episode?  Phew! Plenty of material to mine there, and that's even before he murdered his wife.

I'm very interested in the episode about The Sheik as well, although if they don't have Brian Solomon as one of the talking heads on that episodes, they're idiots.  He wrote an outstanding biography about The Sheik a couple of years ago called "Blood and Fire" which is one of the most well researched books I have ever read.  Even Sabu said there are facts about his Uncle in that book that even he didn't know. (The Sheik was notoriously private and extremely elusive when it came to "keeping kayfabe" and guarding details about his personal life.)  I'm also curious if they got Sabu for that episode as well. Sabu has been on the show a bunch of times, but he is also extremely protective about his Uncle's reputation.  He actually refused to assist in the writing of Blood and Fire, although he ended up praising the end result.

[El-P]

20 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

the false accusations against Pat Patterson

False. Or not. At this point, people need to reevaluate what has been the official WWE narrative in the wake of what the culture actually was. Patterson was the first lieutenant of a sexual predator and rapist. His name has been out there in stuff that absolutely are cases of sexual harassment. So there.

[The Thread Killer]

5 hours ago, El-P said:

False. Or not. At this point, people need to reevaluate what has been the official WWE narrative in the wake of what the culture actually was. Patterson was the first lieutenant of a sexual predator and rapist. His name has been out there in stuff that absolutely are cases of sexual harassment. So there.

Graham went on national TV and publicly accused Pat Patterson of being a child molestor, claiming he had actually witnessed it.

He later recanted those accusations, and admitted that he only made them in an effort to hurt the McMahon family and the WWF, because he was upset he had been released. He devoted a large portion of his autobiography to admitting to this, and begging Patterson for forgiveness. 

This means that either:

Graham falsely accused Pat Patterson of being a child molestor 

or…

Graham really did witness Pat Patterson molesting children, and chose not to say anything about it until after he got fired, and then lied and said he didn’t witness it, in order to get back into Vince McMahon’s good graces

Either way? He was a piece of shit.

So there.

[El-P]

One doesn't exclude the other (the fact that he was a lying/hypocritical piece of shit and Patterson was an abuser, if anything in term of sexual harassement with talent at least)

There are many pieces of shit *today* in that office. Hopefully Dark Side gets to work next year.

[G. Badger]

I didn't know any of that with Billy Graham and Patterson... I think I'm probably going to learn more "Dark Side of the Ring" secrets/tidbits from reading everyone's posts than from the actual show at this point. I really feel like they have exhausted the premise of the show unless they're going to get in the mud with some of these types of things. Maybe I'm expecting too much because of the early seasons...

[The Thread Killer]

39 minutes ago, G. Badger said:

I didn't know any of that with Billy Graham and Patterson

Graham even admitted that when he went backstage after he got his Legends deal, half the locker room wouldn't talk to him because of what he had done to Patterson.

Superstar Billy Graham is an interesting case because even in the carny/bullshit world of Professional Wrestling, he managed to stand out with some of the carny shit he did.  This is a guy who had that legendary series of matches with Dusty Rhodes at Madison Square Garden back in the 70's.  He and Graham were friends.  Then something happened (neither Graham or Dusty would say what it was) and they didn't talk for over 20 years.  When Graham mended fences with WWE, got his Legends deal, got his DVD and Autobiography published, and got into the Hall of Fame, Graham and Dusty mended fences.  There's even a picture of them hugging in Graham's book.

Then Graham has another falling out with WWE, renounces his Hall of Fame induction and sells his ring on eBay. After that, Dusty Rhodes dies. Billy Graham goes on Facebook within a week of Dusty's death, and says that HE should get Dusty's job of teaching promos in NXT because he'd be great at it.  His "friend" is barely in the ground, people are still publicly mourning, and there's Billy Graham publicly campaigning for his job.  And then he starts complaining that nobody from WWE is returning his calls about it.

 

 

[C.S.]

I don't know where the truth lies with Pat Patterson, but I can believe Billy Graham made up a bunch of shit because he was a two-bit carny while also believing Pat may have behaved inappropriately at times considering the WWE culture. I don't believe for a second, though, that a gay man would go after children. That homophobic bullshit really needs to die.

P.S. Superstar Billy Graham blocked me on Facebook years ago. I still have no idea why.

[G. Badger]

On 2/8/2025 at 12:10 AM, C.S. said:

P.S. Superstar Billy Graham blocked me on Facebook years ago. I still have no idea why.

That's hilarious 😄

Again, this thread is probably going to be more entertaining and interesting than most of the episodes this season..for one reason or another.  Mainly, they just don't get into the meat of the subject. It's a very cursory overview. I think the last one I watched was the FMW one with low expectations and those were met but not exceeded. I should watch the Sunny/Candido one. After watching a bunch of ECW awhile back, that still seems like a treasure trove of Dark Side episodes. 

Any one have a clue on what the Vader one will cover that constitutes "dark?" I hope they have a cheesy reenactment of him German suplexing Inoki 

 

[El-P]

1 hour ago, G. Badger said:

Any one have a clue on what the Vader one will cover that constitutes "dark?"

The hygiene part.

[The Thread Killer]

10 hours ago, El-P said:

The hygiene part.

You’re not wrong there, they could probably line up a bunch of guys who could complain in great detail about his body odour. I almost died laughing when JR talked on his podcast about it being so bad that guys would literally come to the office to complain about it. That must’ve been some serious stink.

11 hours ago, G. Badger said:

Any one have a clue on what the Vader one will cover that constitutes "dark?"

Well, I guess there was the time he slapped that reporter in Kuwait and got arrested and detained for it. He also temporarily paralyzed an enhancement guy by being too stiff with the guy. By all accounts, he was a horrible bully to a lot of of the backstage production staff and especially the enhancement talent. Let’s not forget the fight with Paul Orndorff.

Plus, when he found out he was dying of congestive heart failure. He basically started begging to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame before he died, and for whatever reason they wouldn’t do it, which at the time struck me as weird. He could literally prove he did not have long to live, and he just wanted to get in before he died, he even had guys like Foley publicly advocating for him to be inducted, but they wouldn’t do it.

Then things got really weird, Vader asked DDP for help, he thought that maybe DDP‘s fitness program could help prolong his life, but then they talked and for whatever reason either DDP refused to help him or Vader refused to do what DDP asked of him in order to complete the program. I distinctly remember Vader commenting on social media that DDP was refusing to help him. As I recall, he died shortly after.

I might be remembering this wrong, but I’m pretty sure Mick Foley said that he was the only person from the entire Pro Wrestling industry that even showed up to Vader’s funeral, because nobody wanted to travel to Denver.

[G. Badger]

They should change the show to Smelly Side of the Ring and cover the grossest wrestlers  

Thanks for the additional info on Vader especially towards the end of his life. I just remember that he made some remarks about Will Ospreay and they turned it into an angle (was maybe already ill) and died shortly thereafter. Given everything else you mentioned, I do think they are stretching on this one (and probably others...Collision in Korea episode stands out). There's something interesting there but there's nothing nefarious surrounding him. Maybe I'm getting hung up on the Dark Side aspect of the show...it's more just wrestler bios anymore. The Billy Graham one could be something though. 

 

[El-P]

I really don't give a flying fuck about MMA, but I did watch the Dark Side of the Cage episodes about PRIDE and Ronda Rousey.

The PRIDE ones are fascinating. Remember the old "debate" about "Is PRIDE pro-wrestling ?". Well, of course not. But never has a legit MMA promotion was as much linked to pro-wrestling as PRIDE was. Including in term of being a shady-as-fuck company. The fixed Takada matches are evoked, although it's just a blip on the radar. The biggest focus is on the ridiculously dirty yakuza involvements. Also, watching old decrepit Helio Gracie at ringside, it's always a good time to remind people that this guy was actually linked to a fascist Brazilian movement in the 30's. There goes the "great" Gracie family.

The Rousey episode was interesting for a newbie like me, although I had basically heard every bit of it through Meltzer during her WWE days. Between her mom being a complete asshole (I am so chocked to learn that a high level athlete raising her child to be a high level athlete is actually a toxic fuckhead, ya know) and her having to develop a particular style because she was already concussed like crazy from her judo years, it certainly puts an interesting twist to her personality. And yeah, again, she was SO pro-wrestling. I have no idea how anyone even tolerates the sigh of Dana White these days, unless you're, ya know...