Wrestling legend Chris Jericho teases Dark Side of the Ring season 3
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Bobby Bank/Getty Images Wrestler and Dark Side of the Ring Chris Jericho
Wrestlers tend not to be shrinking violets when it comes to promoting projects with which they are involved. So who better to hype up season 3 of Vice TV's Dark Side of the Ring than the wrestling documentary series' narrator, veteran grappler Chris Jericho?
"The creators of the show are fans of the business, so this isn't some quickly put together type of a thing," says Jericho, who is currently signed to All Elite Wrestling. "All of these stories are treated with respect and they've gone the extra mile to find the characters that were involved in these stories, family members, all that sort of thing. Sometimes I'm like, how did you get these people to be on?"
The new season premieres May 6 with a look at the life and career of the late Brian Pillman, a famously — and deliberately — unpredictable wrestler of the '80s and '90s.
"It was a different world back then as far as how hard these guys ran — not just from a recreational side of things but almost by necessity," says Jericho. "They were on the road so much. Now guys complain when they're working once a week, but back then it was literally 10 days on, three days off, 10 days on, six days off, 15 days on, et cetera. Brian was right in the middle of all that. He was also an influence of mine because he was a smaller guy. He was very athletically gifted, he was a great character, a great promo. It's the perfect way to kick off season 3."
Vice Wrestler Brian Pillman
Other subjects covered this season include the so-called "Collision in Korea," a 1995 pay-per-view tournament that was held in Pyongyang.
"There's a great episode about when WCW went to North Korea to do a wrestling show in front of like 175,000 people and all the stuff those guys went through in the middle of this Communist country," says Jericho. "I'd always heard about that, but never really knew the story behind it. The season runs the gamut. There's another great episode about Nick Gage who is a deathmatch wrestler. I didn't know much about the deathmatch wrestling culture either until I saw this episode, and Nick is still with us, which is good. So there are those sides of the coin as well as the Ultimate Warrior and the Dynamite Kid and these folklore [wrestlers] who you were fans of in front of the camera, but don't really know much about them behind the scenes."
Dark Side of the Ring was created by longtime wrestling fans Jason Eisener — the director of the 2011 action movie Hobo with a Shotgun — and Evan Husney.
"It's this very surreal thing for Jason and I, because we grew up as such huge wrestling fans and we had action figures of all these guys," says Husney. "So we had the toys of all the people we're interviewing and now we find ourselves in the middle of these sometimes very emotional moments where we're like almost surrogate therapists to our former toy collection."
The success of the show has helped the pair secure interviews with the likes of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, who wrestled as a tag team with Brian Pillman and appears on the premiere episode. Other talking heads this season include Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Mick Foley, Diamond Dallas Page, Jim Ross, Jim Cornette, Jon Moxley, and David Arquette.
"We wouldn't have gotten 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin on the first season," says Eisener. "But he was a fan of the show and he's a big fan of wrestling history as well. He's very curious about some of the stories and wanted to know more."
Dark Side of the Ring is Vice TV's highest-rated show and has inspired two upcoming spin-offs, Dark Side of Football (premiering May 13) and Dark Side of the '90s.
"It's wild," says Husney. "All we had intended originally was to make a one-off documentary. It's really awesome that it's not just a hit series that we've been fortunate enough to have made but also that it's now becoming a brand and expanding to other realms. I think the possibilities are endless because everything has a dark side or another side that you can look at. I think that those are the stories that people want, those are the stories that are compelling."
Watch the season 3 trailer for Dark Side of the Ring above.
Related content:
