Dark Side of the Ring producer calls TNA episodes ’emotional and tragic’
Dark Side of the Ring co-creator and executive producer Evan Husney says not to expect a “lol TNA” episode this season.
Season seven of the docuseries will premiere on Vice TV on July 7, with parts one and two focusing on TNA Wrestling and Jeff Jarrett. The third and final part of the TNA/Jarrett story will air on July 14.
During a recent appearance on The Jim Cornette Experience, Husney said the episodes may not be what some fans are expecting.
Husney said:
“At first glance, you may think this piece might be just sort of an ‘lol at TNA’ episode or story. But really beneath the surface is a really searing, emotional and very tragic story, that’s very emotional. I think that’s going to be very unexpected for a lot of viewers of the show.”
Husney said the TNA story was originally planned as a two-hour season premiere, but they felt they needed more time after looking at everything they had filmed.
“It was initially conceived to be a two-hour exploration that would open the new season. We had to go to the third hour, essentially.”
“We would have been trying to pack in too much. We would have breezed over too much. We would have left too much out.”
“We kind of went to the network begging and pleading for that third hour so we could let the story breathe a little bit more and we could get into a little more of the side quests along the way.”
“I knew that people’s reaction were going to be, ‘Really? Three hours for this?’ But I think once people see it, they’ll understand because we’re covering a long period of time here.”
Also during the interview, Husney revealed that before the TNA story became part of Dark Side of the Ring, the producers had originally conceived of a standalone TNA docuseries similar to Who Killed WCW?
“Originally going way back when we did that Who Killed WCW? miniseries, that was sort of a separate doc thing we did. The idea was to continue in that tradition and do TNA as the next sort of deep-dive exploration that we would have done on its own.”
“Maybe we could have done ECW and it could have kept going as sort of like a promotion-by-promotion doc miniseries after miniseries. For whatever reason, Vice didn’t want to do that.”
“The only way to really keep that alive was to make it part of the Dark Side platform that we have. Originally it was going to be six parts. That’s what it was going to be as a standalone thing. It was going to be The Six Sides of TNA is what we were going to call it.”
The full interview with Husney from The Jim Cornette Experience is available below.
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.