5 PPVs Dark Side Of The Ring Can Cover in Season 6
Vice's Dark Side of the Ring is already in production in season 6 of the show. There have been some topics potentially leaked, but there are still a lot of unknowns. In previous Dark Side of the Ring episodes, some controversial PPVs have been covered including Bash At The Beach 2000, Survivor Series 1997 (Montreal Screwjob), and Collision in Korea. There are still a lot of controversial PPVs the show can cover and from the amount of pro wrestling PPVs, there are 5 that come to mind.
5. In Your House 8: Beware of Dog
This PPV is an example of the Dark Side of the ring as most of the event was done in the dark. In Your House 8: Beware of Dog was a PPV that WWE held on May 26th, 1996. It lives in infamy as during the show a severe thunderstorm occurred, and the power went out during the broadcast.
Only 2 matches were shown in the original PPV but the rest were done in the dark until it went on when the main event of Shawn Michaels and British Bulldog aired. Speaking of which, the main event behind the scenes was an absolute mess.
The documentary could even mention how Davey Boy Smith "British Bulldog" almost quit the company during the PPV.
Bruce Prichard claims that both The British Bulldog and Diana Hart were perfectly content with the love triangle storyline for the PPV to begin with. However, Davey Boy soured on it as the angle painted Diana in a bad light and for chasing Shawn Michaels behind her husband's back. Plus, the Hart Family was heavily displeased and allegedly "got in his ear".
Bruce Pritchard also claimed that he tried to tell him that it was a fantasy-type thing, but that just made things worse. It didn't help that backstage was a cluster due to the thunderstorm and loss of power. Both Bulldog and Michaels were angry when they got in the ring and did the match.
The event is available to stream on the WWE Network as one event, with no mention of the blackout and most of the matches had to be redone as a result.
There had to be a second show done as a result. It was titled "Beware of Dog 2" and it was done on May 28th. The matches have to be redone including Savio Vega vs Stone Cold Steve Austin which was a key moment in the beginning. It solidified his king of the ring win in 97 and started the big push for Austin.
If this story is told, the documentary has to mention how poor Mick Foley had no idea what was going on and was under the ring throughout the show while the power was out. Foley just thought his headset and monitor were broken until Bruce Pritchard went to the ring and informed Foley what was going on. That had to suck being Mick Foley that night.
4. December To Dismember
This was the PPV that ultimately killed any chance of ECW surviving with WWE. December to Dismember is often regarded as one of the worst PPVs that WWE has ever done. It was the only ECW-exclusive brand PPV that was ever held in the company. The matches were terrible and only 90,000 people ordered the event it was the lowest PPV buy rate ever in WWE history in the Pre-Network era.
This PPV got Paul Heyman fired, and a lot of fans hated that Elimination Chamber match. It was one of the worst-booked chamber matches ever and it hurt Bobby Lashley. The man who won the ECW championship at the PPV, when no fan liked him. The Fans wanted RVD or CM Punk to win.
Vince put all the blame on Hayman, but this also did not help the ECW talent in the locker room. Both Steve Richards and Tommy Dreamer requested their release from the company as a result of how bad the PPV was. Even the Big Show decided to leave the company a few months later. This PPV would likely be a lighter episode, but it had a big impact on WWE. Dark Side of the Ring could even group this in on the death of ECW when owned by WWE.
3. Heros of Wrestling
If there was one word to describe this PPV it would be "Sad". This PPV took place on October 19th, 1999 and it had a lot of notable names booked on the show. Heroes of Wrestling is widely regarded as the single-worst wrestling PPV in professional wrestling history.
The commentary was done by Dutch Mantell and Randy Rosenbloom. Randy Rosenbloom is one of if not the worst pro wrestling commentators ever. He was dreadful on this show. Rosenbloom had no idea what he was doing and had zero knowledge of the pro wrestling industry or any of the moves. Dutch Mantel had to call this whole show by himself and rewatching the PPV, he was embarrassed.
The wrestlers on this show were old and past their prime. Every match was just terrible and sad. The Iron Sheik & Nikolai Volkoff vs Bushwalkers was just depressing, dreadful, and irritating. It was an embarrassing display of nonsense of legends who could barely move in the ring. The same can be said with the One Man Gang vs Abdullah the Butcher, Bob Orton vs Jimmy Snuka, and that main event.
The main event was Jake the Snake Roberts and Yokozuna vs King Kong Bundy and Jim Neidhart. This was covered on the Grizzly Smith Dark Side of the Ring episode, but there are a ton of details not covered. Jake Roberts showed up heavily intoxicated on multiple substances. Jake even cut a promo slurring his words and is not in the same world. This was the lowest point of Jake Roberts's life when he was deep with his drug problems.
Coming out to the ring Jake could barely stand up straight and he acted worse. He was so messed up that he decided to grab a female fan's arms and force her to touch his chest. I'm not even going to explain what he did to his snake Damian, because it's too graphic.
Rewatching the match Jim Neidhart was fire red engine angry. While doing research, Neidhart came into the building angry, to begin with. On the day of the event, he missed a total of 4 flights and got there 20 minutes before the match.
The show was supposed to have nine matches and a double-main event: Jake ‘the Snake’ Roberts vs. Jim Neidhart and King Kong Bundy vs. Yokozuna. But that was changed to a tag match as a result of the sad state Roberts was in. King Kong Bundy comes out and he's more pissed than Neidhart was. Bundy was supposed to be in the main event and now he has to deal with this nonsense with Jake Roberts.
They sent Yokozuna out to the ring and this was the heaviest Yokozuna ever was in a wrestling match. He was easily 750 lbs. at this time and Yokozuna could barely get into the ring. What was sadder about Yokozuna was that his goal was to reach between 850 and 900 pounds to be recorded as history's heaviest professional wrestler ever.
The main event was just a sad, disorganized, and cluster of a match. It's great that Jake is sober today and is in a much better place. Diamond Dallas Page is a saint for saving his life.
This whole PPV as a whole was just dark. It would be a missed opportunity for the Dark Side of the Ring crew not to cover it.
2. Victory Road 2011
This TNA PPV was made infamous the moment Jeff Hardy went to wrestle Sting in the main event, but he was under the influence of multiple substances. Even when not in the right shape, TNA still allowed him to go out there and try to wrestle. They put lives at stake with this as a pilled-up Jeff Hardy could hurt others, along with himself.
Jeff Hardy showed up sober, but randomly disappeared mid-show and didn't get seen until the main event of the PPV. He was getting a world title shot against Sting and he blew that tremendous opportunity. In finally seeing Jeff Hardy, the producers backstage decided to send him out to the ring while clearly under the influence.
Hardy is barely able to stand up or walk to the ring. Eric Bischoff had to come out to tell the change of plans to Sting to hit his finisher immediately and pin him. That's what Sting did in this 90-second match and fans were not happy. There were a ton of BS chants from the fans and Sting responded "I agree... I agree...". This was the angriest Sting has ever looked ever on a live PPV or show.
This has to be covered in Dark Side of the Ring. Maybe the producers can do a 2 part episode on Jeff Hardy would work best knowing all the stuff he had to deal with.
WWE's Girls Gone Wild
Out of the many PPV options not covered so far, this is the WWE PPV I hope gets covered the most. This was when WWE and an Adult Entertainment company called Girls Gone Wild did a cross-over event PPV in 2003.
Girls Gone Wild was known for filming content of a large crowd of people at a party. The women at these "parties" take their clothes, are in wet T-shirt contests, and do the "Horizontal Mombo" while on camera. Which just sounds like an ethical and good company for anyone to associate with.
The WWE Divas in 2003 participated in this and it was so awful. It was a colossal failure and super embarrassing. It was so embarrassing that once the event ended WWE tried to scrub every mention of this event. Too bad for WWE that Footage still exists on the Internet Archive.
The worst part of this event in the aftermath, the founder of Girls Gone Wild was arrested for filming 16- and 17-year-old girls. Joe Francis the founder of that company is a real piece of slime with all the crimes he was charged with.
This also had a black eye on Linda's run for office in the Senate. This whole event got brought up constantly in her 2010 Campaign and WWE got really bad PR. It was Linda's idea for WWE to do this in the first place. I also felt bad for Jonathan Coachman who hosted this event as he got a ton of heat from fans. Rewatching the show, it's obvious he was so uncomfortable doing this show.
This event also has a notable fight between Calvin "Snoop Dogg" Brodarius and WWE Executive Producer Kevin Dunn. There is a ton of talk where both got into a nasty argument verbally that almost got physical. Luckily it didn't as this could have resulted in Brodarius not being associated with the company as he was a notable celebrity in WWE in the past decade.
So those are the 5 PPVs that Dark Side of the Ring can cover in Season 6. Do you agree? What PPV do you want the show to cover the most in Season 6 or beyond? Let me know in the comment section and don't forget to give the article a like. Don't forget to check out more pro wrestling content on StadiumRant.com
MORE FROM STADIUM RANT:
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to our newsletter here. Check out Stadium Rant Original shows on our Youtube channel and subscribe! Give our socials Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok a follow for more great content!
Comments