By Michael Dominguez
While there has been a sports shutdown due to COVID-19, the only sport that has continued during the shutdown is professional wrestling. The companies World Wrestling Entertainment and All Elite Wrestling have been doing live shows without audiences and giving people entertainment to enjoy at home.
Although wrestling is scripted and winners are predetermined, wrestling fans still want more of a behind-the-scenes look of the business, the good and the bad of the wrestling business. The show “Dark Side of the Ring” does a very good job of showing the bad of wrestling and shows the pain these professionals go through and the dark pasts they may have in their lives.
“Dark Side of the Ring” gives a background and more context on why some wrestlers have had a falling out with the WWE or other wrestling companies. “Dark Side of the Ring” opened its second season as with a two-part episode telling the story of Chris Benoit.
Benoit’s death was a complete shock to wrestling fans as they were still recovering from the death of professional wrestler Eddie Guerrero, who had died months earlier of a heart attack. The details of Benoit’s death were unclear on what had happened at first, but as years went on, it was realized that years of head trauma and performance enhancing drugs played a part.
The producers of the show did a good job on showing the rise and fall of Benoit’s wrestling career and go into detail on what may have caused Benoit to do what he did.
It really shows the aspects of what these wrestlers go through. Although it’s fake, they still take hard falls and chair shots that can cause real physical damage outside of the ring.Fans just see the character and fake personas these wrestlers create on live tv every week. “Dark Side of the Ring” shows the side that most don’t know about, which is that these men and women put their bodies through that, like Benoit, can turn deadly.
“Dark Side of the Ring” airs on Tuesdays on Viceland at 10 P.M.