Dark Side Of The Ring Producer Had To Beg VICE For Third TNA Hour

Dark Side of the Ring executive producer Evan Husney says he was surprised to learn that a third hour was needed to cover the TNA story in Season 7. He had to plead with VICE for the extra programming time, warning the entire project would have suffered from compression if they had not been granted it.

I was shocked that we needed a third hour for this, because the whole project originally, when it was going to be a standalone thing, it was going to be six different parts. It was going to get more into the Scott D’Amore years, it would have gotten into the Billy Corgan years, and it would have been a little more expansive, and not just the Jeff tenure. But when we had to shape it for Dark Side, we focused it around Jeff Jarrett’s story. To our surprise even doing that, we can’t squeeze it in two, we need a third. So that was really like begging and pleading with the network, ‘Give us one more hour and we promise it’ll work.’ Thankfully we did because I think it would have all had diminishing returns if we would have been trying to cram everything in there.

For whatever reason, they’re mutually cool with each other appearing on these shows. We’ll feature both of their contrasting viewpoints and creative approaches to wrestling. As legitimate as it is intense that rivalry is, God is it entertaining for TV. The whole saga of Jim getting fired from TNA is a side quest story in and of itself, it could be its own episode of the show.

Unfortunately, Dutch isn’t in the episode. He’s omnipresent, but it was unfortunate. The timing of it didn’t work out. Dutch is one of my favorite people on planet Earth and he had some health challenges during the time we needed to be filming this. Obviously he was the right-hand man to Jeff throughout the whole process.