How Vice Struck Gold by Exploring The ‘Dark Side’ Of Sports Like Wrestling And Football 

“12 months from now we’ll be on the cover of Time magazine as the guys who brought millennials back to TV.” Vice co-founder Shane Smith sure wasn’t lacking in confidence as his counterculture brand ventured into the slightly less underground world of basic cable in 2016. The avocado toast generation’s general apathy toward the move, though, soon proved Smith’s bravado (hubris?) was entirely misjudged.

Formerly known as Viceland, Vice on TV did reduce the average age of audiences from the H2 network it replaced (57 to 40) within its first six months on air. Yet the 45,000 viewers it attracted was half the number which regularly tuned into the likes of pseudoscientific claptrap Ancient Aliens. And by the end of the year, the press were explicitly asking “Why is nobody watching Viceland TV?”

However, unlikely salvation came in 2019 when in among all the shows about food, shows about weed and shows about both food and weed, the channel dropped a six-part series about wrestling. This wasn’t the first time that Vice had tackled something a little more strenuous than sparking up a doobie. Three years earlier its online arm had delved into the ultraviolent form known as Deathmatch in an intriguing one-off documentary. And the two World of Sports seasons showed that Vice on TV could “awaken our sense of wonder” in everything from Ugandan prison soccer to Appalachian minor league baseball.  

But Dark Side of the Ring was the first sporting original to truly capture its cult crowd’s imagination. And as with recent wrestling documentaries Andre the Giant and You Cannot Kill David Arquette, you didn’t need to know the difference between a piledriver and powerbomb to get hooked.

Indeed, with its gripping narratives of behind-the-scenes backstabbing, plans-gone-wrong and unspeakable tragedies, Dark Side is more interested in the human element of a sport (or form of sporting entertainment, if you wish) rooted in pure fantasy. Take the heartbreaking opening episode, which explored the tempestuous relationship between ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth, and the latter’s fatal spiral from glamorous First Lady of Wrestling to a prescription drug overdose. 

Combining archival footage with shadowy reenactments and an array of larger-than-life talking heads who appear to have fully transformed into their wrestling personas (journeyman Jim Cornette comes across as particularly unhinged), the series has covered several other tales already familiar to casual fans: see the Montreal Screwjob which ended Bret “The Hitman” Hart’s WWE career in controversial style or the shocking double murder and suicide of Chris Benoit. 

Yet it’s also shone the spotlight on several lesser-known stories which originated long before Vince McMahon turned the sport into a billion-dollar-spinning national soap opera. The suspicious death of ‘80s WCCW wrestler Gino Hernandez, for example, or the multigenerational saga of the Von Erich family curse. 

And by tapping into both the rich checkered history of the wrestling ring and the near-insatiable current demand for true crime, Vice on TV essentially stumbled on a goldmine. Out of nowhere, Dark Side of the Ring became the channel’s most watched show, and by quite some distance, too. Based on Owen Hart’s horrific fall in front of a live audience at 1999’s Over the Edge, the second season finale pulled in a record-breaking 626,000 viewers. 

By this point Dark Side of the Ring had already been expanded to ten episodes, spawned a spinoff show hosted by comedian Chris Gethard and been named the Best Pro Wrestling DVD/Streaming Documentary at the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards. 

It also paved the way for 2019’s The Wrestlers, an equally fascinating insight into the sport’s underbelly which covered areas as niche as the Lucha libre scene’s attempt to combat homophobia, Congolese voodoo wrestling and the utterly bonkers mix of water parks, office furniture and silent comedy that is Japan’s Dramatic Dream Team. Meanwhile, just last month Vice on TV launched a weekly highlights show featuring action from the New York-based franchise Major League Wrestling.  

But it’s the Dark Side concept that looks set to establish Vice on TV as an unlikely sporting destination. A third helping of macabre wrestling tales kicked off last week with a two-parter about Brian Pillman, the ‘Loose Cannon’ former footballer who died in 1997 from heart disease. Troublemaking Brit Dynamite Kid, the Grizzly Smith dynasty and the mysterious Collision in Korea are just a few of the other subjects profiled for the increased 14-episode order. 

And having lured fans from the USA Network and Fox with their wrestling output, Vice are now hoping to make a dent on ESPN’s figures, too. This month saw the launch of Dark Side of Football, a companion series proving that a career on the field can be just as treacherous as one in the ring. 

Six-time Pro Bowler Chad ‘Ochocinco’ Johnson is one of two problematic NFL stars confirmed to get the Dark Side treatment, no doubt due to his several run-ins with the law, high-profile divorce and habit of changing his name more than his underwear. The other is San Francisco 49ers legend Bill ‘Romo’ Romanowski, who’ll either atone for or justify all his jaw-breaking, head-kicking and Adam Sandler film cameo sins.  

With its moody visuals and straight-to-camera interviewees blatantly enjoying reveling in all the drama, the trailer suggest that Vice on TV have taken the copy/paste approach. You can’t blame them, of course. With a Dark Side of the ‘90s also on its way, the once-struggling network has now hit upon a formula which suggests that Time magazine might still come calling.   

Jon O’Brien (@jonobrien81) is a freelance entertainment and sports writer from the North West of England. His work has appeared in the likes of Vulture, Esquire, Billboard, Paste, i-D and The Guardian. 

Watch Dark Side of Football on Vice