Dark Side of the Ring Brian Pillman Part 1 Review

The Drak Side of the Ring is back, and if you haven’t seen it before, it is a documentary series produced by Vice TV that examines the side of professional wrestling that is unlikely to be explored on the WWE Network.

Featuring high production values in artistically shot scenes to recreate moments from wrestling history, the series always features lots of interviews with important figures in the stories being told. Past episodes have included looks at the death of Owen Hart, the murder of Dino Bravo and the Montreal Screw job. This Brian Pillman focussed episode is the first of a two part story and the opening edition of Season 3 of The Dark Side of the Ring.

Brian Pillman, known to wrestling fans worldwide as the Loose Cannon was one of the most talked about and controversial characters in wrestling during the 1990s. This episode chronicles not only his on screen journey from his time in WCW and ECW, but also looks at the behind the scenes story of how he created his controversial persona.

Die hard wrestling fans will have heard many of these details in shoot interviews before, but this is an incredibly well put together documentary, and they have just about everyone you could hope them to have to interview who isn’t part of the WWE currently. With this, the likes of Vince McMahon and Paul Heyman, who obviously would be able to give significant insight into their relationship with Brian and his career aren’t featured, but Jim Ross and Eric Bischoff both feature heavily to be able to tell both the WWE and WCW management side of their interactions with Pillman.

Perhaps most impressively, the documentary features Stone Cold Steve Austin, who is still linked with the WWE, and was Brian’s tag partner in the Hollywood Blondes. Having been closely linked to Pillman in both WCW as his tag partner and as a rival in WWE, it’s interesting to hear that even Austin didn’t know what was going on when Brian started going off the rails in the creation of the Loose Cannon persona.

A friend of Brian’s, Kim Wood, who features heavily in the documentary tells of how as a confidant of Brian’s he was aware of Brian manipulating everyone from the locker room all the way up to Eric Bischoff in WCW. Bischoff defends that he was aware of Brian’s plan, and maybe he was at one stage and that at some point Pillman made other plans with the WWF.

If Bischoff is to be believed it would suggest that Bischoff knew Pillman planned to go to the WWF and that after having been there would return to WCW with higher value. This is hard to fully believe as tactically speaking this approach would have meant their plan for Pillman to come back a bigger star wouldn’t be for 2 to 3 years, and there would be every chance that Pillman’s life would have simply moved on by this stage. If Bischoff truly felt the plan would work and he would gain more value, why not just take steps to add that value himself?

Outside of the strictly wrestling side of the story, this documentary also tells a lot about Brian’s personal life from his multiple throat surgeries growing up, to his leaving football to pursue wrestling and that he had many relationships which resulted in many children from different mothers.

To explore this side of the story the episode featured current AEW wrestler Brian Pillman Jr as well as Brian’s widow Melanie, and his sister and daughter. I had some awareness of some of this side of the Pillman story, but with information of a custody battle for his daughter and how that played into the suicide of his daughter’s mother, learning the personal history of Pillman added so much more to what I knew of him.

The episode ends on a cliff-hanger of sorts as Pillman was shown to have been in a major car accident whilst in negotiations with the WWF in the mid 1990s, and these sets up for part two which will explore his time in the WWE where he perhaps would gain the most fame for his feud with Steve Austin and was one of the major contributing factors for what would become known as the Attitude era.

Conclusion

The Dark Side of the Ring has always been a great documentary series, and this season 3 opener continues that trend and builds anticipation for part 2 of this story, and for all the other episodes that season 3 will consist of. The pacing, artistic shots of actors playing the wrestlers and interviewed guests are all top notch and this is an excellent start to the new season.

For more wrestling content check out the Wrestling Section of the site. You can also catch the weekly Slam Jam Wrestling comedy panel Show on the Extreme Improv YouTube channel.