Back in 2021, television producer Tim Healy helped launch Dark Side of the 90s, a spin-off of sorts of the popular wrestling behind-the-scenes documentary series Dark Side of the Ring. Running for three seasons and counting, 90s has proven popular enough to give birth to another show in the Dark Side franchise: Dark Side of the Cage.
Dark Side of the Cage debuts on Wednesday night, with an episode focused on the late Kimbo Slice.
The genesis of the idea stemmed from a two-part Dark Side of the 90s episode that focused on the birth of the UFC. And it’s not, despite the obvious comparison, meant to be competing with its pro wrestling counterpart.
“I’m not a huge professional wrestling fan, but those episodes are so well-crafted that I watch them and I enjoy them, the storytelling is so sound. But to be honest we’re not really comparing this series to that series,” Healy told Cageside Press in advance of Dark Side of the Cage‘s debut. “The mission with Dark Side of the Cage is really to serve the subjects of each episode and to tell their story authentically. So we kind of feel more pressure towards doing justice to the subject matter and the people who trusted us with their time to sit and be interviewed, as opposed to kind of measuring ourselves against Dark Side of the Ring.”
“Dark Side of the Ring is amazing, and I really, in my opinion, I don’t think series in this space get much better than that one.”
After seeing how the UFC episodes of Dark Side of the 90s performed, Healy knew he had an opportunity to tell more stories from the world of mixed martial arts. He is, after all, a longtime fan of the sport.
“I’ve always been a fan of mixed martial arts, I’m a fan of the UFC. I remember when John McCain called it ‘human cockfighting,’ and was meeting with all the governors of all 50 states, to get them to not sanction it in their states,” recalled Healy. “Fighting on native American reservations. You look at that compared to now. The idea was to tell the story about how it started, and the hardships that it faced from a business, and how it’s grown into this highly successful mainstream sport.”
The two-part UFC-centered episode of Dark Side of the 90s, which aired as part of that show’s second season, wasn’t fully embraced early on. “Truth be told, it was a little bit of a hard sell. We had other episodes in the 90s, about shows like Baywatch and stuff that was a little more mainstream. And I think that some people felt it was a little niche, but when we produced it, it actually wound up to be so strong from a story perspective that we expanded it from one hour to two hours. And when it did air, it did really, really well. So we immediately said ‘let’s do a series.’ There’s so many stories, there’s so many subjects that we could very easily do ten episodes around mixed martial arts.”
Not every episode will be doom and gloom, mind you. “Every episode has a different level of darkness. The darkest episode is War Machine, and everyone knows why,” pointed out Healy, referring to the ex-UFC and Bellator fighter currently serving a life sentence for the 2014 beating and rape of porn star Christy Mack, his former partner.
Instead, each episode has “varying levels of darkness,” Healy continued. “Kimbo Slice, the darkest thing in that episode is that guy had a heart, he had a heart ailment, and he passes away. My point is that they’re not all 10 episodes of like, shock and awe darkness. We didn’t want to do that, because we want to tell really authentic, compelling stories warts and all.”
Watch our full interview with Dark Side of the Cage producer Tim Healy above. The series debuts on Wednesday, January 8, 2025 on Vice TV.
