The first two episodes of season two of "Dark Side of the Ring" focus on Chris Benoit and the double-murder suicide that took the lives of Chris, Nancy, and Daniel Benoit.
WWE has scrubbed Chris from the majority of its history and many fans still have a hard time watching matches and footage involving Benoit. But the goal of focusing on the Benoit tragedy was not to re-open wounds.
"I think there is so much to unpack with these stories that has never been discussed and processed. A lot of these more tragic stories have been kind of swept under the rug," said "Dark Side of the Ring" producer Evan Husney in an interview with Scott Fishman of TV Insider. "With Dark Side of the Ring, we don’t approach it like a wrestling hit piece because we’re die hard wrestling fans. We grew up fans and still love it and watch it. We would never want to damage wrestling in that way. Most of the stories we’re looking at transcend wrestling. They’re human stories of what these families and other wrestlers had to endure and, in most cases, overcome. For us, it’s more about examining that. I also feel the themes, especially with the premiere episode about Chris Benoit, is a lot of that story is unprocessed for a lot of people. There is an important conversation to be had around a lot of the elements of that story. That’s what we want to try and do, be that platform so wrestling fans and people involved can have some element of closure on some of these issues. I think we made our best effort to do that with a lot of them."
In the two-part Chris Benoit episode, David Benoit (Chris' son and Nancy's stepson) and Sandra Toffoloni (Nancy's sister) were big pieces in putting the story together, giving insight that no one else could provide. As explained by Husney, once Chavo Guerrero came aboard, things started to fall into place.
"It was a little easier in terms of getting people on board because we had something we could point to. We had work people could go out and watch. The first time we didn’t have that. It was more of a struggle. For the Benoit episode specifically, none of it would have been possible, in terms of access and building trust, without the participation of Chavo Guerrero Jr. Chavo was somebody I met almost two years ago now, and we started talking about this project. Chavo was instrumental into introducing us to a lot of people in the episode — Vickie Guerrero, Sandra, David, Chris Jericho. He came on board the project as a producer, but he was instrumental in terms of giving us access to the inner circle of the story. That was the way we wanted to tell that story, and without him, I don’t know we could have done that," he said.
Fans can watch the Chris Benoit episodes of Dark Side of the Ring by clicking here.
