Evan Husney sheds some light on the new perspective that Dark Side of the Ring will use to tell the story of the Mick Foley vs. Undertaker Hell in a Cell Match.
Speaking with Sean Ross Sapp ahead of the premiere of the series' sixth season, Evan Husney explained his mindset behind the structure of the episode covering the Hell in a Cell match between Mick Foley and The Undertaker at WWE King of the Ring 1998.
"Mick Foley is another person that we've had a great relationship with over the years," he said. "He was kind of patient zero in a lot of ways, like things kind of could have gone a different way, sliding doors with Dark Side where he would have been the narrator for the show. That was the original sort of intention of the series. But he didn't know us. We didn't have street cred and so he was a little worried about some of the stories we were covering and how we'd handle them. Which I totally understand because we were green as grass back then.
"But it's cool to come full circle with him now because we always wanted to do a story about him. Because I've always found him to be one of my favorite personalities in wrestling, not only just as a human being but to me. He operates on a plane of performance art or just the way that he thinks about the business and the way that he applied himself as a character and how deep he went and all the sacrifices he made for the sake of his art, his sort of theater of cruelty style of art, performance art has always been really fascinating to me."
According to Husney, Foley was apprehensive about being a subject on the show, but they eventually got him to agree. As for covering the Hell in a Cell match, it has been extensively discussed in almost every way in the almost three decades since it happened. Still, Husney had always wanted to do an episode based on a single match and believes this to be a staple match from his childhood and the history of wrestling.
"So we finally got the opportunity to convince him. He was a little gun-shy for several seasons about kind of being a subject on the show. But we were finally able to do it. The Hell in the Cell match, while it’s well-trodden territory, of course, for wrestling fans, that was such a huge deal for me as a kid," he said. "I'm sure a lot of people of my generation who saw it live, that's the thing we all talked about on the playground afterwards, was that match and what happened. It's just still the craziest thing, and it's always the match that I show people who've never seen a wrestling match before because their jaws are usually on the floor.
"However you may feel about that style of wrestling, the story that is told in that ring and on that night, it's a roller coaster ride unlike any other," he adds. "This idea of, ‘Well, this guy might die in the ring.’ Of course, there's that. But to me, it's just the brilliance of having him carted away in the stretcher, and then getting up and re-climbing the cage, which always gives me goosebumps. It's so amazing. But it was a challenge for us, ‘Can we make an entire episode out of a full match?’"
Husney also remarked that the runtime of the episode is longer than the match itself. He looks forward to fans hearing the perspective of individuals such as Francois Petit, the therapist WWE had on hand who worked with the wrestlers at the time.
"We live, I think, in the Hell in the Cell match in this episode longer than the actual runtime of the matches, and that was kind of the whole point was, let's just try and live in this match and get deep into the psychology of Mick Foley and what he was thinking versus what he had planned versus what other people knew and then let's try and bring in as many people who were there and seeing it unfold. So it is kind of this like urgent, sports real-time sports documentary is kind of how it plays, which is really cool," he said. "It was great to talk to people like Francois Petit, who was the sort of the ‘doctor’ they had in the back who's more just like a physical therapist. But you don't hear from him all that often, and I was just shocked when he told us that he also played Sub-Zero in Mortal Kombat in the first movie. I had no idea that that's who that was. So very cool, and he's a cool character in the piece. But so I urge anybody who feels like they've heard the story before. This is a very cool look at this, and I think it's a little deeper than most of the pieces you've seen on it before."
At this link, fans can read about an idea that Mick Foley had to run the match back and create an even more magical moment in 2008.
Season 6 of Dark Side of the Ring begins on Tuesday, March 25, with the episode covering Mick Foley. Check out the full lineup of topics here.
Check out the full interview with Evan Husney, which is embedded at the top of this page.
