Flight Crew Members Confirmed For "Plane Ride From Hell" Dark Side Of The Ring Episode
Co-creators of Dark Side of the Ring, Evan Husney and Jason Eisener, are on today's episode of The Wrestling Inc. Daily. They and Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman discussed what fans can expect from season three with Eisener speaking on the process of making the Plane Ride From Hell episode.
"It's always been a story that's been on our radar since the beginning," Eisener noted. "If you are a fan of wrestling and a fan of wrestling history, you've had to have come across the Plane Ride From Hell story, and it's always been the story that has been kind of talked about as if it was just crazy locker room antics or Martin Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street, over the top. We didn't know before how it could really span across 45 minutes for an episode.
"But with season three, this episode is so demanded. All the wrestling fans have wanted to see us tackle the Plane Ride From Hell story. So being able to really talk to some of the people who were there, not only just the wrestlers but people who worked on the flight. So when you hear a different side of it, the Plane Ride From Hell really lives up to it's name. It really does sound like a hellish experience."
The Infamous "Plane Ride From Hell" story comes from a flight after the Insurrextion PPV in London in 2002. The incident led to the firings of Scott Hall and Curt Hennig, and many wrestlers have told stories from the flight from Kurt Angle wrestling Vince McMahon to The Undertaker choking out Angle. Husney revealed that the Dark Side of the Ring episode will feature a perspective from this group that is not commonly heard from.
"We have considered it since the very beginning. I actually remember Plane Ride From Hell being in the original pitch materials for the show when we pitched it to the network," Husney revealed. "I mean, it's just one of those stories. You always saw the shoot interviews. You always saw the X-Pac's on certain places talking about it, and so for us, it was always like, 'Yeah, what's the deal with that?' But I'm so glad we waited.
"I'm so glad we waited until now to really find how we could tell it, and I feel like just making this show now so many times, I mean, it's almost, I'm not going to say it's an assembly line because every episode is a major challenge, but we've been able to kind of figure out how it works, and how to put it together and how the show functions. I'm glad we waited because I think that this story really benefits with hindsight, you know?
"To tell this story back when those shoot interviews were done, I think that they are done under a completely different — it is kind of looking at it like, 'It's a big party in the sky man, and it got crazy brother.' And I think like now, it's like, 'Oh no, this is a f**king nightmare, and we're trapped.' And it's bad, and it was a major moment in the WWE. I mean, you look at how it lines up with the changing of the tide of that company. That's when they were going from WWF to WWE [and] when they were becoming publicly traded. It is a big sort of marker of 'okay, we need to button up. Those old-school locker room antics cannot exist if this company is going to grow more.' It's an anxiety inducing episode. You will be terrified."
Dark Side of The Ring season three debuts Thursday May 6 at 8/7c on VICE TV. You can find the full audio and video from Jason and Evan's interview below: