Few wrestling tales have been covered, dissected, discussed, celebrated and argued about more than Mick Foley’s Mankind) being thrown off the Hell in a Cell structure at King of the Ring 1998. And while I always thought I had the full story, that changed upon watching the Dark Side of the Ring Season 6 premiere and its breakdown of how the match and other difficult moments in the WWE Hall of Famer’s career impacted his family.
Ahead of the Vice TV show’s return to the 2025 TV schedule, I sat down with Dark Side of the Ring creator Evan Husney and asked him why he wanted to tackle something that had been covered so much. Essentially, it came down to looking at the match outside of the lens as a wrestling story and more as an exploration of the human element of Mick Foley’s story during the match and beyond:
It only was through other docs like Beyond the Mat, for example, where we saw a glimpse of the consequences of that, which is his family, who kind of is along for the ride, and they don’t always know the things that he’s doing and, and putting himself in harm’s way in order to put food on the table. And those are kind of very underappreciated elements that us as fans don’t really take into consideration because we get so swept up in the drama of it all. To hear Noelle in our episode, Mick’s daughter, talk about how she’s blocked out all of her dad’s wrestling matches. I mean, that’s pretty traumatic, you know, for somebody and, and to having to go along with this.
In the Dark Side of the Ring Season 6 premiere, Noelle Foley revealed that she doesn’t have one singular memory of watching her father wrestle. Though she certainly watched her father take 11 chair shots to the head in his infamous “I Quit” match with The Rock at the 1999 Royal Rumble,she’s convinced the events were so traumatic that her brain simply blocked them out.
And this exploration of the consequences, impact, and more human side of Mick Foley’s legendary and notoriously brutal career was something that Husney and his team sought to cover from the beginning. He continued:
And so our whole approach was, yes, this match has been really told so much, but we wanted to look at it from a more fresh point of view in terms of trying to get deep into Mick’s psychology. What makes him tick, why he wanted to go in through and achieve this. Look at his own personal complicated history with how he looks at it. How he sort of views it and like the legacy of it, but also the consequences of how that impacted his family.
Though incredibly difficult to watch at times, especially during the series of unprotected chair shots from the “I Quit” match and the infamous fall from Hell in a Cell, the episode does a tremendous job of humanizing Mick Foley and showing him as more than the “Hardcore Legend” but instead a man willing to do anything and everything to entertain fans and provide for his family.
To say Dark Side of the Ring, which is one part wrestling docuseries and one part true crime show, starts with a “bang bang” would be an incredible understatement. If you want to see even more stories, check out new episodes at 10 p.m. every Tuesday on Vice TV.
