The night indy wrestling lost its damn mind
Back in June 2005, two men walked into a sweaty building in Indiana and decided safety guidelines were for cowards. Samoa Joe was a rising star tearing through Ring of Honor and TNA. Necro Butcher was a man whose entire career strategy was taking brain damage for fifty bucks and a cold hot dog.
When they collided at IWA Mid-South, nobody expected a technical clinic. What we got instead was a brutal car crash that became an instant urban legend among tape traders. As PWInsider highlighted in their preview clip, Dark Side of the Ring is finally giving this chaotic spectacle the documentary treatment it deserves.
If you have never watched the footage, count your blessings and your remaining brain cells. Joe dropped Necro directly on his forehead onto bare concrete floor without a mat in sight. Necro ate stiff slaps to the jaw like he was eating chips at a tailgate party.
It was not clean work. It was ugly, violent, and completely reckless. Yet every headbanging indy fan in 2005 passed that bootleg DVD around like state secrets.
Joe was built like a brick house and hit like a runaway freight train. Necro looked like a guy who just got fired from a junkyard and decided to fight a bear. The chemistry was horrific in the best possible way.
Most wrestlers protect each other in the ring to make sure everyone goes home to their families. These two guys looked like they were trying to write each other into an early grave. That match altered how fans viewed deathmatch talent stepping up against elite heavyweights.
Vice TV is selling VHS tapes like it is 1998
Vice TV knows their audience is full of nostalgic degenerates who miss the video store era. To celebrate this new episode, the network announced a limited VHS physical release of the show. According to F4WOnline's report on the physical release, collectors can grab actual magnetic tape copies to put on their dusty shelves.
Who even owns a working VCR in July 2026? My local thrift shop stopped taking VCRs a decade ago because they were taking up space where broken coffee makers belonged. But wrestling fans will buy anything if you stick a retro logo on it.
You can already picture the eBay listings popping up three minutes after the drop. Scalpers will ask for $40 or more for a plastic cassette that will probably tracking-glitch during the best bump. It is a gimmick, sure, but it fits the filthy aesthetic of 2000s tape-trading culture perfectly.
Back then, you had to mail money orders to sketchy guys in Philadelphia to get third-generation copies of Japanese deathmatches. You prayed the tape did not get eaten by your VCR before the main event started. Putting this specific Samoa Joe match on magnetic tape feels poetically trashy.
Dark Side of the Ring built its entire brand on nostalgia, tragedy, and gritty storytelling. Releasing VHS tapes is basically printing money off millennial wrestling nerds who refuse to let go of their youth. I respect the hustle even if my VCR has been dead since the Bush administration.
Why the Joe vs Necro match still haunts our nightmares
Modern wrestling is full of incredible athleticism and carefully choreographed flips. You can watch a guy do three backflips off a steel cage and land cleanly on his feet every Wednesday night. But very few matches make your stomach drop like Joe slinging Necro around a floor covered in trash.
In the middle of the match, Joe threw a stiff forearm that looked like it cracked Necro's jaw into three pieces. Necro just shook his head, wiped blood off his chin, and threw an awkward punch right back. That total lack of self-preservation is what made the crowd go wild.
As PWInsider reported on the episode overview, the documentary explores what drove these guys to punish their bodies for pocket change. The match lasted barely 12 minutes, but it felt like a marathon of pain.
There was a moment where Necro was thrown over the guardrail and hit his head on the wooden bleachers. Any normal human being would have called an ambulance and retired on the spot. Necro got up and bit Joe on the forehead like a rabid dog.
You cannot teach that kind of insane commitment to the bit. It was not pretty, and by today's safety standards, it looks borderline criminal. But you cannot look away when two wrecking balls smash into each other at full speed.
Critics at the time called it cheap shock value that demeaned the sport. They were not entirely wrong, considering the complete lack of medical staff nearby. But it carved out a legend that outlasted almost every polished match on television that month.
Memphis nostalgia and the art of the old school cash-in
While Vice TV is busy digging up bloodbaths, Memphis wrestling is pulling off its own blast from the past. Jerry Lawler and Bret Hart are reuniting for a special Memphis Wrestling appearance. That is like putting Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger on stage to sing old blues covers in a bingo hall.
Lawler is the undisputed king of Memphis, a man who has wrestled in that territory since before most of us were born. Bret Hart represents the gold standard of technical wrestling from the nineties. Seeing those two icons share a ring again is pure fan service for the gray-hair crowd.
As PWInsider detailed in their Vice TV preview coverage, wrestling history always loops back on itself when promoters need to sell tickets. You can run high-flying modern matches all year, but old-school nostalgia still draws crowds.
Memphis wrestling was built on wild storylines, heated promos, and crowd riots. Lawler knew how to work a crowd with a single microphone gesture better than most modern rosters combined. Bringing Bret Hart into that environment is a reminder of how simple wrestling used to be before corporate scripts took over.
Sure, neither guy is going to execute a thirty-minute iron man match in 2026. Nobody expects them to take back drops or dive off the top rope through tables. Fans just want to hear the theme music, see the point of the finger, and remember when wrestling felt larger than life.
The verdict on wrestling's obsession with its bloody past
Wrestling fans live in two worlds at once. We want sleek production, pristine moves, and healthy athletes who can walk when they turn forty. At the same time, we obsessively rewatch tape of guys destroying their spines in front of fifty people in a barn.
Dark Side of the Ring succeeds because it exposes the raw, uncomfortable truth behind those viral moments. Samoa Joe went on to win major titles in WWE and AEW, cementing his status as a legendary big man. Necro Butcher became a folk hero whose body took the brunt of indy wrestling's wildest era.
Looking back at that 2005 match feels like looking at old footage of stuntmen working without safety nets. It makes you cringe, it makes you laugh, and it makes you glad the business evolved. But deep down, every fan still craves that unscripted, dangerous spark once in a while.
So go ahead and order that goofy VHS tape if you still have a machine that can play it. Watch Samoa Joe throw Necro Butcher onto hard ground one more time. Just make sure you keep an ice pack handy, because your neck will hurt just watching it.
