Evan Husney Recalls How AEW’s Launch Helped Save Dark Side of the Ring From Being Shelved

Evan Husney says that the first season of Dark Side of the Ring nearly got shelved, and it was AEW’s launch that helped save it. The series premiered in April of 2019 on Vice TV, a few months after the formation that AEW was announced. The company announced its first show, AEW Double or Nothing, in February of that year to take place in May.

Husney spoke with POST Wrestling and spoke about how Vice was not sure about the show’s ability to draw in viewers and nearly shelved it before AEW’s launch showed that there would be attention put on pro wrestling again. You can see the highlights below:

On the Amount of Wrestling Available to Consume Now:

“I think overall it’s great that wrestling is so prevalent, especially on cable. Because you know, in any of the other projects I’ve tried to do that aren’t wrestling-related, it’s tough because trying to get viewers onto cable is very hard in 2026. But wrestling fans are used to watching cable every week, and you can point them in this direction more easily than you can with other audience demographics or what have you.”

On the Show Nearly Getting Shelved:

“It’s funny, going back to 2019. Because when Vice — this is two or three regimes ago. This is a totally different team of people around at that time. But there wasn’t a lot of belief that a show like ours could work on cable TV at that point in time. Because yeah, how are we going to — wrestling, there wasn’t a lot of faith in
that. And it actually — you know, our show was going to be shelved for a very long time. That was a big possibility that was about to occur in 2019. And we were very disheartened by that, because we had put so much work into the first season and we thought we hit it out of the park. Like we thought, ‘Oh wow, this is going to be great, and this show is going to do very well.’ But those at the company at the time did not believe that.”

On Using AEW’s Launch to Save the Show:

“And I remember when it was like this — I can’t remember exactly the dates, but it was this amazing moment when I think AEW… there was some big press release that came out that they had landed a TV deal. And then I was like, I remember taking that and literally going to the company. Me and another producer inside Vice took that information, and we brought it to them. And we’re like, ‘Look guys, [for the] first time maybe in a very long time — years, decades, where you’re going to see two wrestling companies effectively competing for fans attention on cable. This is our time. It couldn’t be a better time for us to be in the mix on this.’

“And that’s really a huge part of what pushed the show to finally get on air, was because of that. And demonstrating, I think it was that first AEW show where there was like — or I think we used the metrics of their All In show, like people flew in. This is an affluent — you know, because there was a lot of negative stereotypes about wrestling watchers on cable, that they had no money. They were worthless to advertisers. That was another stigma we had to fight against. And, ‘No, it’s the opposite. Look how much money people are spending going to these shows,’ you know? And so that all of that helped us get to where we are.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Ariel Helwani Show with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.