MMA Fighting - Ronda Rousey, Nick Diaz, Kimbo Slice All Featured On Debut Season Of Dark Side of the Cage

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

MMA Fighting's Mike Heck is joined by Dark Side of the Cage executive producer Tim Healy to preview the brand new Vice TV series that kicks off this Wednesday, which includes topics such as the stories of Kimbo Slice, Ronda Rousey, Nick Diaz, Matt Hughes, "War Machine," and much more. Follow Mike Heck: @m_heckjr Subscribe to MMA Fighting Check out our full video catalog Like MMA Fighting on Facebook Follow on Twitter Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first... Ah, there, the last one. Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that refreshes. Welcome aboard Air Canada. Rocky's vacation, here we come. Whoa, is this economy?

Free beer, wine, and snacks. Sweet! Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land. And with live TV, I'm not missing the game. It's kind of like I'm already on vacation. Nice. Air Canada. Nice travels.

Wi-Fi available to aeropline members on equip flights, sponsored by Bell. Conditions apply. See Air Canada.com. Podcast Network. Vice TV, ladies gentlemen, they have been on the cutting edge of telling stories from the world of pro wrestling, decades in the entertainment space, and a lot more over the years. But beginning this week, Vice TV,

TV is going to air a new program, Dark Side of the Cage, taking deep dives into the stories of fighters, promotions, controversial figures, and much more. And joining me now is Tim Healy, who is one of the executive producers for this program that is going to be airing on Vice TV. Tim, thank you for joining us. How are you? Yeah, Mike, great to see you. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I was wondering when we were going to get a series like this after the success of Dark Side of the Ring because being in the MMA space and covering the sport for about a decade, there's just a million of these stories. So I'm curious, when did this first come on your radar, Dark Side of the Cage, this sort of other side of the mixed martial arts world, if you will. Sure. Yeah, my production company, Rail Splitter Pictures, we produced Dark Side of the 90s for Vice. And when we were brainstorming episodes, we came up with, let's tell the story of the UFC. Because most, you know, the promotion has gotten so popular over the last decade that we figured a lot of viewers don't understand the early days and what they faced as a company. So we did a two-parter. We did two hours on the dark side of the UFC. And it did really, really well.

It was received really well. And even beyond that, it was a blast to make. We had so much fun doing it. And it rated really, really well. So when those ratings came in, we reached out the vice right away. And we said, look, there's something here. We know you want to do more in the dark side space. Like, let's do dark side of the cage.

Like, let's just dive into mixed martial arts. and, you know, let's dedicate an entire series to these stories. And that was about a year ago. And Vice was receptive. You know, they jumped right on it. And they greenlit these 10 one-hour episodes. And that's really the backstory of the genesis of the idea. So between you pitching this idea to this first episode dropping Wednesday as we record,

this took a year? That's it? About a year. Yeah, about a year. Yep. Wow. I would think that would take way longer. Yeah.

That seems like have you done anything else over the last year? Oh, yeah. We've worked on multiple series. That's one of the great things about TV is it moves much, you know, moves a lot quicker than you think it does. But, you know, we pitched it. And, you know, they discussed it for a while and then decided to pull the trigger and go for it. Most series that I work on, you know, they take between.

nine months and 12 months. Wow. So the stories you're telling, they're all really interesting topics. The first one is the story of Kimbo Slice and then we get into Diego Sanchez and Evan Tanner and season one of the Ultimate Fighter and Nick Diaz, the rise and fall of pride, Ronda Rousey, Matt Hughes and War Machine, just so many interesting things to get into. Was this difficult to narrow down the topics or was this pretty simple for? for the team? It was pretty simple for this first season.

You know, it's a tricky series because it's got a really scary title. You know, when you hear Dark Side of the Cage and when you start to do your outreach for interview subjects, they immediately

going by the title, they assume it's going to be tarnishing somebody's legacy or, you know, digging for dirt. And, um, but really, you know,

each episode, they have varying levels of, of, of darkness to them, you know, War Machine being the absolute darkest that you can get, obviously. But then an episode like Kimbo that, you know, the darkest thing is

his heart condition, you know, and his untimely death. But when we drew up the initial 10, you know, we wanted to straddle the two worlds. We wanted to appeal to the core MMA fan, but we also wanted to choose stories that would be broad enough that wouldn't be alienating to someone

who doesn't know anything about mixed martial Lawrence doesn't know anything about the sport at all. So Rhonda was made total sense, right? So excuse me, Mike. Excuse me. Rhonda made total sense because shadowed the glass ceiling for women in the sport, but also crossed over, you know, into the MMA and then WWE did the, you know,

the wrestling thing. So she made total sense. Plus, you know, the darkness of being, you know, the preeminent athlete and that. promotion for so long and then to suffer that loss against Holly Holm and then, you know, struggling to recover from that. So, um, so that story made total sense. But we also went for stories like the Diego Sanchez story, which, you know, if you know nothing about Diego Sanchez and you just happen to catch the first 10 seconds of the episode, once you see Diego

on camera speaking, you can't help but be drawn in by his personality and his charisma, right? So we really wanted to be careful to serve the core fan, the person that absolutely lives and dies by the sport. But at the same time, attract some people into the fold who might not be as knowledgeable. Yeah, Diego is, I was super happy to see Diego on the list because he's one of the reasons that I became an actual bigger fan of the sport. Because I used to tune in to the first season of the Ultimate Fighter every week, just to see what kind of of wacky things he was going to do. Like, was he going to do a split on a balcony and meditate? What was he?

Was he going to yell at somebody? Was he just going to scream yes and yes over and over again? And then you get to see his career sort of spiral up and then spiral down. And then he gets connected with perhaps some of the wrong people, plus all the wars he had been in over the years. Like, I know you mentioned the first 10 seconds, like Diego just draws you in. But how fascinating is this episode in general? And what is he like today?

We as people in the MA space, we don't get to see a whole lot of him. Yeah, I mean, he was extremely gracious and generous with his time. I think Diego sat for, I think, three different interviews over three different days. He went really in depth. He allowed us to actually interview his mother along with Diego. He's extremely introspective. I think he's in a really good place.

And you're going to see it during that episode, you know, by the end of it, you can see that his intention is to be a coach. And I think he's going to be a really great coach. But seeing Diego over the years, to your point, Mike, and, you know, the outlandish antics and the way he would enter the octagon of the fights or an open fighter, it was really interesting to see him in such a calm, intelligent, introspective place. And it's a fascinating episode. And one thing that you said is, which I,

I think is true for a lot of these episodes, you know, sometimes these athletes choose to surround themselves with the wrong people, and that ultimately leads to a bit of a downfall. So obviously, the Joshua Fabia story, that's a huge part of the Diego episode. But at the same time, in the War Machine episode, Matt Serra talks about how he really feels like War Machine had the potential. to be really great, but he made really bad choices and decided to kind of surround himself with the wrong people and that ultimately put him on the path that led to where it went. So, yeah, I think people are going to really like to see and hear from Diego. It brought a smile to my face and, you know, he's still as charismatic as ever. As we're, you know, kind of going through

the list of topics here, were there any other ideas on the table that were close to making it? but ultimately didn't make it? Yeah, you know, there was pretty much consensus across the board for these first 10s. It's not like we fought for an episode and it didn't happen. I really wanted to do Wanda Le Silva. I really like I was,

I was really drawn to that story, but to my earlier point, I just don't think he had enough mainstream appeal for a season one. I do think that, you know, in success of season one, that's a story that we would obviously love to tell. Pride, it was a little bit of a battle to get consensus to do a two-parter. You know, Pride, when we were talking to some other people and executives

who didn't really know much about MMA, they didn't know what Pride was. They didn't really understand how this Japanese league made. made sense to, you know, the American viewer and how it fit into the big picture. But once we were able to kind of give them the backstory and tell them, fill in all the dots on pride, we were really happy that that expanded into a two-parter. You know, part one is kind of the rise, and then part two is the fall and kind of what, what ultimately led to the design, the demise of the promotion. But that said, like, there's not like we had any, you know,

know, episodes that we absolutely wanted to tell that died. We were very fortunate. That's good. I think this is a great way to start with Kimbo because anybody that has been a fan, even just for a little while, mostly forever, knows the backyard history and how that translated to MMA and how much of a huge deal it was that he went to MMA and went to eventually the ultimate fighter in the UFC and the story of elite XC and all that. And I'm not sure like how much you learn from the Kimbo story, but people ask me all the time, who from the older generations would thrive in today's combat sports landscape? And Kimbo, to me, had he come along two years ago, he'd be one of the biggest stars in combat sports with bare-knuckle boxing being what it is,

the influencer boxing scene being what it is, all the Jake Paul stuff. He was, to me, one of the most ahead of his time fighters that I can think of. Do you agree with that, especially after telling his story? Yeah, I do. And I, and I, I think the one thing that one of the big takeaways, I think, when you watch the episode is, you know, he wasn't this young guy when he started his MMA career. Like, he was really late to the game. He got a late, late start. You know, he's fighting in these backyards in Miami.

But, you know, Boss Rutan talks in the episode about, you know, his level of commitment, right? And the guts that it took to get into the sport at a late age. He had no ground game at all, right? So he had no submissions. You know, when he lost to Sean Gannon and that famous, you know, fighting Boston, you know, it was because Gannon was, you know, hit them with guillotine chokes and he didn't know how to react or how to get out of a choke. But, you know, he became a student, you know, at a late age. You know, when you look at what happened to him, how he was kind of the one of the biggest athletes and, you know,

was sitting on the couch on the Jimmy Kimmel show and making the late night rounds. and then suddenly everything falls apart at Elite XC and then the guy goes on the ultimate fighter where guys at the beginning go. So he was a guy that wasn't afraid to really put it out there and to put himself out on a limb to try to succeed at something.

So I think he would have adapted to your point to all these other opportunities in combat sports really, really well. I mean, it was just tragic what happened to the guy. Yeah, it's just all so sudden too. And one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, despite what you might see on video and the backyard fights and everything. I mean, Mike, you'll, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone to say one bad thing about Kimbo. You know, he was obviously like, you know, a force to be wrecked with.

But I never met him. But from whatever one says, he was just the nicest guy. Yeah, got to interview him once. And it was something else was before the. the Dada 5,000 fight, which one of the weirdest things ever, which is really tragic. I mean, you know, when you watch that fight in the episode and, you know, Big John McCarthy, you know, who wrecked that fight, he talks about how he almost feels kind of guilty because he was urging Kimbo, you know, he hear him in the rim and saying, you have to do something.

You got to move, not realizing the guy had a heart condition. You know, it's like when you watch that fight, you have no idea what's going on inside that guy's body and how sick he was. Yeah, and Dada fell apart too, and he had some really bad health complications coming out of that fight as well. As this announcement came, I think two of the names on here really stood out to everybody. And it was Nick Diaz and as you mentioned, Ronda Rousey, because Nick is technically still an active fighter, even though we haven't seen him in a while. And Ronda Rousey, as you talked about earlier, her MMA career has been over for quite some time, but she had the WVE run. two very interesting individuals, two very important pieces of MMA history,

but in totally different ways. And Ronda was one of the most important figures ever. Anybody knows that at this point. She changed the game and then blink of an eye, she gets kicked in the head. And it's pretty much over. And she just vanished, reappeared to fight Amanda Nunes, vanished all fight week, showed up in the fight, and then vanished again until she showed up in WWE.

what was the Rhonda Rousey deep dive like for you guys? I mean, you know, for us, again, you know, such a popular athlete, you know, she was, she was everywhere. But really the appeal to us for that episode was what you just said, Mike. What's it like to be? She was an unstoppable force for a really long time because of her judo background. She would go in, she would get a quick take down, and she would attack an arm, you know, I mean, and it was unstoppable. I got to the point where, you know, the fighters knew what was coming.

They knew that she was going for the arm bar and they couldn't stop it, right? So, but for us, the appeal was like, what is it, what's it like to be an athlete that goes from being an unstoppable force to losing and really an unprecedented upset, you know, with one head kick, right, in Australia to then basically go and spiral into, you know, kind of what happened to her. So for us, that was the trying to get into the. psyche. You try to get into what is it like for that to happen to you?

And what does it take the crawl back, you know, from a defeat like that? Unfortunately, we weren't able to book Rhonda. You know, she graciously passed on the opportunity to sit. But we did speak at length with Liz Carbush and I'm trying to think who else we have in that episode. You know, we spoke to her, Edmund, her trainer. So we do get some insight into her, but unfortunately we don't get it directly from Ronda. We had to draw on other interviews she's given about that time in her life as well as her book.

But for us, to your point, it was pretty amazing. She suffers that defeat. She goes into a hole. No one really sees her. You know, she emerges. She has the Nunes fight. that was what it was, and then disappeared again. So, you know, it's an interesting episode and it's an interesting arc.

Hearing from Edmund is going to be fascinating because he gets a lot of the blame for this, right? Like, I'm sure you heard this. I'm sure this is touched on in the episode, right? Like, how does he feel about that? Does he notice this himself that he's getting like the lion's share of the blame for her downfall in kind of an unfair way? So Edmond doesn't go there in the episode where he basically says, like, he shares, you know, he takes the, you know, the lion's share of the blame. But he does break, he does break down into tears at one point. And he says that he made a promise to her and that he wasn't able to keep the promise. And that's what haunts him to this day. And our interviewer asks him what was the promise. And he said, I promised her that she would never lose.

So he does acknowledge that, you know, not in the sense of he trained her the wrong way or, you know, her, you know, fight plan was wrong, her style was wrong. But he does, you can see that it still, it still wears heavily on him. And he obviously feels some responsibility for what happened, Ronda. And to your point, we have Rhonda's mom is in that episode. We did an interviewer, but there's some footage that we found of her talking about, placing some blame on Edmund. Oh, yeah. Do you feel like people will think Rhonda was misunderstood after watching this?

I don't think people are going to feel that Rhonda was misunderstood, but I do think people, we don't really go into the subject in the series. of CTE and head trauma. But I do think people are going to come away with a little bit of understanding that, you know, especially with Ronda's background on judo, like people don't realize just how violent of a sport judo is. It doesn't look violent, right?

But if you've ever grappled or done judo, you know, you know, there's a reason why you're taught how to break fall on day one and what that impact is on the body. So I do think people are going to get some insight into Rana. Because at the time, I don't think people really knew that she was having issues with concussions, you know, and with head trauma. And she acknowledges it in the episode.

It required footage and interviews, you know, that we put together. So I think people are going to get probably more of an understanding of what she was facing physically. But I think as far as like Ronda's persona, Rana's personality, I think kind of, I think Ronda is who she is. And I think that that comes across in the episode. is misunderstood a word you would use to describe Nick Diaz or maybe a different word or two words after shooting his episode and putting it all together because what a fascinating guy but also in a weird way much like his brother, kind of a genius in a lot of respects. I mean, look, I'm a huge, Nick, I'm a huge Diaz brother fan. I love Nick Diaz. I love Nate Diaz. When we pitched this episode and it was greenlit, the first thing I said was you're never going to get him. never going to sit for an interview so like you're going to waste your time and to robin black's

credit robin black was a creative consultant on the show you know robin made it his mission to deliver nick diaz it took six months to make that interview happen um i think we had three shoots that were aborted because nick didn't show up so that's like crews sitting there waiting for nick and i had told the team you better roll tape the second he walks to the door because there's no way he's going to last more than 15 minutes and you got to get him storming out on camera. He showed up. He sat for almost three hours, you know. Wow.

I feel it's the definitive Nick Diaz story, you know. He, he sat, he was, you know, he was great. He was open. He was honest. But to your point, like, there's nobody like Nick Diaz. You know, he's a genius. and you can't help but admire his attitude. It's like Nick doesn't play games, you know,

and I really, I truly think that he's friendly with Robin who booked him, but I think he tested the production, and I think he tested Robin's patience. I think it's like, he's not the type of guy where you say, hey, we're doing this series, we'd love to interview you, and he says yes and shows up. Like, I think once he's, saw that, at one point, Robin Black flew to Stockton and Nick was a no-show. And Caesar Gracie said to

Robin, the only way you're going to get him is if you go to Houston and get him on an airplane and fly him back to California for an interview, Robin got on a plane that night, flew to Houston and had Nick ready to fly back to California and then Nick pulled out at the last minute. And I think it was this. I think it was this series of like stops and starts that ultimately like, you know, gave Nick the ability to say, okay, I'm going to sit with these guys. Like he really tested Robin and the team, but it was well worth it. I mean, it's a really great episode.

Would you have been able to do the show if Nick didn't show up? Yes. You know, we felt like we had enough in the episode to be able to tell Nick's story. absolutely we had GSP we had Cesar Gracie we had Gilbert Melendez we had you know enough people that we could round it out but I mean you want Nick Diaz in the chair you know like so we were fully committed to the episode and fully committed to doing it without his involvement but when that phone rang and they said Nick Diaz is happening tomorrow in Houston and they sent me a picture of him sitting in the chair. I couldn't believe it.

What will you predict will be, I don't want to frame this, the most emotional, the most surprising episode of the season, because there's always one with like dark side of the ring that just kind of throws you off guard. You think you know everything. And then something just hit you in the gut from something. Like I just watched the John Tenta Dark Side of the Ring episode.

And I was like, man, like what a sad ending to his life, even though it wasn't really a dark side. You know, he was like, such a good dude, didn't fall into like a lot of the traps that the pro wrestlers did, but it was just a really sad sudden ending to his life, things I didn't really know about. Seems like if I had a guess, Evan Tanner, I think might be one of those. So that, that was about to say Evan Tanner. Could you get to see the Ever Tanner video?

Did you get to see that? No, I'm going to watch it tonight, actually. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think Evan Tanner, he, I mean, look, he had such an unorthodox. the doc style and he was so savage with the elbows and the knees right but the fact that you know he was an amazing high school wrestler gets into mixed martial arts and then starts to train jiu jiu jitsu from bHS tapes and starts to like literally pop in a gracy combatives tape and like teach himself right and really goes for a while as kind of like this self-taught guy you know

you know, gets knocked out by Tito Ortiz, and then takes his motorcycle with Gresham, Washington, and walks into Team Quest, doesn't know anybody. Just like literally shows up, has no place to live, and kind of jumps in with Randy and the team and start to train with them. And then you learn, like, what a cerebral guy who was, that he would sit in the corner and he would read, like, classic literature. And he was an earlier adopter to MySpace and would do these amazingly insightful you know, blog entries, you know.

Like, stoicism has gotten really popular as a philosophy in, like, the last five years. Like, he was way into, like, stoic philosophy way back. So, you know, so many people like the stereotype fighters, and they want to stereotype cage fighters, and they want them basically say that, you know, they don't have a brain in their head and they're knuckle-draggers. And it's like this, you know, a brutal sport. He was like, he was a, he was a poet. an intellect and unfortunately like so many people he had a problem with alcohol and it consumed

them and you know it's it's definitely a difficult episode to watch because you can't help but feel sorry for this guy as he's battling these demons right but at the same time he decides one day he puts a date on the calendar and says this is the day that I stopped drinking and he did it like on the day that he said he would stop drinking, he got on a couch and covered himself with a blanket and detoxed himself alone, right? So like, this was a guy that was cut from a different cloth. It's such a tragic ending, but I think people will be really surprised into who the man was. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that one. That was personally a name that stood out to me because I used to love watching him fight, but I didn't know a ton about him. And then, you know,

seeing that we're going to get a full breakdown of everything, including the tragic end, is super interesting. And Randy sat for that interview, and Randy Couture is so great and is so honest and provides a level of detail. Maliki Friedman, who I love, you know, Maliki sat as a teammate. And I really think it's an authentic telling of Evan's life, you know, warts and all. But you can't help. but, you know, I was, I knew a little bit about Evan, but I didn't know what I know now, and I couldn't help up be impressed.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that one. I'm looking forward to all these, including this Wednesday. It all goes down. The story of Kimbo Slice, and then we're going to go to Diego Sanchez and on and on we go. Wednesday night, 10 p.m. Eastern on Vice TV, and you can check out all these incredible stories. Tim, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it, and looking forward to see what you guys put, what you guys put together. these past several months.

Yeah, Mike. Thanks for the time. Really appreciate it. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.