Jonny Candido reflects on Chris Candido’s Dark Side of the Ring episode, feels Tammy Sytch ruined Chris’ life in many ways

Chris’ brother reflects on the episode. 

Kicking off season four of Dark Side of the Ring on VICE was an episode about Chris Candido and Tammy ‘Sunny’ Sytch. Among those interviewed for the episode was Chris’ brother, Jonny Candido. 

Jonny spoke more about the episode, his overall thoughts coming out of it and how he was contacted for it when he joined René Duprée’s Café De René livestream on YouTube. Jonny expressed that he liked the episode and thought it came across well. He feels it was more of Chris’ story and Tammy Sytch was just in it. 

So, the first time I watched it (Dark Side of the Ring episode about Chris Candido & Tammy ‘Sunny’ Sytch), I was on pins and needles. They interviewed me over two days. Long story short, I liked it. It came across really good and it was more my brother’s story and Tammy was in it, as opposed to the two of them because… I said in the Dark Side of the Ring, I called him ‘Cook’. I couldn’t say ‘Chris’. So I called him Cook and throughout our entire lives, I called him Chris once in ECW Arena. I was like, ‘Hey Cook, Cook.’ He couldn’t hear me. I’m like, ‘Chris.’ He runs over, he’s like, ‘Dude, don’t ever call me that again. It sounds weird.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, it felt weird…’ I thought it came across great… But yeah, I thought it came across great. I’m very happy with the documentary.

Following up on that, Jonny agreed with René that it is fair to say Sytch ruined Chris’ life in a lot of ways. He further spoke about Tammy and recalled her being upset when him and Chris would go on the road together without her. 

Jonny recounted the story of Tammy kicking Chris in the face and continuously putting her hands him in a hotel room. Jonny stated that he took Chris into the hallway and they had a physical altercation. After things settled down, Jonny claims he encouraged Chris to leave and they should leave Tammy in the hotel. He shared that Chris always viewed situations like that as he brought Tammy into his business and now he has to see it through. 

Yeah, yeah (it’s safe to say Tammy Sytch ruined Chris Candido’s life in many ways) and f*cking ended it in a lot of ways. I’m not gonna get into conspiracy theories and sh*t like that. But, I don’t f*cking — I can’t understand if you’re in an abusive relationship like that, why would you stay? And the only physical confrontation me and him ever got into was over her. Because she’d be smacking him, hitting him. He’d be no-selling it. He would never, ever hit her back. As kids, of course we were taught, ‘Never hit a woman’ so of course we never would obviously and so there’s one time, I guess I was maybe 22… Once I started I working, Tammy was kind of out of the business. It was just the two of us and she would get pissed off. The two of us would go off on the road and before, we’d be like, ‘Oh, you don’t want to come. It’s the sh*ts. The car’s gonna be full. Balls is coming, Bam is coming. You don’t wanna come. It’s gonna suck.’ So she would stay behind but sometimes she would come and anytime she’d come, she’d freaking raise hell. So one night after a big fight, smacking him, punching him, kicking him. She was laying on the bed, he went over to talk to her and she f*cking kicked him right in the face. Dude, I couldn’t watch it anymore. I grabbed him, I threw him out of the hotel room, shut the door behind us. We wrestled, got to a stalemate. I’m like, ‘Dude, let’s just leave. Leave her here now. What the f*ck?’ So me and her had a very contentious relationship and he would always be like, ‘Dude, I can’t.’ He’s always like, ‘His business.’ He’s like, ‘I brought her into my business. I have to see it through.’

When it comes to how Jonny was reached out to about doing the episode about his brother, he was first contacted by IMPACT Wrestling’s Brian Myers, who put him in contact with the show creators. 

Initially, Jonny was unsure about doing the show but Evan Husney was able to convince him to agree to it. In the end, Jonny is glad he was a part of it and reiterated that he enjoyed the episode. 

Brian Myers, he’s a friend of mine and he loved my brother’s work. He called me, was like, ‘Dude, do you want to be on Dark Side of the Ring?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. I’m cool with that’ or I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll talk to the guy, whatever,’ and so some fella called me, I talked to him about it. He’s like, ‘Yeah, we want to do an episode on your brother. Chris Candido, your favorite wrestler’s favorite wrestler. Most underrated wrestler,’ something like that and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it. He’s like, ‘Can you talk to this other fella?’ Who’s the creator of the show, the Executive Producer… He’s like, ‘Can we talk? Can we make this episode happen?’ I’m like, ‘Where do you live?’ He’s like, ‘I live in Brooklyn.’ I’m like, ‘Alright, I live in Jersey. I’ll take a ride up there right now. I’d rather talk to you face-to-face than talk to you over the phone’ and we talked. He’s like, ‘Dude, anything you don’t want in there, I won’t put in there. If you say something and want it retracted later, I’ll do that. We wanna make a great show. We’re not looking for gotcha moments. We want to make a really great show’ and I’m like, ‘Alright. I’m down.’ So the fella Evan (Husney), he’s the one that convinced me to do it and I’m really glad he did because I was really happy with my brother’s episode. I thought it was really awesome.

Chris Candido and Tammy Sytch’s Dark Side of the Ring episode was reviewed by John Pollock and Wai Ting for POST Wrestling Café patrons. 

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Café De René with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions. 

About Andrew Thompson 8005 Articles
A Washington D.C. native and graduate of Norfolk State University, Andrew Thompson has been covering wrestling since 2017.