Vice TV will release a second season of the MMA-themed Dark Side of the Cage this September with a list of topics revealed in a trailer.
The follow-up season returns to the cable network on September 1, immediately following the ongoing seventh season of Dark Side of the Ring.
Season 2 is set to cover Don Frye, Phil Baroni, Jason “Mayhem” Miller, Chael Sonnen, Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Conor McGregor from 2018, the Affliction promotion, and Tito Ortiz.
The episode on Baroni teases an interview with the ex-fighter in prison, as he was arrested three years ago in Mexico on the charge of murdering his girlfriend.
Coleman is a former UFC heavyweight champion and winner of the PRIDE Grand Prix in 2000. He was deemed a hero for his actions saving his parents from a fire in their home, leaving the former fighter in critical condition due to smoke inhalation, but he survived. He had an extensive amateur wrestling career, nearly making the Olympic team in 1996 but lost to eventual gold medallist Kurt Angle.
Mayhem Miller became a notable star during the rise of MMA as the host of Bully Beatdown on MTV and competing for the UFC and overseas in Japan among other groups. His life spiralled with too many arrests to document and was plagued by substance abuse. Last year, he shared his recovery story with Ariel Helwani and described the rock bottom he hit over the previous years.
Affliction is an interesting story as the clothing company became one of the symbols of the era for MMA. Finding itself on the outs with the UFC as a sponsor, it launched its own promotion in 2008 and ran a pay-per-view headlined by Fedor Emelianenko and Tim Sylvia and reportedly did around 100,000 buys. It was an expensive undertaking, and UFC ran a free show head-to-head on Spike TV. Affliction only ran one more show in January 2009, and a third event was cancelled at the eleventh hour, and the promotion ceased to exist.
The McGregor vs. Nurmagomedov fight from 2018 was the largest pay-per-view the UFC ever promoted. Despite Dana White’s initial condemnation of the dolly attack by McGregor earlier that year in Brooklyn, UFC used that footage to promote the fight in October. The lead-up to the fight got extremely ugly with the vitriol from McGregor, culminating in a post-fight brawl at the T-Mobile Arena.
The first season covered Kimbo Slice, Diego Sanchez, Evan Tanner, The Ultimate Fighter, Nick Diaz, Pride, Ronda Rousey, Matt Hughes, and War Machine (Jon Koppenhaver).
