I've seen them both. Beyond the Mat was sort of a big deal for my friends and I because it was the Attitude Era and we basically lived for what would go down on Monday nights in order to discuss it all through much of the week. The internet was still pretty young and we didn't really keep close tables on the dirt sheets or really any wrestling website, or publication really, and I think it's one reason why we enjoyed it so much.Originally Posted by #MrScissorsKick
Beyond the Mat didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know, or at least had some good sense about, but Jake Roberts was the emotional center of the documentary for me. I'd heard a few stories here and there over the years how bad things had gotten with him and while the documentary didn't really show him at his lowers, such as showing him actually doing drugs or anything, I'm kinda glad that didn't happen as it would've seemed exploitative to me. The hardest part of the film was when they were filming Foley's wife and kids in the audience during the I Quit match he had with the Rock at the 1999 Royal Rumble. Foley's hands were cuffed behind his back and he legitimately took a good 20 unprotected shots to the head. His kids were screaming and crying, so was his wife and it was pretty tough to watch them go through that. You know that Foley, in his passionate yet, at times, unwise dedication to his craft, told Rock to go at him with that chair as if he'd just caught him raping his mother and that's exactly what the Rock did. Overall, it's a good documentary that shows that pro wrestling really isn't really all that glamorous and gave a lot of people one of the first real looks at how difficult it can be.
Wrestling with Shadows really changed my opinion of Bret Hart and the whole thing about the Montreal Screwjob. I didn't see it until probably around 2001 or so and, like a lot of people, I was firmly on Bret Hart's side but that changed once I saw this. Not that the Montreal Screwjob is exactly something for Vince to be proud of, but I saw that it wasn't remotely the one sided deal I'd once thought. I thought Bret Hart came across as someone that was pretty full of himself and thought he was above Shawn Michaels. I get that he didn't like him, which may well have been quite understandable, but the fact that he didn't want to drop the WWF Championship to HBK while in Canada during his last match just struck me as hypocritical considering how much of a purist and traditionalist he proclaimed himself to be so often during the film. It'd always been tradition for someone to lose their last match when leaving a promotion, especially a championship match. Vince was getting his ass handed to him via the Monday Night War, Bret was leaving to go to the competition and Vince was worried that instead of showing up to Raw the next night to vacate the title, which both sides did agree to, he was afraid Bret would pop up on WCW Monday Nitro and pull a stunt with the WWF Championshp similar to what Madusa did with the WWF Women's Championship. It wasn't Vince's crowning moment but, as I learned, it wasn't really Bret's either and it most definitely wasn't the clear cut, black & white situation that many thought it'd been.
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