Beyond the Mat

Beyond the Mat is a 1999 American documentary film directed, written, produced and narrated by Barry W. Blaustein. The film focuses on the lives of professional wrestlers outside of the ring, primarily Mick Foley, Terry Funk, and Jake Roberts, as well as some aspiring wrestlers. It focuses on the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) during its rise in popularity, and many other independent wrestlers and organizations. The film was originally released in U.S. theaters in March 2000, and later on VHS and DVD.

**Synopsis**
Director Barry Blaustein discusses his love for professional wrestling and clips of him viewing employees of the World Wrestling Federation and Extreme Championship Wrestling. He then decides to travel the United States over a three-year period, endeavoring to understand the mindset of someone who would voluntarily choose to become a professional wrestler. Blaustein interviews a wide variety of wrestling personalities and ascertains their motivations.
Blaustein focuses on three famous wrestlers, one at the height of his career (Mick Foley, aka "Mankind"), one contemplating retirement (Terry Funk) and one at a career low (Jake "The Snake" Roberts). He begins by following Funk, a 53-year-old man in need of knee surgery who appears unable to retire, despite the mounting toll wrestling is taking on his body. Blaustein follows him as he competes at hardcore wrestling promotion Extreme Championship Wrestling's first pay-per-view event Barely Legal in 1997. Funk also appears with his friend, former wrestler Dennis Stamp, who is eager to work as a referee in Funk's upcoming "retirement" match. Stamp discusses the fact that he has not wrestled in years, but remains in shape just in case he gets the call, and demonstrates his unusual workout regimen: jumping on a trampoline in his backyard while holding hand weights.
Funk's sometime in-ring rival, Foley, is profiled next. He has been taking increasingly risky falls (or "bumps") and blows to the head, and at one point is heard talking incoherently as the result of a fall (from his Hell in a Cell match against The Undertaker at King of the Ring 1998) which briefly rendered him unconscious. Clips of Foley with his wife and children are spliced with the clips of him risking his body for the sport. Later, in the film's climax, his wife and young children (particularly his daughter Noelle) watch in horror from the front of the audience during Foley's "I Quit" match at the 1999 Royal Rumble, wherein he takes multiple unprotected shots to the head by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson with a steel folding chair. Four weeks after the match, Blaustein was haunted by seeing Foley's family reaction to the Royal Rumble match. Blaustein decided to show Foley and his wife the footage he captured at the event. After watching the footage, Foley admitted he felt guilty for putting his family through the ordeal, and said he never wanted to put them in that position again.
Lastly, Roberts is a wrestler whose height of popularity was in the 1980s. Now he is a crack cocaine addict, and estranged from his daughter. Although he was once one of the more famous wrestlers in America, performing in front of tens of thousands of fans, he is now wrestling in small-town venues. In the course of the film, Roberts is shown attempting to reconcile with his daughter and being interviewed after reportedly smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room (the act is not shown on camera), as well as musing aloud about his increasingly illicit sexual dalliances while traveling.
The careers of the three successful wrestlers are contrasted with those of wrestlers who have not yet achieved comparable success, such as two men getting started in the sport of wrestling, Tony Jones and Michael Modest, who are granted a tryout match for the WWF. In addition, Darren Drozdov is a former NFL football player who is shown in an interview with Vince McMahon. Drozdov, who can vomit at will, is called on by McMahon to vomit in a bucket as a demonstration of his ability—an ability which earned him the ring name "Puke"—which McMahon plans to use as part of Drozdov's new in-ring persona. Drozdov becomes a WWF wrestler, but at the end of the film, it is revealed that Droz was paralyzed in an in-ring accident from a botched maneuver several months later.