DVD Review: Fight Hard: The Allison Danger Story

Courtesy of Main Event Radio's Steven Wilson:

Earlier this year Strong Style Productions sat down with Allison Danger to film two DVD projects, the first of which was the 4 hour “Quick Shooting with Allison Danger” shoot interview released back in April. Now work has been completed on their second project, “Fight Hard: The Allison Danger Story” which is a documentary on the life and career of Allison Danger.

With a main feature runtime of 2 hours and 15 minutes, Fight Hard is able to offer up something completely different from the previously released shoot interview as the shoot focused more on her thoughts and opinions on the world of professional wrestling, picking apart the WWE, TNA and Shimmer rosters. In this feature you learn what it was like growing up as the little sister of Steve Corino, how her entry to the world of professional wrestling came about, how much involvement her brother had in her training and of course her eventual international career is covered in depth. At times there is spots were there is an assumption that you know what was going on with the storylines she is speaking of, but luckily that gets corrected as the documentary goes along. Overall there is very little downtime and makes for a fairly interesting watch. Chapter listings are as follows : 1) Growing up Corino, 2) Entering the business, 3) Ring Of Honour, 4) Hitting her stride, 5) Branching Out, 6) The girls step up, 7) USO Tour, 8) Debut of Shimmer, 9) Wrestling Takes it toll, 10) 100% Strong Style!, 11) A farewell to ROH, 12) Crowning a Shimmer Champion, and finally 13) What does the future hold?

Strong Style Productions does a decent job in dealing with the limitations an independent company faces when creating a documentary in this day and age. Video and Photo footage of Danger in action in Shimmer, ROH, Chikara and Chickfight finds itself sprinkled throughout the feature which to say the least is a nice addition and has become a must for a documentary nowadays, However being unable to spend a ton of cash to travel, interview, and film those she has worked and been influenced by, written quotes were instead obtained for the DVD from the likes of Francine, her brother Steve, Rebecca Knock and many others. Despite all this the video and audio quality deserves top marks. The documentary also features music from California band “theSTART” as well as irish band “Eden” and some of the musical choices are great and placed well, however sometimes the producers try a little too hard to use the music, as 10 second bits that end abruptly are more annoying than helpful.

The second disc offers up an hour of deleted scenes from the documentary which could of easily been included in the main feature and not brought it down a bit. Stories including her time hanging out in the ECW locker room, as well as hilarious stories of teasing the guys in ROH about how she got to make out with Mickie James, how Matt Hardy’s dad made her cry and why she is deathly afraid of Curry Man! Also included is 2 matchups, first up is Danger against Daizee Haze from Chikara in March 2005, Then we have 6 way women’s action from February 06 in Chikara as Haze, Sumie Sakai and Mickie Knuckles team up to take up Danger, Rain and Ranmaru.

I was generally impressed with the overall quality of this DVD. Its rare to find a documentary of high quality that tells a interesting story and actually enables you to learn about someone who has done so much for the business, specifically for women’s wrestling which right now is more popular then ever, so if your looking for something different in your wrestling library give Fight Hard a look when it comes out next week on DVD.

Fight Hard: The Allison Danger Story will be available from Strong Style Productions on October 14th, For more information or to order your own copy check out www.strongstyleproductions.com, And to read my previous DVD reviews check out www.maineventradio.com/reviews.htm