Paige’s semi-autobiographical movie Fighting With My Family is on Hulu now. I watched it, and it’s no Oscar winner. It’s more like if Hallmark Channel produced Rocky. It went for heart over edge, and could have included more zaniness.
Not to say it didn’t have its moments. Paige’s parents are wrestlers, and so is her brother Zack. He knocked up a girl, so they had to get married. They have a family dinner, and Zack asks his dad to hold back on the crude behavior because her parents are kind of “posh.” Dad (played by Nick Frost) opens up right away and tells them he was in prison for eight years for violent robbery. At the end of the movie, they show video interviews with the real Paige’s family, and her dad tells the interviewer the same thing. They used what he said as Frost’s script for that scene. Frost is outstanding, by the way. There’s one scene where he’s talking on the phone with a booker while another wrestler is sitting next to him. Frost turns to the wrestler and says “Ay, 'e wants to know if you’ll take a bowling ball to the willy!” The wrestler reluctantly agrees, and Frost picks up a bowling ball and smacks him right right in the genitals with it. The wrestler looks like he’s about to cry and Frost tells him to breathe out slowly. Then he picks up the phone, and says “'E’s in.”
The movie gets a little sappy at times with Zack, who really really wanted to be in WWE but got turned down. Paige tries to get him hired, but to no avail. He becomes angry, depressed, gets in bar fights, etc. Then he decides he needs to turn his life around, and gathers neighborhood kids and trains them to be wrestlers, including one blind kid. The closing credits include a “where are they now” chyron, which reads that the blind kid went on to be a professional wrestler, but they don’t show his name. Did they run out of budget and not afford a royalty for a blind person?
Vince Vaughn plays the antagonist role as the talent scout and merciless trainer. In one scene, The Rock is giving Paige a pep talk before she debuts on RAW. As they leave his dressing room, Vince Vaughn’s character is in the hallway and Rock says “Hey, sex tape!” Paige asks him why he called him “sex tape” and Rock replies “Because he makes you famous.” Ironic considering Paige has a few sex tapes herself.
Zelina Vega played AJ Lee, and they recreated the match where Paige wins the title from her. I remember the match and it looked really random, having Lee lose the Divas title to an unknown. This was before I watched NXT, so I had no idea who Paige was at the time. She didn’t make much of an impression on me then, but she got a lot better in short order.
I recognized a couple other wrestlers in training montage scenes, like Dave “The Bomber” Mastiff and Kip Sabian. There were also some people from EVOLVE and PROGRESS. There’s also a scene with Big Show and Shamus arguing at the buffet table, but I think that was it for actual wrestlers in the movie. They otherwise changed the names of Paige’s NXT comrades. One of the girls was named Jeri-Lynn, and I’m wondering if that was intended to be a nod to Jerry Lynn of ECW fame? He retired in 2013 and now produces for AEW, and there’s no mention if he crossed paths with Paige on his Wiki page.