Allison Danger is widely known for her success in SHIMMER and astounding in-ring ability and knowledge.
In October of 2021, Danger was hired at the WWE Performance Center coach as a full-time coach. Danger would then move with her family to Florida to officially begin her new position in training the NXT 2.0 landscape. In speaking on The Sessions with Renee Paquette, Danger detailed some of the standouts from her experience at the Performance Center, including new NXT Women’s Tag Team Champion, Roxanne Perez.
Perez received a WWE tryout in December of 2021, as she simultaneously held the Ring of Honor Women’s World Championship. Allison Danger expressed high regard for Perez, and pointed out to her that “I was the first ROH girl, you were the last” as a point of connection. “I feel like it came back around, so I had to keep an eye on her. So, I’m really excited. She just won the Breakout Tournament.
“I think Tatum Paxley is gonna be something,” Danger continued sharing some of her favorites. “Ivy Nile is already killing the game. I think the world of Ivy. I like her work ethic. If I don’t say Zoey Stark, she’s gonna get mad at me. ‘Cause I was her trainer before we both got signed. She did one match for SHIMMER and then ‘boom’ within two weeks she was off to a tryout. She was doing great. I think she’s gonna be something special. There’s a lot of great people.”
Danger further expressed that she genuinely enjoyed her time at the Performance Center.
“Even on a bad day, I loved it. Every morning, I would show up and before I would walk through the doors, I would tell myself or I would tell Steve, ‘I get to come to work today.’ Not, ‘I have to come to work, I get to come to work.’ Even on the hardest days, the roughest days at TV or just a day where things didn’t go right, I still went home and went, ‘Tomorrow is going to be a good day, we’re going to learn from whatever went bad today.’ Every day, I would wake up, throw my PC shirt on and be excited to go to work again.”
However, in January of 2022, Danger was released from her position at the WWE Performance Center. As noted earlier, Danger traveled to move to Florida with her family for what would be only a three-month tenure. In mentioning her release, Danger expressed frustration with the situation, with “mom guilt attached.”
“It absolutely sucks. Then to only be here three months and then to have it only blow up, I have a lot of mom guilt attached too. I feel like I blew my family up and have nothing to show for it. That’s brutal. That is absolutely brutal. It’s not like Kendall’s little. Kendall is thirteen now, was twelve when all of this went down. Has only known Vegas. All their friends are in Vegas, and all of a sudden dad doesn’t live here. Then all of a sudden we’re moving to Florida, and you gotta go to a new school. It’s been rough, it’s been really difficult.”
“This is either my villain origin story, or this is the point in the movie where the hero finally makes the big comeback. It’s gotta go one way or the other because the third option is not good.”
When further detailing her release, Allison Danger explained that fateful phone call she received and the events that unfolded afterward:
“It came out of nowhere for all of us. Some of the coaches who got let go were still in the Performance Center working with people. We got it right at the end of open ring. We have scheduled classes and then open ring where people can come and meet with coaches. I normally did a lot of the open rings with (Timothy) Thatcher, (Danny) Burch, (Ace) Steele. For me, the more I could be there, the better. I had slipped out after the first open ring. I talked to Burch and was like, ‘I hate leaving early. It’s my kid’s first day at this brand new school in Orlando.’ They had never ridden the bus before because KG [her child] went to a charter school in Vegas. Never ridden a bus, I’m nervous they are going to get off in the wrong neighborhood.”
“So I was like, ‘Do we have enough coaches?’ ‘Yeah, we have enough coaches to get by, just go take care of your kid.’ I was picking KG up and we were going to go out have a special dinner to celebrate the first day of a new school. The phone rings, ‘Hey coach, where are you?’ ‘I just got my kid at the bus stop, do you need me to come back to the ring? I can be back in 20 (minutes).’ ‘No, we’re calling with bad news.’ ‘Is everything okay?’ ‘We just got word that they are going to restructure the Performance Center and we have to let go of eight of you. Unfortunately, they’re not going to let us continue with your contract.”
“At that point, my kid is getting in the car. I feel bad for the person who called me because, it was not his fault, it was just really bad timing. I’m glad the person who called me was the one who called me because I think the world of him and respect him. I just froze. ‘You have to get rid of eight coaches, is my brother safe? You have to tell me, are you going to fire my brother?’ ‘No’ ‘You wouldn’t lie to me?’ ‘We’re literally releasing you and you’re asking about Steve.’ ‘What am I going to do? I can’t negotiate anything, I just need to know if he’s going to okay.’ That was my initial fear.”
“I get off the phone, I call my husband, and he goes, ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘I just got released. They said it wasn’t my fault, there is nothing I did wrong.’ I had gotten a text a couple days before about how we were all doing a great job and how happy they were with the current roster. I was told if they could bring me back they would, in a heartbeat, to make sure I knew it wasn’t a reflection on me, it was a change from the higher-ups going, ‘we’re going to restructure.”
‘I was numb, then I cried, I was numb, then I cried, and I went, ‘what am I going to do now? Could you have not fired me a week before so I could have packed my kid up, moved up with my husband, and followed up if possible?’ It’s their first day at school, how do I rip my kid out of this? My kid has gone through a pandemic where they didn’t go to school and didn’t see their friends for two years. They finally get back to school and it’s, ‘we’re moving to the east coast for sure,’ so now I’m ripping them out of school, they get put online, and have to struggle with being online, at home, in a new place in Florida where they have no friends and mom and dad are working these hours.
“Finally, everything is settled, Christmas got canceled because I got COVID from the December tryouts. Our first Christmas, all apart, my husband is making it down and literally, he walked in, in a mask, we watched [KG] unwrap presents, and he went straight to the airport and flew back. Then I’m back to work in three days. That’s it. I feel like I got brought to Florida and left to die. My family is split, we’re struggling through that. I’m still five months out and nothing to show for it and no idea what I’m going to do. This has been a rock bottom year.”
In recent news, Allison Danger was recently named the official coach of Women’s Wrestling Army.
RELATED: Women’s Wrestling Army Announces Allison Danger As Its Official Coach
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