Allison Danger opens up to Renee Paquette about a variety of subjects.
For the last 20 years, Allison Danger has been involved in the pro wrestling business. She is often linked to the SHIMMER promotion along with Dave Prazak.
While guest appearing on The Sessions with Renee Paquette, she spoke about the initial vision for SHIMMER and knowing how they wanted women’s wrestling to be presented. SHIMMER has not ran an event since October 2021 and Allison said they are on hiatus. She does not know what the future holds for the promotion.
We saw the vision of what we wanted women’s wrestling to be, hence comes SHIMMER and SHIMMER, around 15 years right now. I’d say we’re on a hiatus. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. The most recent show was in October of like 2021 and so yeah, I don’t know what the future holds for that but so many women that you see today have come through those doors, and it would make my heart happy being at the P.C. and seeing some of the girls walking in and still wearing their SHIMMER jackets to the P.C. and I was like, ‘You know, you know.’
Since the first year of Ring of Honor, Danger had been a part of the company. As she was coaching at the WWE Performance Center for the December 2021 tryouts, she ran into former ROH Women’s World Champion and current NXT Tag Team Champion Roxanne Perez.
Danger told the story of how initially, Roxanne did not immediately recognize her as she was not allowed to call herself ‘Allison Danger’ and the company wanted her to be known by her real name.
I did the December tryout. I saw a couple people get hired from there, one of those being Roxanne Perez, formerly Rok-C from Ring of Honor. We had a funny little moment in the bathroom because I came out of the bathroom and I’m washing my hands and she’s washing her hands and I said, ‘Hey, you know, welcome to the PC. I’m coach Corino, nice to meet you’ because I didn’t get to go by Allison Danger there. They wanted that. I couldn’t be coach Danger, I couldn’t be coach Allison so I was like — and I don’t like going by my first name. Only super duper close to me because Allison is my middle name. Like only if you’re super duper close to me do you call me by my first name but like, they were doing it at the PC, I’m like, ugh. The SHIMMER girls were like, be like, ‘We don’t like this…’ The joke was I was ‘Corino 2.0’ because I came in right around 2.0 time, right? So I was like, ‘Hey, I’m coach Corino. Nice to meet you’ and she’s like, ‘Oh gosh, thank you.’ I’m like, ‘Hey, from one ROH gal to another, I’m gonna be watching out and I’m gonna be making sure like, you gotta go impress me kid’ and then you just see her look at me, go, ‘… Oh God! You’re Danger’ and I’m like, ‘No, no, no, it’s fine.’ She’s like, ‘I didn’t recognize.’ ‘It’s okay. I’m older, I’m a little thicker than I was. I didn’t have the gray streak in the early days. It’s okay you didn’t realize it was me’ but I go, ‘I was the first ROH girl, you were the last.’ I feel like it came around so I had to keep an eye on her.
The conversation then turned over to Danger’s release from WWE this past January. She was let go along with multiple staff members including William Regal, Ryan Katz, Brian ‘Road Dogg’ James and talents such as Danny Burch and Timothy Thatcher.
When she got the call, she was picking up her child from school. After she processed what she had been told, she asked if her brother Steve Corino was safe and said that was a concern of hers. Danger was told that her release is not a reflection of her work and it was just the company going in a different direction.
Came out of nowhere [WWE release]. Came out of nowhere for all of us. Some of the coaches that got let go were still in the Performance Center working with people. Yeah. We got it right at the end of open ring because you know, we have scheduled classes and then there’s open ring when people can come and meet up with coaches and I normally did a lot of those open rings with [Timothy] Thatcher, [Danny] Burch, [Ace] Steel. Just for me, the more I could be there, the more I could do, the better and I had slipped out after the first open ring. I had talked to Burch and I kept going to him and Ace going, ‘I hate leaving early, I hate leaving early’ but it’s my kid’s first day at this brand new school in Orlando. They’ve never ridden a bus before because K.G. [her child] went to a charter school in Vegas. Never ridden a bus. Nervous that they’re gonna get off in the wrong neighborhood and so, I was like, ‘Do we have enough?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah. We have enough coaches to get by. Just go, you got this. Go take care of your kid.’ I was picking K.G. up and we were gonna go out to have a special dinner to celebrate the very first day of new school and my phone rings and, ‘Hey coach, where are you?’ I said, ‘Hey, ‘I’m just grabbing my kid from the bus stop. Do you need me to come back to open ring? I can be back in 20’ and they’re like, ‘No, we’re calling with bad news’ and I’m like, ‘Is everything okay?’ And they go, ‘We just got word that they’re gonna restructure Performance Center and we have to let go of eight of you and unfortunately, they’re not gonna let us continue with your contract’ and at that point, my kid’s getting in the car and 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 I respect him and I just like, I just froze and I’m like, ‘You have to get rid of eight coaches’ and the next thing is, ‘Is my brother safe? Is my brother gonna be okay?’ I’m like, ‘You have to tell me. Are you gonna fire my brother? Are you getting rid of him?’ And they’re like, ‘No, no, no.’ I’m like, ‘You wouldn’t lie to me?’ And they’re like, ‘We’re literally releasing you and you’re asking us about Steve’ and I’m like, ‘Well what am I gonna do? I can’t negotiate anything. I just need to know if he’s gonna be okay.’ That was my initial fear and then I get off the phone and I call my husband and he goes, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I go, ‘I just got released’ and they said it wasn’t my fault, it was nothing I did wrong. I’d literally gotten a text a couple of days before about we were all doing great jobs and how happy they were with the current roster and I was told, you know, if they could bring me back, they would, in a heartbeat and like, not to make sure that I know it wasn’t a reflection on me. It was a change from the higher-ups going hey, we’re gonna restructure and that’s that and that’s it, and I was numb and then I cried and then I was numb and then I cried and then I’m sitting there going, ‘What am I gonna do now?’
She dove into how the release affected her personal life. Danger had just enrolled her child in a new school after several years of learning from home via the pandemic on top of moving from Las Vegas to Florida. Her family was separated as they were in different parts of the U.S. and around Christmas time, she contracted COVID. It was just days after Allison recovered that she was released.
So I feel like I got brought to Florida and then left to die, because now my family’s split [in different parts of the U.S.], we’re struggling through that and I’m still now five months out and nothing to show for it and I still have no idea what I’m gonna do. So like I said, this is either gonna be my villain origin story or this is where the hero finally gets to start making the rise back up. I don’t know, but this has been a rock bottom year.
Maria Kanellis-Bennett and Bobby Cruise’s Women’s Wrestling Army promotion is bringing Danger in as a coach. At the time of the recording, she said there had not been any calls made to her for assistance in the pro wrestling space.
Danger felt that coming out of the release, everyone landed on their feet but her. She mentioned that her child is with family for the summer while she’ll be sorting her situation out in Florida. They are tied up in a lease and Danger said she has to have a solid plan in place before the end of the summer.
That’s where the mind f*ck comes in because there hasn’t been phone calls. I feel like everybody landed on their feet but me. There’s been nothing, nothing. There’s not many of women who do what I do but there’s just really hasn’t been it and it’s to the point where I’m like, is the universe telling me this is it? This is done? I chase the dream, I got it for three months and I’m financially devastated. I’m emotionally like, what am I doing? And now I’m going, is this it for me? I have no idea what the future holds, and it’s — if I weren’t a mom, it wouldn’t be so bad, you know? But what happens to me happens to my kid. That’s the part where it’s just like a dagger.
One hope of hers is to get a call from Ring of Honor owner Tony Khan. She thinks it is good that he purchased the company and went on to credit AEW and IMPACT Wrestling’s women’s divisions.
I love that he purchased it [Tony Khan buying Ring of Honor]. I love that it’s not gonna go away. It looks — even at the end of the most recent run, it looked different than when we were at that Murphy Rec Center in Philadelphia but like, I’m happy that it’s gonna go on and you know, deep down selfishly, do I wanna get my fingers into it? Oh my God, yes.
I manifest every day that I’m gonna get that call and he’s [Tony Khan] gonna be like, ‘Can I talk to you about ROH?’ I’ll be like, ‘Yes please’ because this was my baby once and it can be my baby again. It’ll be my wrestling grandbaby. I’m fine with that, you know? No, I’m so happy and I love that AEW’s given women a lot of opportunity. I love what IMPACT’s doing with their women.
Further speaking about her early days in Ring of Honor, Danger expanded on what women had to endure from fans during that period of time. She detailed multiple negative experiences she and other women had such as receiving death threats, being told they would be sexually assaulted at shows along with people wishing bad on their health.
She added that they had a supportive men’s locker room who took care of them and helped the women of the company get better.
I remember the early days of ROH, we — the girls had it rough… the fans didn’t want us. They were not interested. I used to get death threats. I would get — this is gonna age me — and this is not all fans but there were a few extreme fans but I would get AOL instant messages or emails outlining exactly how I was gonna be raped and murdered outside of the upcoming show. I would get threats against my life, hopes that I would get cancer. They got their wish on that one [referring to Danger’s skin cancer]. Hopes that I would get HIV. When we would come to the ring, fans would turn their chairs around and purposely put their backs to us or make a show of, oh, it’s bathroom time and go and I was like, ‘Mhm.’ It was rough, it was rough and then they slowly started coming around because they were like, ‘You’re stealing time from the guys.’ No, this is time worked into this. We’re not taking anything from anybody and we had a good group of guys in the back that supported us and took care of us and they helped us put matches together and helped us train and stuff like that but I don’t ever want it to be that bad again and this was before social media really.
Danger had to retire from in-ring competition in 2013. She currently writes a column on her official website that is titled ‘Dangerous Thoughts’.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit The Sessions with Renee Paquette with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
