FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY (2019)
NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Alex
Young Saraya Bevis and her brother Zak are fighting over the remote. Paige is watching Charmed, but Zak wants to put on wrestling. The two begin to fight until they are interrupted by their father, Patrick (Nick Frost) – who instead of stopping them, gives them better wrestling techniques.
Later, Saraya (Florence Pugh) is 18 years old. She and Zak (Jack Lowden) teach wrestling classes to kids at their family’s wrestling gym and also perform as part of an amateur wrestling league run by Patrick and their mother Julia (Lena Headey) – both of whom also perform in the league. Soon, Zak’s girlfriend Courtney becomes pregnant, and the Bevis family has Courtney’s parents over for dinner. Zak pleads with his family to tone it down and not curse and be vulgar, but their personalities still come through, shocking Courtney’s parents with tales of how Patrick used to be a criminal and Julia lived on the streets. They are especially disturbed to learn that Saraya and Zak’s brother Roy is currently in prison for a violent crime. During the dinner, the family receives a phone call that Zak and Saraya’s submission tape was reviewed by the WWE, and they have been selected to come to the local tryout. They’re ecstatic.
As the siblings enter the tryouts, they encounter The Rock (Dwayne Johnson as himself). They are completely starstruck and ask him for advice. He yells at them – but this ends up being part of his pep talk. The siblings go into the training run by Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn). Saraya chooses the stage name “Paige,” named after the character from Charmed. At the end of the tryouts, Paige is the only person selected to move forward to NXT in Florida. Saraya runs after Hutch, saying he has to take her brother. He says no, and she says that she won’t go without him. Zak begs her to reconsider, to do it for the family. Saraya gives in, and her family bids her a tearful farewell at the airport as she leaves to enter training.
In Florida, Saraya/Paige feels out of place and lonely. The other women are all models or cheerleader types, most of whom have never really wrestled seriously before. She puts her all into training but is lonely and exhausted. She tries to express to her parents how tough it is, but they’ve already begun making big money for their gym solely off of Paige making it to NXT. Meanwhile, Zak is not doing well at home, depressed and jealous of Paige. He calls Hutch and begs for another shot, but Hutch tells him to let it go. He becomes angrier and more troubled, ignoring his wife and child and abandoning his young students at the gym. Paige calls him continuously, but he ignores her calls.
At her first NXT match, Paige is badly heckled by the crowd and takes it badly. They mock her appearance, so she dyes her hair blonde and lathers on the sunless tanner to look more like the other girls. She gets into a spat with some of the other girls, but they claim she’s never tried to get to know them and has only judged them. She asks Hutch why she didn’t pick her brother, and he explains he saved him from a life of putting everything into wrestling, alienating his wife and child only to get a back injury that kicks him out of the game – which is what happened to him. He tells Paige to quit that she doesn’t have what it takes.
Paige returns home for Christmas. Her family has sold a lot of tickets to a match, and before the match, she tells Zak that she’s going to quit NXT. During the fight, which the family has planned for Paige to win, Zak fights her ruthlessly, winning and seriously hurting her. Their parents are furious with Zak for behaving so recklessly, but he tells his parents that Paige is quitting and runs off. Patrick is incensed, telling her she can’t quit, but Julia supports her – she knows the family is in a crisis, and together they search for Zak.
Zak ends up at a bar and picks a fight with a gang of men, and is narrowly saved when Patrick finds him and drags him out of the bar. Paige goes to talk to her brother, saying it’s not her fault that he wasn’t picked. The two have it all out, Paige tells Zak he has so much greatness in his life that he’s ignoring. Zak tells Paige that he can’t stand seeing her throw away a dream that he can never have. Later, Patrick finds Paige to tell her if quitting is really what she wants, he’ll support her.
Paige returns to Florida, back to her regular black hair and pale skin. She trains hard and befriends the other girls. In England, Roy gets out of prison, reuniting with the family, and Zak makes amends with and returns to training his students. Paige survives another round of cuts and heads with the group to Wrestlemania. Hutch brings her to a private office, where she meets again with The Rock. He has her call her family on the phone – and her dad hangs up on him, not believing it’s The Rock. He tells them all that Paige is going to make her WWE debut the next night on Wrestlemania at the Divas tournament. Everyone is in shock and thrilled.
The next night, Paige is awaiting her match. Hutch comes to get her, but she panics and calls Zak. He gives her a pep talk, telling her to be the best her she can be and that they’re going to love her. This helps Paige, who goes out to fight AJ Lee. AJ taunts her for being weird, and the fight begins. Paige is down, but gets the upper hand and wins the Divas belt. She’s overjoyed and tells the crowd that she’s done it for everyone who doesn’t belong or doesn’t fit in and that this is her house now. Her family watches, overjoyed.
The post-script tells us that Paige was a trailblazer who changed women’s roles in the WWE.
