In 1976 John G. Avildsen directed one of the most successful and best loved sports films of all time in Rocky.

Now it’s his son Ash Avildsen who climbs back into the ring, but this time directing a film about the origins of female professional wrestling with the Mildred Burke story.

1930’s America and a young Mildred (Emily Bett Rickards) is working as a waitress in a diner. She has a young son, and dreams of a better life for them both.

It’s after seeing a wrestling match at a local carnival that she sees her future, as a wrestler in the ring. But with the sport for women banned in several states, it would be no easy task.

But after she meets promoter Billy Wolfe, he sees potential in her and takes her out on the road, where she begins her journey to the top. It’s a journey however, with just as many incidents out of the ring as well as in it.

It takes some balls to take on a fight flick after your old man made one of the greatest of all time. Or it would have been if you were any kind of contender, which by this shoddy effort, Avildsen is clearly not.

That’s not to say that a story about the history of female pro wrestling isn’t worthy of a film, it is, but its execution here is almost laughable.

Of course wrestling has always been about theatre in the ring, but the manner in which Avildsen’s film portrays what happens outside of it makes pantomime look like Greek tragedy.

It’s a film that lacks any degree of subtlety, which any serious bio should have.

You also have a sense that Avildsen has an illusion of grandeur, with his film coming in over two hours long. He may well have thought he was making a serious sports bio, but he sadly directs with the flair usually associated with a trashy movie of the week that you might find on the Hallmark channel.

Certainly Rickards’ transition from TV (where she played Felicity Smoak in the Arrow-verse for eight years) to film is an awkward one, and although she gets to grips with the physicality of the role, she struggles on all other levels.

A few of the cast come out of it relatively unscathed, like the always watchable Walton Goggins, Francesca Eastwood (Clint’s daughter), and Adam Demos as Gorgeous George, whose character possibly deserves a bio all of his own.

If only Avildsen had checked out the superior Netflix show GLOW, starring Alison Brie and Betty Gilpin as modern day female wrestlers, then perhaps he could have gotten a better understanding on how to approach his biopic drama.

Unfortunately this is one that sees Avildsen punching way above his weight, and despite being overly long, suffers an early TKO in the first round.