Login Form
Advertisement
Polls
Sponsored Links
| Cagerage 21 – Hard as Hell (DVD Review) |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Administrator |
|
Cagerage 21 – Hard as Hell DVD Review by Gary Graham
If you read my last Cagerage review you will see I was less than impressed with Cagerage 20 and in fact as I stated it was the worst MMA DVD I had ever had the misfortune to watch.
I was really hoping that Cagerage 21 – Hard as Hell would be better and the production quality would have been improved as I hate writing such damning reviews.
The opening shots and theme music did not go on for ever; neither did the entrance of the very sexy cheerleaders, even the stilt dancers looked amazing this time round.
They still have the arty pre match promo’s only they have lost the porn sounding voice over. The promo’s are a lot shorter and straight to the point, with less focus on the theme music and cgi and more on what the fighters are saying. Again great on screen match graphics, nothing to complex but matches the product ideally.
I still hate the over dubbing of the fighters entrance music but again, this has been cut down and gets straight into the action.
The camera work, angles, shots and lighting seem to have improved 10 fold, its like a totally different production company have taken charge. The quality and finished production looks a lot more like a mainstream sports TV presentation than any other Cagerage DVD I have watched.
For years I have been crying out for a countdown clock to be added to the bouts, and at last we have a clock, this really does improve the excitement of every bout.
One major problem though, yes there has to be one. The commentary / crowd mix is messed up again. This time they have mixed way too much crowd noise and not enough commentary, this makes it pretty impossible to hear the commentary and needed a lot of messing about with the sound settings on my DVD player to hear what they were saying.
The card:
Cagerage in my opinion never lets the fans down when it comes to booking great fights and they know how to fill a massive venue, this action packed card had everything for fight fans.
The fights were captured well in the camera work and editing. I said earlier this DVD was in a new class of its own; the quality kept me gripped all the way from the start to the end.
One thing I liked in particular was that they had a heavyweight Kickboxing match included in the DVD from the event between Michael McDonald vs. James McSweeney, this added a little bit of diversity and was one hell of a fight. Tank Abbot replaced a previously announced Bob Sapp and with a convincing win from Cagerage favourite Gary Turner the event closed on a high.
In summary, what a difference a show makes! This had to be the best MMA Event I have watched outside of the UFC, the quality and most of the production issues that crippled the Cagerage 20 DVD were solved and if the commentary crowd mix was better finished this DVD would have got full marks.
If you have never seen MMA Cage fighting in the UK, then this is the event to buy. MMA Universe currently is selling this event for £9.99
|
Well thankfully they obviously looked at the poor production and quality issues of Cagerage 20 and took major steps to improve them and this DVD looks like the product you would expect from the UK’s leading MMA promotion.