Deonna Purrazzo has been a stand-out in women’s wrestling for years. After making a name for herself on the indies, she signed with WWE. However, she was let go during a worldwide pandemic. She turned around and dominated the wrestling world on her “belt collector” tour, spanning across promotions like TNA, AAA, and Ring of Honor. Now, her home is in AEW.
In North America, women’s wrestling is at a peak in all promotions. In AEW, Megan Bayne has signed, Toni [Storm] is champion, and she and Mariah [May] had a storybook ending to their feud. Since you started wrestling 13 years ago, obviously a lot has changed.
So much has changed. When I started wrestling, it was pre-women’s revolution. Women were still really fighting for opportunities to even get three minutes on the card. If they did it was like, ‘are you gonna give us one minute when we get out there?’ To see that transition and especially be a part of it in TNA where I got to participate in the first ever Knockouts World Championship main event on pay-per-view. I got to do that twice!
To see it happen at AEW, like you said, Toni and Mariah, online they were rioting. They thought Toni and Mariah deserved that main event spot. The fact that the fans continuously get behind these stories and want to see women in better positions makes us work 10 times harder and push 10 times harder for those positions to be a part of that history.
You’re also going back to school which AEW encourages. What has it been like to balance an education while being an active wrestler? For so long, wrestlers had no backup plan, or they’d just write a book. It’s cool to see you build a whole other career.
Growing up, wrestlers wrote books. I had every wrestler’s book thinking I’m going to plan my career based off the advice in them. They all stress the importance of education and that wrestling will not be forever for anybody. Our bodies just simply can’t do it forever.
So I think that it was always ingrained in me. From age nine when I decided I would be a professional wrestler, I needed an education and a backup plan. For a long time, wrestling took precedence. I — and I still strongly feel this way — between 18 and 25 before I went back to school, it was like, ‘I need to hustle. I only have so much time to make it to where I want to be in wrestling.’
On the flip side, being let go from NXT opened the door that I made it where I wanted to go but I didn’t love it. I don’t know that I love wrestling in the same way anymore. So what else can I do? I didn’t have the time for it then. So, transitioning back into school gave me that outlet. I can give 100% to wrestling, but it’s not 100% of my identity. I’m going through that same identity crisis right now. I just turned 30, I got married a few years ago, and yes, I love wrestling so much, but I’m now giving it 100% of everything and it’s taking over again. I also think wrestling is so out of our control as performers. There’s only so much we can do.
I’m turning 25 this year and I’m starting to experience a quarter-life crisis a little bit, too. I feel like, as women especially, there’s a feeling we have to be so much further ahead than we are. Sometimes we don’t fully appreciate the moments that we’re in because of it.
“Yeah. We see more women become mothers and have families and come back to wrestling. But 12 years ago, that wasn’t the case. So I could be like, ‘it’s time now,’ and then something changes tomorrow. I think we have it 10 times harder because if you want to start a family, you’re taking at least two years off. And so when is the right time to do that? All these outside factors put pressure on us as women that I don’t think our male counterparts necessarily experience.
You’ve been with AEW for a year now and a match we haven’t seen yet is you versus Mercedes Mone. When are we getting “The Virtuosa” against “The CEO”?!
My dream match is Mercedes Mone versus “The Virtuosa” Deonna Purrazzo in a submission match. And I feel like, for both of us, submissions are the cornerstone of our careers. Bringing that to life at AEW I feel might be a first for the women’s division. I could be wrong. But [it] would be so unique and a different story to tell. We’re two of the most submission-based women in our division that could accomplish that.”
I feel like every time women get hardcore in matches, the internet goes crazy. You had a really good feud last year with Thunder Rosa. The Texas Bullrope match, you bled a bit. I thought that added so much. We’ve seen it recently with Toni and Mariah, it’s reigniting a discussion.
“I definitely don’t think it’s my forte, but there’s a time and place for it. For Thunder Rosa and I, who I’d feuded with all summer long, coming together for the first-ever women’s Texas Bullrope match on national television, that was the time and place for us. We had a no-disqualification match and got the opposite of that. ‘This was boring. There was no blood,’ and it was like, did you not see her run up the table and catapult and dropkick me with a garbage can on my head? What more do you want? You know what I mean?
So it’s interesting when you have that take where it’s like, ‘you didn’t give us enough!’ Then women do what Toni and Mariah did, and it’s like, ‘you gave us too much.’ There’s a time and place; we’re telling stories. We’ve been watching Toni and Mariah build to this match at Revolution. That was the time and place for them, and I think that if we’re talking about women’s equality in wrestling and giving us these opportunities, then we need to do something more extreme.
They were given the opportunity, and they rose to the occasion. If women want more opportunities like that, we need to take those risks and have those types of matches to show we can do the same thing and sometimes do it better. We’re never gonna make everyone happy. We have to make ourselves happy. I think Toni and Mariah killed it. They set a new standard for violence in our division and we get a lot of opportunities to be violent. They upped the ante for women in wrestling, period. I’m so proud of them and I’m proud to be part of a division that puts that out there and says, ‘love it, hate it. We earned this spot and type of match.’”
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