Deonna Purrazzo recaps her AEW debut.
Last week’s installment of AEW Dynamite featured two IMPACT Wrestling talents in action as W. Morrissey competed against Wardlow and in the main event of the show, Deonna Purrazzo took on Mercedes Martinez to determine an Undisputed ROH Women’s World Champion.
Martinez came out of the bout victorious. Following that match and IMPACT’s Under Siege show on May 7th, The Universal Wrestling Podcast welcomed Deonna Purrazzo onto their platform and she looked back on her AEW debut.
Yeah, it was really cool. Obviously, Britt Baker’s my best friend so it was something we had been pushing for-for like a year it seems like now, just to work together in some capacity so it was nice to be there with her and see a lot of familiar faces and I think for me, it was just really full circle because I was supposed to be at ALL IN which is like the precursor to AEW and then that didn’t work out so now, fast forward like two years, when I was released, it was just a weird period. I didn’t know that I was gonna be welcomed at AEW or what. Landed at IMPACT and now, it’s just like everything’s come together. I’m a true believer in everything happens for a reason and the way it’s meant to be and this is my journey and it’s been really, really cool.
Deonna and Mercedes did not find out they were headlining Dynamite until 5 PM that day. Purrazzo opened up about the pressure she felt because she had not done live television with commercial breaks and picture-in-picture breaks since her time in WWE.
She questioned if she could still do it, but thinks the match turned out great and added that she was able to spotlight both herself and IMPACT.
It was like the lead up to it, all day, we didn’t know what the card looked like, where we were gonna be and it’s funny because Mercedes [Martinez] and I were like, ‘We might be the main event. We were the biggest thing on the advertisement but gosh, I don’t wanna be in that spot. That’s a lot of pressure’ and then at 5 o’clock, they were like, ‘So you guys are the main event’ and it was like, ‘Whew!’ A lot of pressure. IMPACT does our live pay-per-views. There’s like four every year and then we do these app specials that are live but I don’t necessarily do live TV every week like people in AEW are so it was even more pressure for me to be like, can I still do this? I hadn’t done live TV since NXT so that’s two years. So I was like, oh gosh, and we have a commercial break and we have a picture-in-picture. There’s so many facets to this that we have to get right because we’re the main event but, I think it turned out really, really great. I think that I got to put my best foot forward, IMPACT’s best foot forward and yeah, it’s just a really exciting time for me right now.
At Under Siege, after Purrazzo fell in defeat to Taya Valkyrie, she attacked her from behind. Purrazzo was then confronted by Mia Yim. Purrazzo attempted to ambush Yim from behind but was countered.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit The Universal Wrestling Podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
