By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Deonna Purrazzo
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
On her AEW debut being in her home state of New Jersey: “Just coincidence. Honestly, that’s how the schedule lined up. When I spoke to Tony Khan before I signed I had said to him, ‘This kind of seems like we’re on the same page with a lot of things. If I was to debut, the first Dynamite of the New Year is in New Jersey, and that would be like a dream come true for me.'”
On how quickly it all came together: “That conversation was like, mid-December. Yeah, it only took like three weeks to get this deal done. It was a last-minute thing. So we had that conversation, I pitched that idea, signed the contract on the 1st and it was like, Okay, we have like two days and I haven’t heard anything. I was really upset because I thought it’s Tuesday afternoon, it’s probably not gonna happen. Tuesday at 5 pm Sonjay Dutt called me and was like, ‘We’d love to have you in Newark. Is that doable?’ And I was like of course it’s doable. So yeah, it was literally like a 24-hour turnover.”
On keeping her debut a secret: “So I didn’t know what I was doing until I got there, and I was wheeled into TK’s office on a wheelchair under a tarp so no one [knew] it was crazy, they didn’t want anyone to see who it was. I feel like once they got there, everyone kind of put pieces together and the girls knew it was me, but they wanted it to be super top secret. I wasn’t picked up to go to the venue until like 5 or 6 pm. Then yeah, I was kind of hidden in Tony’s office for a little bit, and then they gave me my own separate locker room. And I felt like, this is just me, this is really silly. I was so uncomfortable and I was like, I feel bad asking, can someone bring me food? Where do I go to the bathroom? I felt very uncomfortable, but yeah, I didn’t have any expectations. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t ask what I was going to be doing. I was just kind of like, this is where I want to be, this is my number one choice. If we can make this happen, Jersey would be great, but I’m in this for the long haul, so you tell me what you want.”
On why she left TNA: “I just felt at the end of last year I kind of had done everything. I had been a three-time Knockouts World Champion. I had been Knockouts World Tag Team Champion. I had carried the brand and become the Reina de Reinas champion in Mexico with AAA. I went to Ring of Honor. I had main evented AEW Dynamite representing Impact Wrestling. What else was there for me to do here that would continue to level me up? Just felt like I’ve worked with everybody in the locker room. I’m comfortable here. It’s time now to get out of my comfort zone.”
On wrestling Jordynne Grace in a 30-minute Iron Woman match: “Well, we were supposed to do a No Disqualification match at first. So at the time, what was great about Impact was we were taping every two weeks in Nashville. It was still the pandemic, so it was a closed studio and we would get creative ahead of time. So what Jordynne and I were told we were doing was we were going to have our Slammiversary match, and then the next day at the next set of tapings two weeks down the road we would do a No Disqualification match. So leading into that we planned for a hardcore [match], what are cool, intricate, different things we could do with weapons? It wasn’t until the match at Slammiversary happened and it went over so well, the internet loved it, just the entire reaction was so good to it from a company standpoint and from a social media standpoint, that they were like, we need to do something bigger than a 10 minute No Disqualification match.
“We’re gonna do a first-ever Iron Woman match. And when they told Jordynne and I that literally at the beginning of the next day at like 9 am we were both like what the f—? We were so beat up that we had 17 or 18 minutes on the pay-per-view, beat that crap out of each other, and now you want us to do it again, but for like, double the time? Jordynne Grace is one of the hardest-hitting people I’ve ever been in the ring with, physically and emotionally, she just brings out such a different animal in every one of her opponents. You need to be 100% to be in the ring with Jordynne Grace. So neither of us were 100% at that time and going in we were just like how do we even reframe and reset our mind to do what we did again, but 30 minutes.”
On Mickie James: “Oh my gosh. That whole entire feud was career-defining for me. After I worked with Jordynne, I kind of went into a phase of working pay-per-view to pay-per-view programs with a lot of the girls on the Impact roster. When Mickie came in, it was Slammiversary and she was making a return after being released from WWE. I think it was just the exact opponent I needed, an organic babyface with a history at this company who’s also like, at that point, she has nothing else to prove. She’s just here because she wants to be here, she wants to continue wrestling, she wants to continue to better and change women’s wrestling. My character at that time was ‘I’m the best, who are you?’ Just arrogant and so like this is my championship and my company and my title, and just the chemistry we had organically was just everything I needed in those moments to really sink my teeth in and define who The Virtuosa was.”
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