Things aren’t slowing down in the least for Impact Wrestling’s Deonna Purrazzo, as The Virtuosa recently battled it out with Taya Valkyrie at Rebellion and will soon take on Mercedes Martinez for the Ring of Honor Women’s World Championship on next week’s AEW Dynamite. Having Purrazzo cross over to All Elite Wrestling has been wanted by fans for a hot minute, and now they will finally get to see it happen. ComicBook.com had the chance to talk to Purrazzo all about her upcoming Dynamite debut and defending her ROH Women’s World Championship as well as what’s next for her Title ambitions, the chaos that happened right before Rebellion, and her dream opponent for Slammiversary.
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Right off the bat, we had to talk about her battle at Rebellion against Valkyrie, a full-circle moment for Purrazzo as it was Valkyrie she sent packing from Impact the last time they clashed. That was the beginning of Purrazzo’s dominance over the Impact Women’s Division, and while she didn’t come away from this match as the AAA Reina de Reinas Championship, she’s still proud of the match itself as well as the story being told throughout the era of the Champ Champ Challenge.
“Yeah, absolutely. I think that for me, more so than winning or losing ever, it’s about the story we’re telling, and I think that this whole time that we’ve been doing the Champ Champ Challenge is who’s going to dethrone Deonna? Who is going to dethrone Deonna? With Taya, it was a shock for her to come back at the Multiverse of Matches in Dallas. But also too, there is that story that last year at Hard to Kill, I sent her off to explore other places,” Purrazzo said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t work out, but she came right back for what was hers. So I think that there’s a lot of symbolism in the story we were telling. Win or lose or draw, whatever, if you can make the fans feel something and feel like we hate each other, and that there’s more to the story than you’re seeing through the wrestling, then I’ve accomplished my job.”
Purrazzo will have a chance to reclaim her Title at Under Siege next month, where she will get her rematch against Valkyrie. This could very well be the return of the Champ Champ and therefore the Champ Champ Challenge, though Purrazzo wasn’t originally sold on that moniker. “You know what’s funny is I didn’t want to call it the Champ Champ challenge. I was calling it at first, the Champ Champ Invitational,” Purrazzo said. “And Impact was like, ‘Well, we’ve been calling at the Champ Champ Challenge.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, so change it.’ And they were like, ‘No, you change it.’ The Champ Champ Challenge, just the three Cs, and it just worked out so much better.”
While she might not have two Titles at the moment, being the Champ Champ is really more like a state of mind, so the Champ Champ era is here to stay. “I’m not the Champ Champ, but I think I just have a Champ Champ mindset. So … Champ Champ or not, I’m still the Champ Champ. Everyone’s a Champ Champ,” Purrazzo said.
By the way, if you tuned into Rebellion you will have likely noticed Purrazzo’s awesome ring gear. It turns out things were a bit chaotic getting the gear to the finish line, but the team behind the scenes came together to bring this Lady Gaga-inspired look to life.
“Okay. So to be completely honest with you, what I wore was not what I intended to wear. I ordered a jacket that I had designed from one of the gear makers on Instagram that I use frequently, and my inspiration was actually Lady Gaga,” Purrazzo said. “She does the crazy shoulder pieces, and she had some really cool hip things on one of her jackets, and so my inspiration was, can we take the shoulder spike from this and the hip disc from this and kind of mash that into the floor-length jacket? That could be really cool. So what they made me was absolutely beautiful. My gear, I took it and then I sent that over to a gear maker that has made plenty of my jackets before, and what they sent me was not beautiful. The color scheme was off and the shoulder pads or the spikes were kind of dangling and it looked like I had a broken wing.”
“Luckily, Gia Miller, who does our backstage interviewing is just a Jill of all trades, if you will, and she does so much behind the scenes for us at Impact,” Purrazzo said. “She sews all of our stuff last minute. She puts rhinestones on. I’m forever grateful for her because she saw the atrocity that was the jacket that was delivered to me and was like, ‘No, no, no, we can make something else work.’ So luckily, I had brought a backup jacket, and I had worn that jacket a couple times, my last few matches in NXT. I think actually on one of my debut matches here in Impact, and I brought it just in case because I didn’t know what my jacket looked like. They hadn’t sent me any progress pictures or anything.”
“So I was like, ‘Let me just, I don’t know, bring a backup.’ God was working for me that day, and I packed the jacket that I wore. And Gia was like, ‘Oh no, we could take the spikes off that and sew it on that, and you’re going to be like this, it’ll work.’ So that is what we did. And honestly, it was beyond my wildest dreams, like the presentation and what it looked like in the pictures and … Oh, it was just stunning, but I had to Gia to thanks for that because what was delivered was not going to work at all,” Purrazzo said.
Purrazzo is set for her debut on Dynamite, and she will look to solidify her hold on the ROH Women’s World Championship when she faces Martinez, who was crowned ROH Women’s Interim World Champion at Supercard of Honor. Purrazzo was disappointed that she didn’t get to defend her Title at Supercard of Honor and Tony Khan hasn’t revealed why an Interim Champion was crowned, but in hindsight, things worked out for the best.
“Not to me specifically, has Tony reached out, but I think that in hindsight, I would’ve loved to be able to defend the Ring of Honor Women’s World Championship at Supercard of Honor. Just logistically, it didn’t make sense, and it actually worked out in my favor. I talked about in a previous interview, having a really bad bruised leg and I was super nervous about … I didn’t share with anybody, but I was super nervous about like, oh my gosh, I have to wrestle two high profile matches back to back, two Championship matches back to back, and I’m not 100%. So I think it worked out in my favor that now I will be wrestling on Dynamite. My Dynamite debut and Championship match is more than I think anyone could ever ask for,” Purrazzo said.
As for what’s next in AEW after next week, many are hopeful that we get a few dream matches before this crossover ends, especially one involving a certain Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D. “I mean, I don’t really know what’s to come. I think that a year ago it was the Impact AEW relationship and we were just like, ‘Hey, women are here, and we’d like to be a part of this.’ And it never really happened to its full capability. So I think now it’s a perfect opportunity to try to lay the foundations for further interaction with each other and further partnership and trade back and forth. But I don’t know. I hope that I have a good relationship with Tony. I hope that it’s not a one-off for me because I want to wrestle Britt and I want to wrestle Kris Statlander, and I want to wrestle Red Velvet. There’s so many women on their roster that I think are so incredible, but I don’t know what the future holds.”
Impact also just announced that Slammiversary would be happening in Nashville, TN once again, and if she could pick her opponent and the scenario for this year’s event, she already has one in mind that would bring things full circle.
“I won my first Knockouts Championship at Slammiversary 2020 in Nashville in the empty arena, so I think it would be full circle, so great to finally wrestle Tasha Steelz in an Impact ring for the Knockouts Championship at Slammiversary,” Purrazzo said. “I think that is like full circle completely, but then also, Tasha and I just have a unique relationship where we trained together. We traveled together. We did everything together in our earlier years. So we haven’t gotten to interact much at Impact, but I’d really love to moving forward.”
Here’s hoping that not only does that Slammiversary prediction come true but that we finally get some of those anticipated AEW match-ups, resulting in another banner year for the Virtuosa. You can watch Purrazzo take on Valkyrie at Impact Under Siege on Impact Plus and FITE TV.
What do you want to see next for Deonna Purrazzo? Let us know in the comments and as always you can talk all things wrestling with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
