Posted By James Walsh on 09/10/21


IMPACT Knockouts champion Deonna Purrazzo was the latest guest on Renee Paquette’s Oral Sessions podcast to discuss a wide rage of topics, including how she became disconnected with wrestling after her release from WWE, and how Ring of Honor was a potential landing spot prior to her re-signing with IMPACT. Highlights are below.

How she became disconnected with wrestling after her WWE release, so much so that she even considered going back to school to become a teacher:

I was just kind of emotionally drained from wrestling and you know, we can get into NXT later but that environment and that system just really didn’t work for me as a person and I just very much was like, ‘This is such bullsh*t. This is not what I love about wrestling. This is not — I’m not even wrestling. I come to work and no one has valued me for any of my literal life accomplishments before I got here. What is this worth? What have I done with my life? Was it even worth it up until this point?’ When I was fired, I had contemplated going back to school a whole bunch and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m definitely gonna go back to school’ so I immediately like sent in applications to different schools that were online and I was like, ‘Maybe I’m just gonna be a normal person again.’ So I was in school before wrestling became full-time for Exercise Science and that was just really hard because I didn’t have the time to dedicate to studying and I was also teaching full-time. When I came back, it was kind of like, okay, maybe not Exercise Science but History, which has always been my first love and it comes natural and it’s fun for me. That’s who I am really, is such a big history buff so, when I was released in May, that was the first thing I was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna go to school and I’m gonna be a history teacher maybe.’ Now I’m about a year out from my Bachelor’s so that’s awesome but, it was kind of like, ‘How do I wanna identify myself outside of wrestling? Is there things that I can love outside of this, as much as I loved wrestling? Because I don’t know if I love it anymore.’ It wasn’t even just wrestling. It was like, ‘I don’t even know that I love me anymore. Who am I?’

Says she had discussing with Ring of Honor prior to signing with IMPACT:

I would love that [to work with Ring of Honor again] and before I signed with IMPACT last year, I did speak to Ring of Honor but it just — I had given IMPACT my word that I would be [there] and then I was exclusive so I didn’t wanna go back on my word and they didn’t really have a partnership and it wasn’t a world yet when we could be working with all these companies so, the stuff that Ring of Honor was planning would’ve been like two or three months after my contract started and I just didn’t feel in a place to ruffle feathers yet so I said, ‘You know what? Hopefully, bringing it to IMPACT’s attention that Ring of Honor would like to work with me will maybe mend some fences and bring everyone together’ so, in my head, 100 percent there’s a world that I’m wrestling Chelsea Green for the Ring of Honor Women’s Championship. I just hope that IMPACT and Ring of Honor can see that too.