I recently had the distinct pleasure of speaking with top IMPACT superstar, current ROH women’s champion, and current AAA Reinas de Reinas champion Deonna Purrazzo. The Virtuosa and I spoke about a wide range of industry topics, including her thoughts on Tasha Steelz dethroning Mickie James for the Knockouts championship, and how she hopes to compete in the next women’s Ultimate X matchup. Highlights, including the full video interview, can be found below.
Thoughts on Tasha Steelz winning the IMPACT Knockouts championship at Sacrifice over her recent rival, Mickie James:
I think good riddance to Mickey. She’s more than welcome to leave Impact Wrestling now that she is not the champion, I’m excited for Tasha, I really am. Obviously she is someone that I kind of came up with and you know, I was a few years ahead of her, but we have this dynamic that’s not necessarily trainer trainee, but we just have this really fun dynamic between us. I know she’s someone I could go to to bounce ideas off of or get critique from and vice versa, so I think she’s been more than ready for this opportunity. It was never and if, it was just a when. I’m excited to see where she goes from here. There was definitely quite a few tears shed for her…wrestling is probably the only thing that makes me emotional and to see my friends succeed and to see people that I that I know struggled to get where they are and sacrificed, no pun intended, to get where they are and you know how hard Tasha worked to get the opportunities that she’s gotten on Impact and now to be the knockouts world champion means everything to me when my friends succeed. I’m excited for her and where her career goes from here.
Her thoughts on the first women’s Ultimate-X match, and whether she would be interested in competing in one in the future:
Yes. It’s definitely not my wheelhouse for sure, but I was very, very jealous that they announced the first ever woman’s Ultimate X and I didn’t get to be in it. Obviously there’s a trade off because I was also in the first ever Knockouts pay per view main event at Hard To Kill, but I think it’s groundbreaking and I was so SO excited to see what the women were going to do and who was going to be involved. It was something that us women have been fighting for the opportunity to do. I mean, I’m sure women from, you know, the O. G. Knockouts were fighting to do things like that, but last year at Slammiversary when I wrestled Thunder Rosa, they had the structure built for the guys match and before the PPV started, all us girls were like climbing up and seeing if we could get up there and and really pushing like, hey if we can all make this happen and we can at least climb to the top and hang a little bit, we could do a match. So it was a really hard fought victory for the entire Knockouts division past and present to see the women get to do that and I was very jealous, I didn’t get to yet.