IMPACT recently held its Rebellion pay-per-view in Canada, an event that saw Steve Maclin become the new world champion and Deonna Purrazzo become the new Knockouts Champion.
During a recent interview on Fightful’s In The Weeds Maclin was asked whether his world title victory helped motivate his wife’s triumph in the main event. Here is what he had to say.
I hope I did. It’s funny because we tried to avoid each other the whole day because we were both kind of emotional for what we were able to possibly do by the end of the night, and that’s being a married couple, in the same company, winning world titles on the same night in our divisions. I came through the curtain, as happy as I was, everybody was kind of avoiding me because I just hit the boss, but there’s my wife, standing there trying to not look at me, but also just being like, ‘I love you, but leave me alone, let me go do my match.’ We finally embraced later in the night, she posted the photo not too long after. It was one of those moments where we didn’t have to say anything to each other, we just smiled and were laughing, just because of where we were a few years ago together, when she was let go the year before I was and for the opportunities IMPACT has given us and for how we’ve come into our own where he believed in ourselves. She’s the one that has believed in me the most. She knew what I was capable of. I had a lot of supporters out there, people who knew what I was capable of doing, just never given the opportunity. The day that I did get that call when I was let go was the moment I knew, ‘this is all on me.’Here we are, two years later, IMPACT World Champion.
Maclin would later be asked if he and Purrazzo ever envisioned holding championship gold at the same time.
No, it was never a thing. I know I got into wrestling to be a pro wrestler. Yes, you want to be the world champion and main event WrestleMania and be ‘the guy,’ but once you get into this business and see how it works and you’re behind the scenes all day and hitting the grind, you enjoy pro wrestling and when you’re given those opportunities and moments that happen organically, this is something that happened organically. It just so happened to be that we have a title match on the same pay-per-view that both get changed. Things happen in wrestling, we don’t know why, injuries happen, maybe for the better for long-term storytelling. It’s a cool feeling, a cool moment, and it took a while to get there where we both realized what we had just done. It’s an awesome feeling. I know the hard work is ahead and putting the company and brand on my back, but I’m looking forward to doing that.
Elsewhere in the interview, Maclin addressed Nick Aldis confronting him shortly after his win at Rebellion. You can read about that here.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)