Deonna Purrazzo: I Hadn’t Done Live TV Since NXT, AEW Main Event Caused A Lot Of Pressure

Deonna Purrazzo speaks about her spot in last week’s Dynamite main event.

Deonna Purrazzo speaks about her spot in last week’s Dynamite main event.

In the main event of AEW Dynamite last week, ROH Women’s Champion Deonna Purrazzo clashed with ROH Interim Women’s Champion Mercedes Martinez in a championship unification match. The match came as a result of Purrazzo being unable to make the ROH Supercard Of Honor event back in April, as Martinez defeated Willow Nightingale to win the interim belt. Purrazzo however, has held the original belt since the January 13th edition of IMPACT Wrestling when she defeated Rok-C to capture the gold.

In a new interview with The Universal Wrestling Podcast, Purrazzo talked about last week’s main event match and the circumstances behind it.

“Yeah, it was like the lead up to it all day. We didn’t know what the card looked like or where we were gonna be. It’s funny because Mercedes and I were like ‘We might be the main event, we’re the biggest thing on the advertisement’. But gosh, I don’t wanna be in that spot, that’s a lot of pressure. Then, at like 5 O’Clock they’re like ‘You guys are the main event’. A lot of pressure. IMPACT does our live pay-per-views, there’s like four every year. Then we do these app specials that are live, but I don’t necessarily do live TV every week like people on AEW are. It was even more pressure for me to be like ‘Can I still do this?’, I hadn’t done live TV since NXT, so that’s two years. I was like ‘Oh gosh, we have a commercial break and we have a Picture in Picture’. There’s so many faucets to this that we have to get right because we’re the main event, but I think it turned out really really great. I think that I got to put my best foot forward and IMPACT’s best foot forward. It’s just a really exciting time right now.”

Purrazzo would go on to lose the match, crowning Mercedes Martinez as the undisputed ROH Women’s World Champion. The match was also historcial, as it marked the fourth time that women have main evented an episode of AEW Dynamite.

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