Deonna Purrazzo recently spoke with Denise Salcedo on her series Instinct Culture, where she discussed a variety of topics, including Scott D’Amore and his effect on the world of IMPACT Wrestling, how she prepared for her Texas Deathmatch, and more.
You can check out some of the highlights below:
On how Scott D’Amore has changed IMPACT Wrestling
I give Scott a lot of crap on social media but I really do love and appreciate him and everything he has done for me and my career. He took a chance on me almost two years ago, and just said, ‘We’ll see what happens. If you like it and we like you and this is a good relationship then we’ll keep being in a relationship, if not we’ll break up.’ {laughs} I appreciate his way of looking at that and what we were gonna do with me. I think he has created this unique landscape within IMPACT where it’s really become a landing zone for a lot of people.
Unfortunately, the way the world has been and the way the rest of the wrestling world has been over the last two years; but for people to see an opportunity to come into IMPACT Wrestling and be paid to be wrestling and making money during the pandemic but also as a way to reestablish themselves or show the world for the first time what they are able to do like I was. The fact that he has been able to cultivate that kind of environment and then really solidify the roster with all these different people from all these different places and then make the business decisions, and the company decisions with who we’re gonna work with. I know IMPACT was the hub of the forbidden door, we didn’t coin the forbidden door but I really think we were the place that most of that interaction took place with… I just think he has been really able to capitalize on the way the world has been in the last two years and create this entire new vision for IMPACT that is so much for the better.
On how she prepared for the Texas Deathmatch
I did a lot of studying of different ways to incorporate weapons and things like that, I watched a lot, a lot of wrestling, which these days when I’m home I just don’t wanna watch wrestling {laughs} so that was different where I needed to actively be studying and researching and trying to prepare myself for it. But yeah it’s definitely not something that is in my wheelhouse, and I think Mickie would say this too, it’s not something that is in her wheelhouse but definitely fits her hardcore country style a little bit more. I think for me it’s hard to get away from the pretty wrestling, because I love the technical wrestling side and when things aren’t smooth and pretty and transition nice it’s hard for me to accept them. And with this it was meant to be a war, it was meant to be gritty, we weren’t meant to have the pretty wrestling, it was a fight and we were like ‘I am gonna kill you or you’re gonna kill me for this Knockouts Championship.’ So it was preparing myself, like I may not think this is a 5 star match for what Deonna Purrazzo loves but at the end of the day we are telling the story that will justify what we’ve done up until this point.
We had a ton. I think what makes IMPACT special is that we get creative maybe a day or two before we go to TV, and everyone is such an open book. Going back to Slammiversary where Mickie and I had our first bit of physicality and I knew we were gonna wrestle down the line at some point so my concern was ‘okay we don’t know when we’re wrestling but we’re gonna start off with physicality so is that gonna limit what we do later?…’ They are so okay with you questioning and throwing out there like ‘this is how I am feeling and I am not sure.’ Of course they are gonna try and sell you on ‘this is why we’re doing it that way’ and 9 times out of 10 I am like ‘I totally get where you’re coming from and I was wrong’. We has so much input in the way we wanted to do the physicality…The fight on her farm we had all the input for what we wanted to do. IMPACT is so great with having this open door policy where you feel like your opinion really matters and is valued and if you come up with something better than what they wrote, they are more than willing to tweak it and change it to make everyone happy.
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