Deonna Purrazzo reflects on her AEW debut and her dad becoming a wrestling fan.
Deonna Purrazzo has been wrestling since 2013, but it wasn't until 2018 when her dad started to truly understand what she was doing. It took another five years to turn her dad into a wrestling fan, which is the night she made her AEW debut in her hometown of New Jersey.
“There was one moment that my dad finally got it. I made him come to Hammerstein Ballroom for a Ring Of Honor show. He has a co-worker who is a really big wrestling fan and he was like, ‘Can Mike come to the show?’ I said, ‘The only way I’ll get Mike a ticket is if you come with him. You’re done dodging me.’ He walked in, and I’m really glad this was his first experience, because Hammerstein is huge right? At that time with Bullet Club & The Elite, the whole audience was covered in Bullet Club shirts and he just kinda looked around like, ‘I get it.’ I had wrestled and then I went and got popcorn and drinks and I went and sat with him and his friend for the rest of the show. He was like, ‘Cody Rhodes is wrestling. You didn’t tell me you knew Cody Rhodes, that’s Dusty Rhodes’ son.’ I was like, ‘I did not know that you knew who Dusty Rhodes was.’ I had this really cool bonding experience like, oh, you do know a little bit about wrestling and you maybe pretended that you didn’t," she recalled on AEW Unrestricted.
Deonna continued, “Fast forward now, I make my debut, there’s my dad crying. When Renee came to the back, he had said to me, ‘I think I’m a wrestling fan now.’ What other place can you go to and you can cheer and you can boo and you can say nasty things about people and everyone else in the audience is doing it, and you’re not being judged. He had the time of his life at Prudential Center and there’s only been a few times where I’ve seen my dad so happy and so free and loose and excited. My wedding day was one of them, and Prudential Center in Newark was the other time.”
Purrazzo will look to add to her legacy at AEW Revolution when she challenges Toni Storm for the AEW Women's Championship.
Fans can find the current lineup for AEW Revolution by clicking here.
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