Andrew Ravens
Deonna Purrazzo has opened up about a creative pitch she made during her time in AEW that never made it to television. Speaking with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp, the current ROH Women’s Pure Champion discussed both the learning curve she faced when joining AEW and the segment idea she developed that even had Chelsea Green convinced it was worth pursuing.
Purrazzo first addressed the adjustment she had to make upon arriving at AEW, explaining that the transition back to live television was more difficult than many might expect. Her career had taken her through major promotions early on, but the experience was not always a smooth one.
“Now, though, I felt like going to AEW was one of those big moments where it was such a shift again, because TNA wasn’t live at the time. Everything was taped except pay-per-views, and so I hadn’t worked a commercial break in three years,” she said.
“So it was a real big learning curve to go back to live TV when I hadn’t for so long. Then learning the format and things like that, I felt like I was a little bit behind the ball, actually, almost two years ago when I started there.”
It was during her time in AEW that Purrazzo came up with the segment concept she called “Purrazzo in Picture.” The idea was built around the picture-in-picture format that AEW regularly uses during commercial breaks, but flipped it into a comedic vehicle for her character. She detailed the pitch during the Fightful interview.
“I pitched Purrazzo in Picture. It was a mock picture-in-picture segment where we could pop up my floating head, and I could talk shit about an opponent, or like a pop quiz, an AEW history question, and make it about one of the girls, and they have a problem with it, and then I could just get squashed,” she revealed.
“I was like, don’t need to be like a serious ‘rassler. I can just do ‘Purrazzo in Picture.’ I ran this by Chelsea when I came up with the idea, and she was like, ‘Deonna, that’s gold. You need to pitch this.'”
Despite Green’s enthusiasm for the idea and Purrazzo admitting it would take her character in a direction similar to Green’s, it never made it to air during her AEW tenure. She is currently competing in ROH, where she holds the Women’s Pure Championship.
