Over the last few years a number of interesting names have joined All Elite Wrestling, and back in January of 2024, Deonna Purrazzo announced that she had officially signed with the company. Although Purrazzo was initially featured on AEW programming, she has mostly been appearing on ROH in recent years.
While discussing the topic of what’s lacking in women’s wrestling during an interview with Behind The Turnbuckle Studios, Deonna Purrazzo talked about the importance of vignettes when it comes to explaining a wrestler’s character.
“We’ve talked a lot about being a character versus being the real person and I think what misses for a lot of women’s wrestling is that character development. We’re not getting vignettes to explain who we are. We’re not watching the women interact with each other in backstage, real-life scenarios.
When you don’t have that the audience doesn’t invest. The audience doesn’t know. The AEW audience at this point doesn’t know who The Virtuosa, Deonna Purrazzo is. We haven’t seen a vignette for me in, you know, 18 months, right? So, if I get put on TV, they’re not going to be like, ‘Holy s**t, this is awesome!’ and cheer for me because we don’t have that relationship yet.
So, I think across the board for women’s wrestling, it’s developing characters that people relate to or hate. And that’s what’s going to get us those storylines, that’s what’s going to get us more time, and that’s what’s going to get us main events. But we need that character investment. Everyone needs that character investment, but we’re talking specifically about women.”
Currently Deonna Purrazzo is the ROH Women’s Pure Champion. She last appeared on ROH programming earlier this month when she defeated Jody Threat on ROH on HonorClub #191.