Deonna Purrazzo Says Hardcore Matches Aren’t Her Forte, Enjoyed Hollywood Ending Match

Deonna Purrazzo says she’s not the best at hardcore matches, but she enjoys them when they’re used well like the Hollywood Ending at AEW Revolution. Purrazzo spoke with VICE for a new interview and was asked about women’s hardcore matches in the wake of Toni Storm and Mariah’s bloody battle at Revolution. You can see the highlights below:

On women’s hardcore matches: “I definitely don’t think it’s my forte, but there’s a time and place for it. For Thunder Rosa and I, who I’d feuded with all summer long, coming together for the first-ever women’s Texas Bullrope match on national television, that was the time and place for us. We had a no-disqualification match and got the opposite of that. ‘This was boring. There was no blood,’ and it was like, did you not see her run up the table and catapult and dropkick me with a garbage can on my head? What more do you want? You know what I mean? So it’s interesting when you have that take where it’s like, ‘You didn’t give us enough!’ Then women do what Toni and Mariah did, and it’s like, ‘You gave us too much.’ There’s a time and place; we’re telling stories. We’ve been watching Toni and Mariah build to this match at Revolution. That was the time and place for them, and I think that if we’re talking about women’s equality in wrestling and giving us these opportunities, then we need to do something more extreme.”

on the Hollywood Ending: “They were given the opportunity, and they rose to the occasion. If women want more opportunities like that, we need to take those risks and have those types of matches to show we can do the same thing and sometimes do it better. We’re never gonna make everyone happy. We have to make ourselves happy. I think Toni and Mariah killed it. They set a new standard for violence in our division and we get a lot of opportunities to be violent. They upped the ante for women in wrestling, period. I’m so proud of them and I’m proud to be part of a division that puts that out there and says, ‘love it, hate it. We earned this spot and type of match.”