While attending community college, Deonna Purrazzo still hadn’t found an in for pro wrestling training as she, for whatever reason, took a different path to class one day and stumbled upon a VFW hall with a sign that said, “Live Pro Wrestling: The first Friday of every month.” She then took to Google and found that, lo and behold, there was a wrestling school right there.

This led to her first match against a local wrestler named Jana at an event called D2W Season’s Beatings 4 in Wharton, New Jersey in December 2013, in which Purrazzo recalls having plenty of nerves.

“I was terrified,” she told Jericho. “All my friends were going to be there and I was super emotional so I cried for three days beforehand. I just felt like, if this is what I worked pretty much my whole life for, this is what I always said I was gonna do, this is my defining moment, if I’m not good at it, then what did I work all this time for?”

The new AEW star, who has appeared in TNA, Ring of Honor, NXT, AEW, and the indies, credits a background in athletics such as cheerleading, track, and gymnastics for giving her some basic tools to help her in wrestling. 

She feels that there’s still room for improvement, singling out the speaking aspect of wrestling as something she’s still working on. “The public part of it,” she admitted. “Still, I would say I’m not the greatest public speaker.”