Deonna Purrazzo should have graced an AEW ring long ago

AEW Dynamite featured a big debut, and no it wasn’t Will Morrissey. No, it was Deonna Purrazzo who walked through the curtain. She battled Mercedes Martinez in the main event, losing the title unification bout for the Ring of Honor Women’s World championship. Purrazzo is one of the most talented women in the world and the last three years of her career prove that. It was great to see her in an AEW ring, but this should have occurred long ago.

Purrazzo’s accolades hold up against any woman in the industry. She went from being released from the WWE in early 2020, to becoming Impact Wrestling Wrestler of the Year in 2020, and two-time Impact Knockout of the Year. If Kenny Omega was known as the Belt Collector, then Purrazzo has a claim to a stake in that moniker as she held both the ROH and AAA Reina de Reinas Championships just a few short days ago.

Yet, when Omega was jumping between AEW, Impact, and AAA to defend all the belts around his waist, Purrazzo wasn’t doing the same. She was in the midst of a dominant run as the Impact Knockouts Champion, while Britt Baker was standing on top of the AEW women’s division. The matchup wrote itself. Letting the Impact and AEW women kick their way through the “forbidden door” would have gone a long way in quelling the outcry that some fans had about the women’s division in AEW. Being the face to pull the Impact women’s division into AEW was something that Purrazzo wanted and she made that clear.

“Over the last year and a half, there’s been so much talk about what the women’s crossover would be between AEW and Impact, and we haven’t really seen anything,” Purrazzo said while speaking with Mike Johnson at PWI Insider. “To be that first woman to get through Tony’s forbidden door is everything I wanted. Alongside Britt, and people at Impact were very vocal about it, this is what we wanted. We wanted to be part of this.”

Baker versus Purrazzo would have been a featured match if the crossover between the two companies if the women were given that opportunity. It didn’t happen, but finally, the Virtuosa has walked down the AEW ramp and made it clear she’s one of the best performers in the industry. This was a long time coming and hopefully, it leads to seeing more of her involved, either with AEW or the Ring of Honor brand.