One thing no professional wrestler can avoid is thousands of eyes watching them at any moment, especially in the age of social media. Former TNA Knockouts Champion Deonna Purrazzo is far too familiar with that feeling, as she told "Mighty Pursuit" recently.
"[AEW posted] a clip of I think what we call a 'Baseball Slide,'" Purrazzo explained. Purrazzo had just joined AEW, and the company was looking to celebrate her first match. "They post that clip online, and over the next 48 hours, it blows up, and they have to turn the comments off because the comments are about how overweight I am or what my body looks like and then that went from just being on Instagram comments to discourse."
Purrazzo said she was in her hotel room, trying to stay awake ahead of an early morning flight, when she saw the comments, the reactions, and the discourse on social media.
"It just became a slow spiral of like 'Oh I'm already tired, I'm already drained,'" Purrazzo said, saying she was already in the midst of an "adrenaline dump"when the negativity found her. "I'm just watching comments filter in...It was just really defeating because I was on such a high."
Purrazzo says that the weeks leading up to the match had been so exciting, and she'd felt the match went well, but the negative comments completely deflated her enthusiasm, especially since her body had never been commented on during the rest of her wrestling career in TNA and WWE NXT.
"You looked like this and weighed this much when you were a world champion, and no one was talking about it," Purrazzo told herself. "So what is the difference?"
Purrazzo didn't want to respond to the comments on social media, saying that ultimately it would've just put her in contact with "the worst" of the fanbase. When the discourse came to Twitter (now X), Purrazzo saw an opportunity to address the matter, after a fan requested that she not be tagged in the comments.
"I was like, well, I have seen it. I had a little cry about it, and then I realized my body does not define my worth," she said. "I had just gotten married. I'd just gotten a bachelor's degree. I just debuted in one of the biggest companies in the world. I've worked with every wrestling company in the world. I'm a 5-time world champion and my husband loves me whether I'm a size extra-small or a size extra-large, and I've never been an extra-large and I've never been an extra-small, so if that's how you value me, then you can kiss my fat ass."
Purrazzo regrets giving the comments power over her and feels that she took some of the power back with her response on social media. Despite going through emotional turmoil, Purrazzo was newly-debuted with AEW and couldn't lose momentum, meaning she had to step in the ring with the enitre situation weighing on her.
"I think I cried [before her next match] because I was like...I don't want to put on gear. I don't want to go to work. I don't want to be in front of all these people in spandex and know that they're judging me," she said. "I don't think I had ever felt like that before, and I'd been wrestling 12 years at that point...I think that's also then translated into my body of work as a wrestler. I have never felt so self-conscious wrestling, and wrestling's always been my thing. My character is that I'm the greatest technical wrestler in the world and here I am in the ring, feeling so self-conscious about my body...I think that if you watch me, maybe 3 years ago versus now, you might be able to see that because I'm terrified every time I step in the ring now."
