Deonna Purrazzo would welcome Mandy Rose with open arms (Picture: IMPACT Wrestling)

Deonna Purrazzo would love to see Mandy Rose in IMPACT Wrestling following her WWE exit last week.

The former NXT Women’s Champion was released after losing the title to Roxanne Perez following a 413 day run with the gold, and the two-time Knockouts World Champion is keen to see her thrive in a new environment if she decides to carry on with her wrestling career.

She exclusively told Metro.co.uk: ‘Oh, I’m gonna open the door and welcome her in! I think that the Mandy Rose that came to NXT a year and a half, almost two years ago, to the Mandy Rose we see today has been a complete evolution of Mandy Rose.

‘To see her in a different light and on a different platform, and see what else she can do without the WWE confines, is going to reinvent her again.

‘Obviously we can’t speculate what she’s gonna do, or what her mindset is, if she wants to wrestle, if it she doesn’t want to wrestle – it wouldn’t be fair to. But if she chooses to wrestle, I want to wrestle her.’

The Virtuosa added that while the stars haven’t aligned for them so far, she sees Mandy as a huge name, and someone who could ‘thrive’ in the creative environment fostered by Scott D’Amore.

Mandy Rose has been released and her wrestling future is unclear (Picture: WWE)

‘Our paths have never crossed in wrestling, we just know of each other and things like that but I think she’s a frickin’ star,’ she enthused.

‘IMAPCT has become such a landing zone for people post-WWE to continue to grow their brand and evolve as a professional wrestler, and I think she would thrive in this environment that we have at IMAPCT. We should break down the door for her and welcome her with open arms.’

That environment has been transformative for Deonna, who was able to delve deeper into her Virtuosa persona – which just started with a word she liked and put on the back of a jacket in 2015 – during her time in NXT, and take things to another level when she joined IMPACT following her own WWE exit in April 2020.

Deonna has been able to thrive as the Virtousa (Picture: IMPACT Wrestling)

‘NXT really forced me to hone in on that character development, for better or worse,’ she said, reflecting on her time in WWE’s developmental division. ‘While it was frustrating, it really forced me to become something bigger than I was and really evaluate who I wanted to be moving forward.’

While she admitted her departure without getting much of a shot was ‘unfortunate’, she was able to go to IMPACT and present boss Scott with ‘an entire synopsis’ for her character, as well as vignettes she’d been creating in her own time.

‘He’s just created this environment where there’s camaraderie, and there’s communication and there’s an open door policy,’ she smiled. ‘It was a learning curve for me, Scott was just completely open and said, “We like you, we’re going to push you as much as we can, and what you become you become. There’s no wrong answer here.” ‘

Although the 28-year-old star is still very much a force to be reckoned with, next week will mark a decade in wrestling, and now she finds herself wanting to ‘evolve’ and ‘push women’s wrestling’ rather than focus solely on championship wins.

‘The last 10 years have really shaped me into the person I am today,’ she admitted. ‘If I have any power to help other women push those boundaries and get opportunities and make the Knockouts division even more groundbreaking and continue to push our legacy further, that’s what I wanna be doing.

‘Yeah, I wanna win championships, I wanna be a three time Knockouts World Champion, but I wanna tell incredible stories and I wanna continue to wrestle incredible women and push those boundaries the way they were pushed for me.’

Professionally and personally, it’s been an incredible year for Deonna, who started 2022 in the main event of Hard To Kill when she beat Mickie James in a Texas Deathmatch – which also marked the first time the Knockouts Title main evented an IMPACT pay-per-view – while she tied the knot to her husband and fellow wrestler Steve Maclin a month later.

‘It’s surreal. I think that little girls dream of getting married, and we had the most amazing wedding… It was like a legit fairy tale, in the rain – all our friends and family, and it was just incredible,’ she beamed.

‘Steve’s killing it on IMAPCT, I’m so excited to see what he’s doing and what he gets to do. Then same goes for me… Figuring out what my next steps are, and then how to level up and reevaluate and evolve again in the New Year is really exciting.’

She added: ‘It’s been a whirlwind! I don’t know what can top it next year, but I’m excited to find out.’

IMPACT Wrestling is available to watch for fans in the UK via DAZN, as well as IMPACT Plus and IMPACT Insiders.

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The Virtuosa is waiting…