Mickie James On Staying Loyal To Impact, Reflects On Feud With Deonna Purrazzo

Mickie James is a loyal member of the Impact Wrestling roster, and she recently talked about the company being her “home” and more. James spoke with Ella Jay for SEScoops and you can check out a couple more highlights below, per Fightful:

On staying loyal to Impact: “I feel, I mean Impact is my home. I think a lot of people feel Impact is their home, or it’s certainly a home for them. You look at the people that have come through that roster over the last 20-plus years, the amount of people who have gone on to have great success, and who have had major success within Impact. But they gave me my first chance, they really did. They gave me my first chance. They gave me my first chance, they gave me a chance at a time when I was really questioning myself and my value, my decisions, where I was.

“I was in such a weird place in 2010, I was just really uncertain. It helped me remember who I was and what I wanted, and realize that there’s a reason for everything and there’s a learning for everything. There wouldn’t have been ‘Hardcore Mickie’ Mickie James and this whole resurgence of my career. When I felt like I was in an either sink or swim kind of place, and now to be able to come back, and what they did for myself and NWA with EmPowerr was special, like the fact that they dedicated a lot of time, television time, the fact that we could have the Knockouts World Championship match on that card, and a match that I felt was something people had never seen before, it was one of those dream matchups. It was cool. It was so, so special.”

On her feud with Deonna Purrazzo: “Then the comeback and then go into this angle against someone who, she’d been the champion a long time, Deonna. In conversations when you talk about women’s wrestling and you’re looking at the landscape of people in those conversations who are deemed to be the best, and she was very much in that. So it was a different test because I felt like I hadn’t really been able to have a lot of those matches. I really hadn’t wrestle wrestled like that for a while. I had wrestled, but I felt like it wasn’t Mickie James. It wasn’t a representation of who Mickie James truly is. I always try to do my best and do whatever, and I loved what I did. I loved being with Alexa, I loved working with Asuka, or whatever, but there were so many other things that I really wanted to do and people I wanted to wrestle. I just never had a chance to do a lot of that stuff. Even I was going like, ‘Man, these girls are freaking going. I don’t know if I can keep up.'”

On her respect for Purrazzo: “To be able to test myself against someone like her, I think that we may not love each other on television, but in that ring, we have incredible chemistry, and I love a lot of respect for her as an opponent, as a talent, because she is one of the best. She’s earned that. It’s amazing. They have a lot of faith in me, and they trust me, and I trust them. I think that I trust them because I can have open conversations with them and real conversations, and it’s not anything but good vibes, and I like that. I don’t want to be in a place where I’m not happy to be there and having fun.”