Select Answers: Deonna Purrazzo, If Not Hogan, Who?, Tacks

Welcome to Select Answers, a short feature that provides some of the answers to questions that were posed to Sean Ross Sapp in the most recent Fightful Weekly Q&A Podcast. The show drops every week on Fightful Select for subscribers.

When aggregating these posts please refer to it as "Fightful Select Answers Q&A" and tag Fightful, noting that it was in the Q&A format to avoid confusion.

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Hi Sean. Let me preface this by stating I'm a massive Deonna fan. Hell, that Gresham match last weekend was amazing. On June 18th during The Hump, you briefly mentioned something about things not going well in Mexico. I wasn't gonna ask bc I don't want this being aggregated, that it creates drama. However, it's becoming impossible to ignore that she's not being used more. OK she's getting some matchers in roh, with the pure title apparently being a thing but being left off Supercard was weird imho. So, curiosity has gotten the better of me. Can you elaborate on this? Like is it to the point that there's no hope? Thanks

We'd reported this at the time, so anyone re-aggregating it is pathetic, but the long and short of it is she had a bad showing in Mexico in December and hasn't been brought back there. She's certainly not used to the level she'd like. I think a World Tag Team Title would certainly help that, and I've also always been told that even though someone isn't booked heavily, that doesn't mean they're done forever. Specifically I've been told numerous times (not particular to Deonna) that when anyone shows leaps of improvement, Tony Khan takes notice.

If Hogan wasn't the face of wrestling in the 80s and 90s who do you think they would had made the guy?

There's a strange perception that Hulk Hogan saved wrestling, or that it was going to fail without him. That's a lot of WWE-ashing on their part. Wrestling would have succeeded, would eventually went global, and there would have been megastars. However, it's certainly fair to question if anyone would have been as big of a star as Hulk Hogan. He was special in that regard.

So let's say Hulk Hogan just remained an actor after Rocky 3. I definitely think WWE would have been way quicker to jump on Randy Savage, which would have changed the trajectory of Continental. Dusty Rhodes would have had to been in consideration, as would have Kerry Von Erich, which would have hugely changed what the NWA and World Class were.

There's also a really good chance that WWF would have went after Ric Flair, who was in his early to mid 30s at that point and was about to hit his prime.

To me, the most slam dunk pick is Magnum TA. He was very young in the business but I think would have connected on a level similar to Hogan.

Hogan being the guy certainly changed a lot of what WWE looked for, and who his foils were. It being anyone else would have greatly changed the course of wrestling, especially in ring. If it were anyone but Hogan, I think WWF would have looked at guys like Austin Idol and Gino Hernandez to bring in as well.

Do you know how the tacks in the mouth spot is done where its safe? I cringe everytime I see this and don't get how this is done

Well. It's done with thumbtacks put in a person's mouth and kicked. They deal with the ramifications of such afterwards. Rarely are sharp weapons gimmicked these days, though I believe in many cases they should be.