Chelsea Green On WWE Releasing Zack Ryder And Deonna Purrazzo
WWE NXT Superstar Chelsea Green recently spoke with Spencer Love of the "Conversations with Love" podcast to discuss a number of topics. You can find the full interview on the Win Column Sports Network or Podbean. Love also sent us highlights from the interview.
Green is currently working with Robert Stone in NXT, as the first talent he signed to The Robert Stone Brand. Green talked about working with the former Robbie E and going back to their Impact Wrestling days together.
"I love it!" Green said of working with Stone in NXT. "A lot of people don't know that Rob and I go quite a ways back. I worked with him at Impact, and we actually had our NXT tryout together. We never thought we would be put together. We never explored that option. We got paired together very, very last minute, and we both have the same work ethic. We want to go the extra mile, we're both characters. The minute that we get out there, we put on this whole different front. I love, love, love working with him.
"I think both of us just want to succeed so bad. We probably text, I would say we text every single day about work, about 'what can we do to build on this character? What can we do for storylines? What can we do outside of work to make people believe in this group?' That's why I love working with him."
Green also talked about the impact former WWE Producer Lance Storm has had on her career. She said Storm is just like a father figure to she, Peyton Royce and Rachael Ellering, and others who went through his Storm Wrestling Academy before it closed down last year.
"He really is like a dad to me, and to Peyton Royce, and to Rachael, and everyone who's gone through his school. He just has the best wrestling mind," she said of Storm. "There's just no one like him out there. For us to kind of come full circle – I remember the day I told him I wanted to be in WWE, that was the first day I met him – so for us to kind of go through all of this together, and then to be on RAW versus Charlotte (Flair) and for him to be there was the sweetest moment to have with him. It was so, so, so cool. Hopefully that's not our last moment. I imagine that WWE would rehire him, whether it's in a couple months or a year once everything kind of gets back to normal, because he just is something special."
Green is good friends with wrestlers who work with AEW and other companies, including Allie, Rosemary, Allysin Kay, Britt Baker and Brandi Rhodes. She talked about maintaining relationships when working for different companies.
"It's funny, I actually have a harder time keeping in touch with my normal civilian friends," Green said. "My wrestling friends know – like, Britt and Santana (Garrett) and Deonna (Purrazzo), those are my best wrestling friends, and they know if we're super busy, we might not talk for two weeks. We might see each other every day, but then we might go two weeks and we haven't even spoken to each other, but we're all kind of just as busy. It's harder for my girlfriends in Canada who are normal human beings to understand how busy I am, or to understand that I truly might go 48 hours without looking at my phone if I'm taping a RAW or an NXT or something.
"That's kind of the more difficult side of things, and especially having a bunch of friends all over the place. All my girlfriends from Impact, we're now all in different companies. Allie is in AEW, Rosemary's in Impact, Sienna is with NWA. We don't care. We just do us. We're friends, and we really don't care what companies we're at. We just happen to be at different companies right now, but who knows what will happen in two years?"
The WWE budget cuts made back on April 15 saw two people close to Green lose their jobs – her friend Deonna Purrazzo and her boyfriend Zack Ryder. She talked about the recent WWE releases and how the former Zack Ryder will be fine whatever he does in his post-WWE career.
"I know, and everyone on social media's like 'oh my god, poor Chelsea!' I'm like, well, no, I have a job, I'm very, very thankful that I have a job, because who knows? If this cut had've come three months ago, I might not have had a job," Green said. "It was just you had to be in the right place, or the wrong place, at the wrong time. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that this has happened. This has been happening all over the world in every profession, and it's really, really unfortunate that two of the people who are closest to me in my life were released, but on the other hand, both of them are going to go on to do so much more, and I would feel terrible if that wasn't the case, but that's the case.
"Like, Deonna has so much potential. She was not used in the capacity she should have been used in. Matt has so much potential and has continued to prove that throughout his entire career. So, whatever Matt does, he's fine. I'm really excited to see what happens once the world gets back up-and-running. Once indies come back and everything, I'm really excited to see what they do. It's not necessarily a sad thing. I think for the fans, it was really sad to watch that all unfold on Twitter. But, for myself, and Matt, and Deonna, I think we all know no matter what happens from here on out, this isn't the end of any road for them. We have so many opportunities nowadays."