AEW Women’s Champion Toni Storm has looked back on her time in WWE, and how she wished there could have been more direction for her while in the company.
After departing WWE at the end of 2021, Storm made her arrival in AEW. While the early days of her time in All Elite Wrestling were not anything of note, the same could not be said when Storm debuted her “Timeless” persona. Unlike anything else in wrestling and with entertaining mannerisms, Storm’s character work became some of the best in the current wrestling era and showed fans what she was really capable of.
With some fans wondering why the Women’s Champion was unable to show this entertaining side while in WWE, the AEW star has looked back on the instructions she was given while in the promotion, or lack thereof.
“In WWE, I Wasn’t Told What To Do Enough”: Toni Storm
Speaking with MVP & Dwayne Swayze on their Marking Out podcast, Storm admitted that she wasn’t told what to do enough while in WWE and at times felt very lost:
“In the WWE, I don’t think I was told what to do enough. I wasn’t told to do anything, actually,” Storm said. “I wasn’t told like, I mean, obviously you were told what to do under certain circumstance. But overall, I don’t feel like I was told what to do enough. I was very lost.
Continuing, Storm clarified that while there was general direction on what to do from a production standpoint, there was not when it came to character work:
“I mean, there’s direction in things like, ‘This is how you do it, this is what you do, this is what you do on television, this is cameras.’ But then, I guess in regards to a character — I was never like, I mean they write promos, but like I was just kind of — just did it. I wasn’t really told like, ‘Do this. Today you’re a cat and this is your character. Your name’s bloody Tori Smith.’ No one told me anything. And I kept my name the whole time, and it was like I had complete creative freedom to be honest. I saw where others didn’t and others were given things. So it’s a very difficult thing for me to grasp. Am I getting too deep?”
Storm also added that she was open to anything, no matter how bizarre:
“I would have done anything, to be honest. That’s the weird thing about this,” Storm said. “If they had just given me some mad off-the-wall thing, I would have just 100 percent gone with it. I can honestly say that.”
The infamous pie throwing segment was also brought up in the interview, which was where Storm was embarrassed on live TV by Charlotte Flair. While some see this as a career lowlight for the AEW Women’s Champion, Storm had a different view:
“That was the most exciting thing I ever got to do really, when you think about it,” she said. “The rest was just random wrestling.”
Storm is scheduled to defend her Women’s Championship in a 4-way match at All Out on September 20.
H/t to F4WOnline for the use of transcriptions.
Featured image: AEW
