Toni Storm wishes WWE gave her more instruction: ‘I was very lost’
Toni Storm wishes she was given more instruction during her time with WWE.
While being interviewed by MVP & Dwayne Swayze on their Marking Out podcast, Storm discussed the concept of creative freedom in wrestling, noting that she actually feels like she had a lot of freedom during her WWE run. She wishes WWE told her what to do more often, and she felt lost without that type of direction.
“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.
“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 added that, in regards to her character, she would have been willing to try anything.
“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.”
When asked about a controversial pie-throwing angle that she was part of in WWE, Storm said she welcomes embarrassment and doesn’t want anyone to think that she is upset with WWE over it.
“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 was part of NXT UK, NXT, and eventually the WWE main roster before deciding to leave the company at the end of 2021. In AEW, she’s on the run of a lifetime with her “Timeless” character. Storm currently holds the AEW Women’s World Championship and will defend it against Jamie Hayter, Thekla, and Kris Statlander in a four-way match at All Out on September 20.
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.