Toni Storm’s AEW Absence Takes Unexpected Turn

Toni Storm’s unexpected removal from AEW television was not caused by an injury — and the promotion itself had no idea it was coming until the day it happened. That’s according to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, who provided context around the emergency angle used to write Storm off television on the post-Revolution edition of Dynamite.

“On the Toni Storm thing, it appears she’s not gonna be wrestling for a long, long time, and this was something that they found out on Wednesday. It was not an injury or anything like that,” Meltzer said. He added that as recently as the day before, AEW was fully planning on Storm competing in her scheduled No Holds Barred match against Marina Shafir. “On Wednesday, she’s there. She is set up to wrestle in this match… They, on the day, on Wednesday, earliest Wednesday morning, certainly all day Tuesday, were under the impression that she was going to be wrestling.”

AEW Has Creative Direction in Place for Storm Storyline Despite Her Absence

With only 10 minutes before Dynamite went on air, AEW posted a clip of Storm discovered unconscious in a locker room in a pool of blood. Mina Shirakawa replaced her in the Shafir match and won with a Storm Zero. The emergency angle has since been built into a whodunit mystery storyline, and AEW reportedly already has a creative direction in place for the eventual reveal of Storm’s attacker. The situation has also impacted potential plans involving Ronda Rousey, as a future Storm vs. Rousey match had been set up at Revolution. Storm has been signed to AEW since 2022 and is a record four-time AEW Women’s World Champion, having held the belt for a combined 640 days.