— On a recent episode of the “Marking Out” podcast, AEW Women’s World Champion Toni Storm reflected on her WWE tenure and the creative freedom she experienced there.
Storm explained that while she was given full creative freedom in WWE, it wasn’t always to her benefit. By contrast, she said that in AEW she feels truly supported and empowered as she continues to develop her “Timeless” persona. She stated,
“Well here’s the thing, this is where I get stuck on it. If the WWE – I don’t think I was told what to do enough. I wasn’t told to do anything actually. I wasn’t told like, I mean, obviously you were told what to do under certain circumstance. But overall like, I don’t feel like I was told what to do enough. I was very lost [and wanted out]. I mean like I knew there was direction in things like ‘this is how you do it, this is what you do on television, cameras.’ As in regards to a character? No, I was never like, I mean they write promos but like I was- I just did it. Wasn’t really told ‘do this, today you’re a cat and your names Tori bloody 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, some where others didn’t and others were given things. It’s so much so a very difficult thing to grasp. I wish they would, I would have done anything to be honest. That’s the weird thing about this if they had just given me some mad off the wall thing, I would have 100% gone with it. This is like therapy!”
— During a recent appearance on the “That Sweet Pop” podcast, Bea Priestley (Blair Davenport) revealed that WWE still had creative plans for her just days before her release. She said,
“That was essentially what happened. This isn’t going to sound how I mean it to sound because I’m very happy for all of my friends. It’s just a reflection and my experience. Kiana (James) and Lyra (Valkyria) go to Raw, and I go to SmackDown. Smackdown, you’re lucky if you get two girls’ matches on one SmackDown anyway, because SmackDown was only two hours at the time, and Raw is three. Lyra, straight away, is doing the Queen of the Ring tournament stuff, and that was awesome for her. They did have some idea with me, but two weeks after I got moved to SmackDown, the head writer changed to a different head writer, so all of my initial conversations weren’t known. The general writer that I had, she had only just been promoted to a writer, so I think she was a little worried to push for me because she was new in that role. I think she was going with the flow rather than being like, ‘Why don’t we do something with Bea.’ No disrespect to anyone, because I was the same way on SmackDown. I wasn’t going to step on anyone’s toes. I was going to do as I was told because I’m new here. There were times when I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’ There were talks about tagging with Isla and Alba and us being a trio in the Unholy Union because we were doing six-woman tags against Bianca, Jade, and Naomi. That was a conversation. ‘We might put you with these guys, but we’re not sure.’ It got to the end of the year and I had a triple threat with Bianca and Chelsea, that was my last match. I did a backstage with Piper in January and that was alluding to me doing stuff with Chelsea and Piper in the Secret Hervice. I was basically told I would be on the Europe tour in March. I had all my flights, [Talent Relations] came to me and was like, ‘You’re going to be super busy doing stuff with Chelsea and Piper. Get ready for it.’ I had one of the writers come to me, talking to us about what they wanted me and Piper to be wearing, how they wanted us to behave, all the gimmicks. It was happening. ‘In two weeks, we’re doing Chelsea and Michin, you’re coming in to cost Michin and joining Chelsea.’ It was exactly how they did it with Alba. I was like, ‘Cool.’ Six days later, I’m out of a job.”
— Tiffany Stratton recently opened up about the wrestling moves she’s least fond of taking.
During a recent appearance on the “No-Contest Wrestling” podcast, the WWE Women’s Champion shared which maneuvers she finds particularly rough, citing powerbombs, the Alabama slam, and chokeslams as especially painful. She said,
“There’s not a lot of moves that I like taking. I think Powerbombs can be really crappy to take, because sometimes people will yank you down. Sometimes people will just let you float down. Powerbombs. Nia Jax’s finisher. Jade recently started doing, she calls it The Eye of the Storm, I think it’s like similar to a Thunder Bomb. I have to hold my head up just because of the whiplash and the momentum coming down. So that’s pretty crappy to take.”
She added, “Any sort of Powerbomb, I think, is really bad to take. I will not be taking an Alabama Slam from anybody anytime soon… or like a Chokeslam of some sort. Lash Legend Chokeslammed me one time, and that hurt pretty bad.”
