Toni Storm’s sudden removal from AEW television and the expectation that she will not wrestle again in 2026 are not due to an injury, according to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio.
Meltzer clarified the nature of Storm’s situation and revealed that AEW only learned about the issue on the day of the Dynamite taping.
“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,” Meltzer said. “It was not an injury or anything like that. On Wednesday, she’s there. She is set up to wrestle in this match, and they had to do this emergency angle to take her out and put Mina Shirakawa in. On the day, on Wednesday, earliest Wednesday morning, certainly all day Tuesday, they were under the impression that she was going to be wrestling.”
The revelation that Storm’s absence is not injury-related adds a new dimension to a situation that had previously been widely assumed to involve a physical issue. Storm was pulled from her scheduled No Holds Barred match against Marina Shafir on the March 18 episode of Dynamite in Fresno, California, just ten minutes before the show went on air. AEW posted a social media clip of Storm being discovered laid out in her locker room in a pool of blood with Luther and Mina Shirakawa attending to her. Shirakawa stepped in as her replacement and defeated Shafir with a Storm Zero.
Earlier reports indicated that AEW was prepared for Storm to not be cleared to wrestle through 2026 at a minimum. Bryan Alvarez of F4Wonline.com had previously reported that the replacement was legitimate and that something had genuinely occurred. Meltzer’s clarification that the situation is not injury-related raises questions about the exact nature of what prompted the emergency angle.
The development has creative implications for AEW. Ronda Rousey made her AEW debut at Revolution on March 15, confronting Storm following her victory over Shafir in a segment that appeared to set up a singles or tag team program between the two. Those plans are now reportedly affected. AEW already has a creative direction in place for the reveal of who Storm’s on-screen attacker will be, suggesting the company is moving forward with the storyline in Storm’s absence.
Storm has been with AEW since 2022. She is a record four-time AEW Women’s World Champion and has held the championship for a combined 640 days across her reigns.
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