Toni Storm Shoots HARD On WWE Exit: "If They Don't Give A Sh*t, Why Should I?"
AEW's Toni Storm opens up on her final days in WWE - and they misery they brought her.
Toni Storm hasn't been shy of sharing her thoughts on her WWE exit since leaving the promotion in late 2021 and signing for AEW in March of this year, though this new interview on The Sessions with Renee Paquette might be her most headline-worthy yet.
Storm, who was called up from NXT to SmackDown in July 2021, told Paquette that wrestling on Raw or SmackDown had always been her goal. It didn't take her long to realise that this wasn't going to work out, however, with main roster life making her miserable (h/t Cageside Seats):-
“My main goal in wrestling was to be on RAW or SmackDown, main roster WWE TV. Then I got there and figured it out pretty soon, I realized this is just not going to work out. Also, I’m 26. — I want to have a really good time at this job. I want to have a really good career and I want to enjoy part of it. I just wasn’t enjoying it for so long and I abruptly quit. I woke up that morning having no idea that I was going to quit by that night. It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. A lot of people don’t enjoy it at all. For some people it just works out and for others — it just makes them miserable. I guess I just fell into that category. I guess it just wasn’t for me at that point."
Continuing, Toni spoke on WWE's swooping rounds of roster cuts, which have become a habit since the COVID-19 pandemic's March 2020 inception.
“Let’s face it. They just fire people left, right, and center out of the blue. I could be fired next week and then it’s like, ‘What’s the point?’ It just got very pointless to be honest. It’s been hard to convey that, especially to fans, especially to people that just aren’t in this business, and will never understand. I must sound ridiculous to those people, but it’s the reality of what it’s actually like."
The AEW newcomer then stressed that she wasn't upset with how she was booked in WWE, nor was she angry with the company in general:-
“I’m not mad about the booking. I certainly don’t want to bury it. I don’t want to say bad things about the place. I think I had a great time there for the most part... I’m not mad. I’m not angry at WWE. I don’t have anything against them. I’m sure they got bigger fish to fry than me. You know what I mean? Like, why do they care? People get let go from that place constantly. People move around constantly. It doesn’t matter if I’m there, but what matters is I’m not having a very good time, and why shouldn’t I be having a good time?”
But after what she called a long, complicated ordeal, Storm no longer wanted to work for a promotion that "didn't give a sh*t." She realised, in the end, that even though WWE's main roster used to be her goal, she loves wrestling itself more than any specific company:-
“It was a complicated ordeal. I had built up frustrations with the place for a very long time, like a lot of people do. They don’t give a sh*t, so why should I? This isn’t going to work. I know what’s going to happen here. I’m just going to be sent back to catering again. I’m not going to succeed here, I can just see it. I know they see me as I’m such a kid and I’m such a newbie and this that and the other, but I like to think that I’ve been around wrestling long enough to know — I just know what’s right and what’s wrong for me and what I like and what I don’t like and I just didn’t like it in the end. I didn’t feel that appreciated. And I just felt like they, at times, didn’t have very much respect for me. I feel like over time they just crushed my love for wrestling, it just wasn’t even wrestling anymore. You’re not even allowed to say wrestling. I thought my whole purpose in life was to go to WWE but then over time I realized it’s just pro wrestling that I love, it’s not a company that I love.”
Storm was granted her WWE release soon after requesting it in December 2021. "Burnout" was reported as the reason behind the move, which Toni has now elaborated on.