7 Exact Times Wrestlers Got Their Spot TAKEN

2. Toni Storm > Saraya (AEW Dynamite, August 30, 2023)

If you squint, you can half-see what on earth Tony Khan was thinking by pushing Saraya so hard in AEW. 

A lot of people wanted the former Paige to make a comeback. She was a popular “better than the Divas” pre-Women’s Revolution wrestler in WWE, and for empathy’s sake, she was forced into retirement in her twenties. Also, from Khan’s perspective, Saraya was the subject of a modest box office and critical hit movie, 2019’s ‘Fighting With My Family’, produced and heavily promoted by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. There was potentially some further name value in Saraya there. This all made for a nice story, if not a good run. 

Saraya was not good at all in AEW. While her shock debut at Grand Slam 2022 went down well, she almost immediately accidentally said that the division was awful and needed saving, and then, ironically, just as quickly became the worst part of it. The trash-talk was horrendous - “Well, Doctor, your name rhymes with sh*t!” she said to Britt Baker - and her in-ring performances were slack and generic. Khan in his defence quickly turned Saraya heel, but her shrill promo style was quintessential go-away heat. Saraya was awarded with the Women’s World title at the first All In: London, in a four-way match against Toni Storm, Hikatu Shida and Britt Baker, though even her home country fans were hardly gasping for it. This established her as the top star, nominally, in the division. This spot was re-taken in almost record time by former occupant Toni Storm. 

Storm had already started to flirt with a golden age of cinema look, wearing a medium-length swirl of curls at All In. The black-and-white tron had also debuted. But on the very next Dynamite, Storm, in the tizz that marked her descent into madness, drew an enormous belly laugh - which sparked her ascent as the top women’s star and the funniest person in all of wrestling. “It’s safe to say that Wembley went tits up!” she said to a corpsing Renee Paquette. 

That also rhymed with Britt, but it was infinitely funnier.