50 Best Wrestlers Of The 2020s (So Far)

Toni Storm didn’t just finally unlock her true self in AEW between 2022 and 2025. She unlocked everything. 

Form, character, purpose, all leading to total superstardom. A perennial prospect turned main-event fixture, Storm’s evolution in this period was both unlikely and inevitable, especially given how often she stole the show and remembered to steal the moments too.

Initially brought in as a heavy hitter, Storm’s 2022 run was defined by rock-solid in-ring work and title-winning consistency. Matches against just about everybody weren’t just great on their own terms but in comparison to just about everything that had come before them. Her ability to adjust to any opponent and carry herself as a genuine workhorse, made her invaluable during a period when AEW’s women’s division was searching for identity. She provided the Ace. 

But it was her reinvention as Timeless Toni Storm that changed everything all over again.

Leaning into Golden Age Hollywood madness, Storm re-tooled herself with a level of commitment that blurred the lines between parody and performance art. The act remains outrageous, surreal, and utterly magnetic. Storm turned the women’s division on its axis yet again, with vignettes, black-and-white entrances, shoe-throwing melodrama and a must-see implosion with Mariah May that resulted in segments and matches that raced into contention for being candidates on the company's Rushmore. In a promotion still often guilty of sidelining its women, Storm made herself impossible to ignore. By force of talent and her idiosyncratic creativity, she gutted her way to the top, leaving everybody else below her watching for the shoe.