Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: britt baker, charlotte flair, NXT, nxt uk, NXT UK Women's Championship, Rhea Ripley, Smackdown, SmackDown Women's Championship, toni storm, wrestling, wwe, wwe release

Toni Storm Released: The SmackDown Star Is Now Gone From WWE

We have some very surprising news just breaking this afternoon that SmackDown star Toni Storm has been released by WWE.  This is pretty shocking as she's only a recent addition to the SmackDown roster and over the past month has been feuding with the top woman's star in all of WWE, Charlotte Flair, over the SmackDown Women's Championship, including a match for the title on last week's Christmas Eve edition of SmackDown.  It's equally surprising as Storm seemed to check all of the boxes of what WWE and Chairman Vince McMahon are usually looking for in their top female wrestlers.  But then, maybe this wasn't exactly WWE's decision.

Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com broke the news in the last hour that Toni Storm (real name Toni Rossall) has been released by WWE and it was confirmed in a company memo that she is gone, but the details are scant at the moment.

Sapp does say though in his report that the belief by those in the know is that Toni Storm asked for her release from the company and this was not another in the WWE's long line of "budget cuts" from this year.

"According to those Sapp spoke to within WWE it is believed Toni Storm asked for her release from the company. The memo that went out did not list budget cuts as the reason, as has been tradition of late."

Australia-native Toni Storm first entered the WWE universe as a competitor in the 2017 Mae Young Classic.  She would go on to win the tournament the next year and from there would become a regular part of the WWE UK roster, where she defeated Rhea Ripley to win the WWE UK Women's title.

She became a part of the NXT roster in October of 2020 and was there until her SmackDown call-up this past July.  As stated above, over the past couple of months Storm has been a heavy part of the Women's Division on SmackDown and appeared to be next in line to Charlotte Flair for the title, but now that's all a thing of the past.

Where Toni Storm goes next is obviously up to her, but something to chew on is that current AEW Women's Champion Britt Baker posted the following tweet with an image of Storm just minutes ago.  Is Toni Storm AEW-bound?

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