AEW World Champion No-Shows Press Conference After Full Gear

An All Elite Wrestling (AEW) world champion decided not to show up to the press conference after Full Gear and had an interesting reason for not attending. On Saturday, Toni Storm defeated Hikaru Shida to win the AEW Women's World Championship for the third time. Instead of attending the Full Gear media scrum, Storm wrote a letter to AEW president Tony Khan who read the letter during the press conference. 

"Please excuse my absence at your little scrum," Storm wrote. "I had to board an aeroplane. I am going to Peter Lawford's beach house for the weekend. Nevertheless, I'm still your new AEW Women's World Champion and I expected to be lauded as such this Wednesday on the Turner Broadcasting Station. Give Ted [Turner] my best. If you must talk about me, do be kind and don't drink so much coffee!" 

Storm has recently developed a classic movie persona after losing the title in August. She began calling herself "timeless" and gained a new butler named Luther. The storyline with Shida began weeks before the match on Saturday as Storm would come out during Shida's title defenses. 

Strom, 29, joined AEW last year after spending four years with WWE. She first won the AEW Women's Championship at All Out in September 2022 after winning a fatal four-way match. After losing the title to Jamie Hayter in November of that year, Storm won the title again in May of this year after defeating Hayter at Double or Nothing. 

"I think Toni Storm is doing some of the best work in all of pro wrestling right now," Khan said on the Superstar Crossover podcast in September, per Post Wrestling. "She's a former Women's World Champion, two times. She's had a great partnership with Saraya… We've seen, it's been very compelling and I agree with you, highly entertaining in recent weeks the way Toni Storm's been losing her mind and personally, I really enjoy working with Toni Storm. I think she's a great talent and I think we are onto something really special with Toni Storm right now." 

When Storm was in WWE, she won the NXT UK Women's Championship and held the title for 230 days. In 2018, Storm won the Mae Young Classic, a tournament that features 32 women from NXT and the independent circuit.