Toni Storm Retains AEW Women's World Championship at AEW Revolution
Toni Storm defeated friend-turned-rival Deonna Purrazzo at Revolution.
At AEW Revolution the women's title was on the line as Toni Storm defended against "The Virtuosa" Deonna Purrazzo. "Timeless" Toni Storm, currently in her third reign, has been the women's champion since AEW Full Gear 2022 when she took the belt off of Hikaru Shida. She has only defended the championship twice since she won it and the feud with Purrazzo has dated years as the two used to wrestle together in Japan. Purrazzo keyed a lot of unfamiliar AEW fans in on this when she showed off their matching tattoos on AEW programming a number of weeks back.
Purrazzo put up an incredible fight, and technically should've gotten the win. She forced a tap from Storm while the referee was distracted, so the match continued on. Ultimately, however, it was Toni Storm who retained the title, continuing her reign atop the AEW Women's Division.
"The minute I came in, this was the idea, 'You and Toni are going to do something.' The people that pitched that idea and were maybe writing some of the stuff for us, didn't even know that, 'Hey, we have these matching tattoos, we should do something with this,'" Purrazzo said in a recent interview with Fightful. "It's been really fun for Toni and I to drop little bits of our relationship outside of work. She's not a big social media presence, so a lot of our friendship in the past was between us and offline. It's been really fun and interesting to see the reaction, 'Oh wow, we knew they were in STARDOM together, but we didn't know to what extent they were friends.' The tattoo was the cherry on top to all of it. We have this tangible evidence to prove our friendship. Let's use that."
Since Purrazzo's AEW debut in January she has been on a roll in AEW picking up wins on AEW Dynamite and AEW Collision. Heading into the match with Storm, she stood undefeated at 5-0. Before Purrazzo officially signed with AEW she was one of the hottest women's free agents on the market next to Mercedes Moné and Kamille. It is being highly implied that the Big Business show in March at the TD Garden in Boston will be the debut of Moné in AEW. At just 28 years of age Purrazzo is a well-traveled veteran in professional wrestling. She's appeared in pretty much every single major promotion around the world including ROH, IMPACT/TNA, and AAA all of which she has held titles in.
Storm held onto the title for 106 day leading into her bout with Purrazzo at AEW Revolution. It'll be interesting to see how Purrazzo now evolves, as her first AEW program ended in a loss.
