Bea Priestley Recalls Toni Storm Bouncing Ideas For Timeless Gimmick Off Her

Bea Priestley and Saraya recently spoke about Toni Storm’s evolution with Priestley recalling how Storm ran ideas for the Timeless character off of her. Priestley was a guest on Saraya’s Rulebreakers podcast and spoke about Storm; you can see some highlights below (per Fightful):

Saraya on Storm’s evolution: “When I first got to AEW, she was too nervous to pick up a microphone. So we were doing The Outcasts stuff or whatever but, I remember she had this one line that she had to say and she kept going over and over and she’s like, ‘Oh f**k. Can we keep going over it?’ It’s just one line, and I was like, ‘Toni, you got this, babe,’ and I had Ruby (Soho) who is amazing on the mic too. We got through that promo, she did amazing but I think the secret sauce is finding something that you really love and you’re really passionate about and to do something that kind of flips that switch for you, and so the whole Toni Storm, f**king phenomenon that she created really f**king capitulated her. She’s one of the best promos in the game now.”

Priestley on storm bouncing ideas off of her: “I was at her house when she was still thinking this idea. She pitched it to me and she was like, ‘Bea, you know, I’m essentially the modern-day Marilyn Monroe. Why don’t I just do it? Why don’t I just do this on TV?’ She’s like, ‘You know what? f**k it. I’m just gonna do this and see what happens. I’ll be Timeless Toni Storm’ and like, it’s just her being silly and fun but that’s how she is all the time so, I’m so happy whenever I see her doing this silly, comedy stuff and I don’t think people realize, being actually funny and doing wrestling seriously, it’s so hard. Comedy wrestling is so difficult to get right and I’m so happy because she’s — obviously, everyone knows how talented she is as a wrestler in the ring, but I’m so happy that she’s found this because it’s like, she’s not just stuck in that one box of being a good wrestler. She’s also funny, she can do character, she can do promos, she can do just silly, little gimmicks. Whenever I’ll see her, she’ll be like, ‘Bea, I’m thinking about saying this next week’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, throw that in.’ She was like, ‘You know what? Maybe I will.’”

On Storm getting her started with STARDOM: “I think Toni was actually the one who put me over because at that time, Rossy (Ogawa), who owned STARDOM at the time, he would ask the girls that he valued that were coming over regularly — be like, ‘Okay, who do you think I should bring over?’ Because he always knew the girls, they’d eventually get signed by somewhere… do STARDOM for a few years and then end up in WWE. That’s kind of how it was. So obviously, he knew Toni wouldn’t be far off and I think Piper (Niven) — or Kim — she was also in that so, I think he just asked Toni — be like, ‘Okay, who’s someone who’s got potential? Who do you recommend?’ And she was like, ‘Why don’t you give Bea a go?’ Sent him photos of me and then they reached out and that debut match I had with Starlight (Kid) and AZM, Rossy saw that and then he pulled me off. He was just like, ‘Do you wanna be here all the time?’ And I was like, ‘Yes!’”