AJ Lee Reveals Why She Began Considering A WWE Return

When AJ Lee decided to retire from WWE in the spring of 2015, she left behind a women's division that was ripe with talent and potential but lacked the creative backing of the company.

The former WWE Divas Champion openly criticized WWE for its major disparity in both the screen time and pay scale for female wrestlers when compared to their male counterparts.

Fast-forward 10 years and Lee is now finally getting the chance to step into a world that used to only exist in her wildest dreams, which is exactly how she described it during a recent interview with ESPN Vibe Check.

“It’s been dreamlike. I remember very vividly traveling in cars with Kaitlyn... and I would always say, my goal is for there to be one more me. There is one more person who gets these cool opportunities that can sort of shatter that glass ceiling and kick down these doors. If just one person gets an opportunity, that would be amazing. Just be more than I can be, to be more than what the past was, and be limited on our looks."

CM Punk & AJ Lee — Joe Camporeale-Imagn Images

AJ Lee will lace up her Chuck Taylors for the first time since March 30, 2015 this Saturday night, when she teams with CM Punk to take on Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch at WWE Wrestlepalooza. A match that very well could main event the show now that it's been announced that John Cena and Brock Lesnar will open the show.

Women wrestling in the main event of a major Premium Live Event, especially one that will stream live on ESPN, would not have been a legitimate possibility during her first run with the company. She says the evolution of the division as a whole in the time she's been away is undeniable.

MORE: New Update On Joe Hendry's WWE And TNA Future (Exclusive)

A lil louder? 😏🔊

Popularity won't matter when BECKY & SETH battle AJ & PUNK at Wrestlepalooza!

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"Everyone is so special, different, unique, and talented, and what they look like is the tenth most interesting thing about them. It’s a dream come true and that’s what evolution is supposed to be. Every generation is supposed to get stronger and blow the previous generation out of the water.”

Lee has gone on record that she truly believed she was done with professional wrestling when she walked away over 10 years ago. A return started to seem more plausible once her husband came back to WWE in 2023, and ultimately, it was was her adoring fanbase that finally brought her back.

"I wasn’t super considering it until I started to get back on the Comic Con circuit. I wrote my first original graphic novel and started to do signings and I realized that there are so many fans out there who are so loyal, kind, and have been with me for a decade. To go to Comic Con and have a seven-hour line of people, I realized, I owe them a little something because they stayed with me."

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