Paige is expected to return to a WWE ring this weekend at WrestleMania 42, with plans for her to compete Saturday in the Women’s Tag Team Championship Fatal Four-Way at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. PWInsider reported that she is expected to replace Nikki Bella in the match after Bella was not cleared to return from an ankle injury suffered several weeks ago on SmackDown.
WWE secretly brought Paige to Las Vegas earlier this week, and she was seen taking part in a run-through for the match. The return would put her back on a WrestleMania stage six years after WWE ruled her medically disqualified from competing in January 2018, when she was 25 and still dealing with the fallout from a December 2017 injury during a tag team match at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Paige, now 33, has lived through more than one version of a WWE career. After the injury ended her in-ring run, she was brought back on Raw in the Absolution faction with Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville and later served as SmackDown General Manager. When her WWE contract expired in June 2022, she signed with AEW, made a surprise debut there in September 2022 and went on to win the AEW Women’s Championship from Hikaru Shida.
That history is what makes this weekend matter. WrestleMania 42 takes place Saturday, April 18, two days after the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony on Friday, April 17, and John Cena is hosting the event. Both nights of WrestleMania will stream on the app through the Unlimited plan, with the first two matches each night airing on 2 on Saturday and on Sunday.
The tension around Paige’s return is obvious: WWE once declared her unable to compete, then spent years building other roles around her after the December 2017 injury. Her path also included neck surgery, two WWE Wellness Policy suspensions, a public leak of personal videos and a turbulent relationship with Alberto Del Rio, before she re-entered the company orbit through television and later crossed to AEW, where she competed through March 2025. Now WWE appears ready to test whether one of its most complicated comeback stories can still land in front of a WrestleMania crowd.
