AJ Lee is back in the biggest match of the weekend. After returning to WWE last September following nearly a decade away from wrestling, Lee now heads into WrestleMania with Becky Lynch across the ring from her.
That return did not happen quietly. The crowd chanted Lee’s name as the notes of “Let’s Light It Up” played, and she quickly inserted herself into the feud between CM Punk and Seth Rollins. Two weeks after she came back, Lee and Punk beat Lynch and Rollins at Wrestlepalooza, giving her first run-in with the current era an immediate edge.
For Lee, the comeback has landed after years of distance. She left WWE in 2015, saying at the time that injuries, a sense of accomplishment and Punk’s split with the company in 2014 all shaped the decision. Before she walked away, she had become one of the most popular wrestlers of the early 2010s and helped ignite what later became known as the Women’s Revolution.
Her influence stretched beyond matches. On February 25, 2015, Lee posted a tweet responding to Stephanie McMahon that called out inequalities between male and female talent in WWE. The message helped spur the #GiveDivasAChance movement and is now seen as part of the path that opened doors for later stars such as Charlotte Flair, Bayley and Lynch.
Lee has said she did not stay connected to wrestling after leaving. “I’ve been very honest and talked about how when I left, I did not keep in touch at all with wrestling,” she said. “I was retired and that was it.”
That long break made the return feel stranger and more intense. Lee said, “I think that has been the coolest way to enter the new generation, to have this gap, because I knew what it was during mine and now to see what the women are doing now, it was like ‘Woah, that is what evolution is all about.’” She added that the division “have grown into my wildest dreams.”
The nerves have followed her back, too. “I’ve always heard that nerves are good because it means that you care,” Lee said. “That’s one of the things about performing, you always feel that right before you go out.” She said she will “always feel nerves when it comes to performing, because I care about it and I care about the fans and my opponents,” and called the comeback “especially nerve-wracking” because she did not know what reaction she would get. “I could hear the crowd being really supportive that whole show, chanting my name, which was a bit calming,” she said. “It kind of felt like diving into a pool and not knowing how shallow the water was going to be.”
What comes next is no longer in the past. Lee is back in the middle of WWE’s biggest stage, and this weekend’s match with Lynch will show whether one of the women who helped change the company can still shape it now.
