AJ Lee didn’t just randomly decide to come back to WWE — she says the fans made it impossible not to.
While speaking with Rick Ucchino for Sports Illustrated ahead of WrestleMania 42, AJ Lee revealed that reconnecting with fans after years away played a huge role in bringing her back to the ring.
After stepping away from wrestling, AJ spent nearly a decade focusing on other things, including writing and advocating for mental health. She said she wasn’t even thinking about wrestling again at first — until she saw how fans still reacted to her. When asked about her return, AJ explained that doing signings again changed everything.
“I mean, I knew that coming back was the right decision because of my fans. So, I very much took like a decade sort of out of the spotlight and have been sort of enjoying just being a mental health advocate and a writer and producer behind the scenes. No one’s looking at me.”
AJ said the real turning point came when she saw how many people were still showing up just to meet her.
“Um and so, when I went back into sort of the fandom world and I started to do signings again, I was getting these lines that were like legitimately 7 hours long. And that’s when I realized, ‘Oh, they’re still here.’ Like, there’s still this hunger here, this support and that only comes with wrestling.”
She made it clear that those moments showed her just how loyal wrestling fans really are — and that loyalty pushed her to return and give them another run.
“It only comes with this really loyal fan base who watched me from day one, were part of the mission statement of like underdogs for the win and stuck with me and were waiting for me to come back. And so, to be able to kind of give them a title run and a Mania match has been just really incredibly meaningful.”
Now, AJ Lee is heading into another WrestleMania moment — something that once felt completely impossible — and she says it all started with fans refusing to forget about her.
Do you think fan support was the biggest reason AJ Lee returned to WWE, or was this comeback always going to happen eventually? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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