AJ Lee Makes Personal Confession Amid WWE Absence: “I Would Just Explode Into Dust”
Following her WrestleMania 42 loss to Becky Lynch, AJ Lee announced that she would be momentarily stepping away from WWE.
Lee returned to the company after 10 years in September last year and entered into a feud with ‘The Man,’ which culminated in multiple tag team and singles matches.
At the 2026 Elimination Chamber, the 39-year-old star won the Women’s Intercontinental Championship for the first time. She later defeated Bayley in her first title defense on Raw.
AJ Lee soon reignited her feud with Becky, setting up a WrestleMania fight. This time around, Lynch was at the top of her game, and despite putting on a decent performance, Lee failed to retain her title.
She subsequently took to Instagram to upload a lengthy post, where she revealed enjoying her feud with Lynch while also looking back on her time with Roxanne Perez, Lyra Valkyria, and Bayley.
AJ Lee also closed her message with a ‘see you soon,’ although she did not specify the timeline for her WWE return.
AJ Lee Discusses Separating Her WWE Character From Real Life
During a recent interview, AJ Lee, whose real name is AJ Mendez, spoke about the importance of separating her real life from her WWE character, calling it the “healthiest thing.”
Speaking on The Match-Up, she claimed that she prefers to leave her true self behind the curtains and transitions into AJ Lee when she is a professional wrestler.
I think that’s the healthiest thing, is to leave yourself behind the curtain like that. (It’s) The only way I could ever do it, like if I had to go out there as AJ Mendez, I would just explode into dust like there’s just no way I could do it.
But like you almost have to like, healthily disassociate and become this different character, and that’s the person that is performing and has all the storylines and the wins and the losses. They’re not you. You can’t take that home with you or take it personally, and then also it’s like this art form you get to give to the world and then it’s not yours anymore. So they can dissect it and praise it or tear it apart or whatever they want to do.
It’s because it’s part of the show, and so that’s the way I stay the healthiest. Yeah, like the pieces of her come from me, but it’s very much an armor of a character that needs to exist in order to do all of that. It has to be a performance and me has to be protected and not shared with the world in that capacity and so that’s kind of the only way to survive I think as long as I have in like that… in the public world but yeah, it’s so funny because it is like the- almost the opposite.
Like you have to, at least for me, I’m sure there’s wrestlers that it’s them 100 out there, but I don’t know. What do they do? Do they stare at the wall at the end of the night? I would be so drained. I would just have nothing left for myself. [H/T: Fightful]