AJ Lee (April Mendez) has remained retired from the world of professional wrestling since April 2015. But when her husband, CM Punk, made his comeback last August for All Elite Wrestling, many fans started to hope that it might get the ball rolling on her return to the ring. She has stepped back into the business by working as an executive producer and color commentator for the WOW— Women of Wrestling promotion but told Renee Paquette on The Sessions this week that her opinion on competing hasn’t changed.
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“The conversation was a conversation that was way longer than people knew, with many things happening in the universe. There were many options. It was a very long time of, ‘what’s the right route? What’s the safest route? What does it look like?’ It was something I was scared of, just seeing what would emotionally happen. That was more or less for his stuff. To me, I retired and I retired,” Lee said (h/t Fightful). “I always say, ‘never say never, but don’t hold your breath’ and everyone holds on to the ‘never say never.’ [laughing] Don’t hold your breath, you’re going to die. I just wanted him to be emotionally safe and protected. That’s been the coolest thing about his experience. It feels like he’s always in a safe space and has a good group of people around him in AEW, that makes me very happy. There was a lot of ‘Let’s go!’ To me, that didn’t spark anything in me, but the combination of wrestling and writing, wrestling and producing, that was more comfortable and more exciting because it was a challenge.
“I always felt great about the timing of when I retired. You never want to be the last girl at the party, you want to go out on top. Everything felt so perfect and tied up in a bow. I know his experience is different. To me, I didn’t want him, or me with WOW, anything to feel like you were the person going back to hang out with high school kids. I was hoping it wasn’t that and it seems to not be,” he added.
She talked about AEW’s women’s roster elsewhere in the interview, saying that she feels Serena Deeb is the best wrestler the company has. Deeb came up short in trying to win the AEW Women’s World Championship against Thunder Rosa this past Sunday at Double or Nothing.
