Add as a preferred source on Google With just 30 minutes left before she walked through the curtain on the September 5, 2025 SmackDown in Chicago, AJ Lee still had not signed her WWE contract.
The deal was finalized backstage shortly before her return, which ended an absence of more than ten years and placed the former Divas Champion in the CM Punk vs. Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch rivalry.
These details are part of the third season of WWE: Unreal, which premiered Tuesday, July 21.
In the first episode, Lee recalls that her character was born in a division dominated by Bikini Battle Royals and a physical standard she didn’t fit.
“To understand what my character was back in the day, you kind of have to understand the landscape. I came into a world that was Bikini Battle Royals. There was no place for anyone who wasn’t a perfect 10 supermodel, and I was not bringing that. And I knew that coming in, and I’m proud to be a Jersey 6, you know? I really had to fight and scratch and claw and prove myself to sort of get noticed. Unexpectedly, through that, the fans connected to me.”
“I needed to change things for everyone who came behind me, for every woman in that locker room. So that became my goal.”
Lee also recalled that a return was not in her personal plans. She said the combination of physical issues, mental health, and everything happening inside and outside the company made 2015 a breaking point.
“In the last year of my career, so much was happening inside the company, outside of the company, with my husband in the company, with my physical health, with my mental health, that it just was this, like perfect storm of, I’m not okay right now. I felt like I hit every single milestone on my ten-year wish list of dreams. I did everything. But the tension, the fans, none of that means hit if you’re not alive to enjoy it. I stepped away very content. I wrote my first book. That became a New York Times bestseller. I’ve written comic books. I wrote my first film. I was very much positive I was never coming back.”
That changed when Paul “Triple H” Levesque called and brought up the possibility of working her into the storyline with Lynch.
“All of a sudden, I get a call that says Paul Levesque. He sort of threw out this idea with Becky. It was the perfect time to pay homage to these fans who have had my back for so long. I ended up saying yes.”
“There’s a lot of factors that go into the day. 30 minutes before I go out there I didn’t even have the contract signed. That was a little nerve-wracking.”
The documentary also shows Lee signing the contract alongside Levesque, a moment that ended a public dispute dating back to 2015, when she called out Stephanie McMahon for better pay and more TV time for women.
“To know I’m signing this contract where I am getting paid the way my husband’s getting paid, where I’m being treated like an equal, it was a boss-ass moment, I’m not gonna lie.” h/t False Finish
Lee made her in-ring return at Wrestlepalooza on September 20, 2025, making Lynch tap out to the Black Widow. On February 28, 2026, she captured the Women’s Intercontinental Championship, but lost the title to Lynch at WrestleMania 42 on April 18 after a 48-day reign.