Publish date: 2024-06-16

is happily retired from in-ring competition, but she looks forward to the challenge of her new wrestling role as a producer for WOW.

The Sessions with Renee Paquette welcomed AJ Lee (AJ Mendez) to the show to discuss her return to wrestling in the form of her executive producing role with WOW (Women Of Wrestling). AJ spoke about how her husband CM Punk’s own return was something they spoke about at length, but she never felt like it inspired her to come out of retirement as an in-ring performer.

“I’m an extremely private person, and he’s the complete opposite.” [laughs] “He’ll be like, ‘Here are the test results from my doctor’ to anyone that will listen and I’m just like such a closed-up person. I don’t know if he shared this, but the conversation was, I think, way longer than people knew. Many things happened in the universe, there were many options. It was a very long time of [asking] ‘What’s the right route here? What’s the safest route? What does [his return] look like?’ It was something I was kind of scared of, just seeing what would emotionally happen, but that was more or less for his stuff. To me, I retired and I’m retired.

“I always say, ‘Never say never but don’t hold your breath’ and then everyone just holds on to the ‘never say never’ [part]. Don’t hold your breath, you’re going to die. [laughs] But I just want him to be emotionally safe and protected, and that’s been the coolest thing about his experience, is that it always feels like he’s in a safe place and has a good group of people around him at AEW, so that makes me very happy. And then there was a lot of ‘let’s go!’ and to me, that didn’t spark anything in me, but the combination of wrestling and writing, wrestling and producing, that was the more comfortable and more exciting — because it was just a challenge — I love it.”

AJ went on to talk about seeing Punk return to television for WWE Backstage, praising Renee for being a positive person in his life at that stage. AJ also said that she is happy with how her in-ring retirement worked out and knows it’s different for Punk, but the timing for her felt great.

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