AJ Lee is back in WWE, and the entire women’s locker room will be rejoicing.
It’s been a decade since the former Divas Champion’s last appearance, with plenty of the current crop of superstars growing up watching her in their teens.
Among them was Roxanne Perez, who has been extremely vocal about how much AJ, 38, inspired her to chase her dreams of becoming a wrestler in WWE.
‘I think I always knew I wanted to be a WWE superstar,’ she exclusively told Metro during an interview with our wrestling expert Alistair McGeorge at WrestleMania 39 in Hollywood.
‘At first it was actually The Rock,’ she said of her early influences. ‘I remember turning on the TV and seeing him. I already knew who he was because of Hollywood and movies and what not.
‘I was like, “Wow, this is pretty crazy!” How electrifying he was, I was like, “Wow, I want to do that!” And then I saw AJ Lee.’
For Roxanne, already a two-time NXT Women’s Champion with two tag team title runs to her name at the age of just 23, seeing AJ on screen was when everything clicked.
‘At the time, you saw Kelly Kelly – and she’s so amazing, but I couldn’t relate because I don’t look like her,’ she recalled.
‘To see someone like AJ Lee where she’s a tom boy, she was a fan, she was Latina, she was small. That really related to me so much, and it helped me believe, “OK, I could really do this, I could be a WWE superstar.” ‘
When we caught up with Roxanne earlier this year in Las Vegas for WrestleMania 41, she admitted once she set her sights on WWE, she ‘never imaged doing anything else’, even during training.
‘I started pretty young, 13 years old. For some reason I just, I just had a feeling that it was gonna happen if I just got going,’ she admitted. ‘I just, I feel like I manifested it, I envisioned it, and now I’m living it.’
Roxanne can be seen on Monday Night Raw each week teaming with Raquel Rodriguez as a member of the Judgment Day, and while she acts very confident on screen, she admitted that ‘definitely didn’t come naturally’.
‘When I first walked into WWE, I definitely was not as confident as I am now. I was definitely nervous to be surrounded by all the people that I looked up to,’ she recalled.
However, she soon set her sights on not only matching her idols but surpassing them.
‘I realised that, like, they’re my equals. I could be them one day, and I could do more than them one day,’ she smiled. So, that’s the mentality that I had to have, and I think that’s got me pretty far.’
WWE Raw airs Monday nights at 1am on Netflix. WWE is returning to the UK and Europe in January 2026.
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