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WWE star Bayley earned the opportunity to challenge AJ Lee for the Women’s Intercontinental Championship earlier this week when she won a gauntlet match on “Monday Night Raw.”
The match, which will take place on Monday, is nearly 13 years in the making. The last time the two professional wrestlers competed against each other was on Aug. 21, 2013, for the Divas Championship. Lee, a veteran at that point, got the better of Bayley, who was still a newcomer.
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Bayley celebrates her win with Lyra Valkyria after the Woman’s Gauntlet Match during Monday Night RAW at Climate Pledge Arena on March 9, 2026 in Seattle, Washington. (Meg Oliphant/WWE via Getty Images)
A lot has changed since then. Lee departed the company in 2015 while Bayley went on to become a four-time women’s champion and two-time women’s tag team champion. Bayley helped shape the WWE women’s division into what it is presently. The Women’s Intercontinental Championship wasn’t even a glimmer in anyone’s eye five years ago let alone 13 years ago.
Lee returned to WWE in September, potentially putting the two wrestling greats on a collision course with each other at some point. With Lee winning the title against Becky Lynch, Bayley was able to solidify her path toward a chance at championship gold.
“Man, it’s so weird. So weird to think, it’s just like the universe works in mysterious ways,” Bayley told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. “I remember 13 years ago, getting that text that I would be wrestling AJ Lee for the divas title and I had just started my character stuff on NXT. I remember that seeming like, ‘What do you mean? What am I? Why? What? This can’t be possible.’ And that’s sort of what I feel like now, just because nobody thought that AJ was going to come back, let alone there be an intercontinental women’s championship, let alone she’d be the champion or ever.”
“It just seems like one of those things where she would just come back as a one time, dream match type thing,” she continued. “And even when she did come back, and I’ve told this to her, I was just happy to have her around. We’ve kept in touch these last 10 years and been actual friends outside of the business and just to think that now I get to be in the ring with her, I wasn’t like, ‘I need to have a match with you,’ because I got my match. I just wanted to have my friend around and the fact that we got to do this now, it just seems right. Now, I’m like, ‘Of course we’re supposed to have this match together.’
Bayley with an elbow drop to Ivy Nile in the Womans Gauntlet Match during Monday Night RAW at Climate Pledge Arena on March 9, 2026 in Seattle, Washington. (Meg Oliphant/WWE via Getty Images)
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“I would love, love, love to win this championship because I have to finish my grand slam role. I gotta get this one. I gotta get to the United States one and I gotta get to WrestleMania. So, I have a lot of feelings going into this and I kinda have to put aside the nostalgia feeling of it.”
Lee’s return was a shock to the WWE Universe when she teamed up with her real-life husband, CM Punk, to take on Lynch and Seth Rollins. Still, for many WWE fans, Lee’s return still seems unreal.
She returned on an episode of “Friday Night SmackDown,” which took place in Chicago at the time. Bayley told Fox News Digital she was in the city filming something and heard the rumors that Lee may have been returning.
Even as best of friends, Bayley said Lee never tipped her hand.
“She did not say anything to me,” she said. “I had heard rumors. I’m a big believer and I hold a lot of hope for a lot of things that I truly feel and I just so happened to be in Chicago to film something that day for SmackDown and I was like, I’m just going to stick around. I don’t need to go back to my hotel. I’m just going to stick around and yeah, I was right. And I’m so happy that I followed my heart but she was very quiet about it.”
AJ Lee returns to SmackDown at Allstate Arena on September 5, 2025 in Rosemont, Illinois. (Rich Freeda/WWE via Getty Images)
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Soon, the two will meet in a dream match of sorts.
Bayley and Lee will face off with the Women’s Intercontinental Championship on the line Monday night on RAW. It can be seen on Netflix, starting at 8 p.m. ET.
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