Former three-time WWE Divas Champion AJ Mendez (Lee) recently sat down with Renee Paquette in an interview for Paquette’s podcast “The Sessions.”
In this interview, Mendez first talks about her returning to the wrestling industry as a producer for the upcoming relaunch of Women of Wrestling (WOW). She talks about being an author, mental health advocate, and much more.
The two talk about an upcoming movie that Mendez co-wrote the screenplay for which is titled Blade of the 47 Ronin (a sequel to the 2013 film 47 Ronin). After discussing the premise of the film, Paquette asked Mendez how much her wrestling career helped her now in her writing career.
“So much, there’s so many transferable skills. I remember I was very fortunate that I was given a lot of trust with my promos and I think that started from the angle I had with Kaitlyn, and Tom Casiello was the writer. He was very much collaborative. We would put promos together as this group.
I remember this really big promo where I was revealed as her (Kaitlyn) secret admirer. I wrote a first draft of it and sent it to Tom and then Tom gave it to Stephanie McMahon and then she did edits on it and we sat down and practiced it and I added these edits in. It was so cool to see that she had a lot of writing experience. So it was this mentorship for the whole arc with me and Tom and then the one particular promo with me and Stephanie. I was given so much freedom. This is every insane thing I want to say, can we do this? They just let me do my whole promo. That feeling of, ‘I wrote this,’ and you let me put it on TV. And perform it.”
She continues, “We were terrified because this was a time when women didn’t get to talk, ever. So I remember we were shitting our pants because we were like they are just going to do the Austin ‘What’ chant the whole time. We had a game plan on what to do and Stephanie was just like talk over it. We all thought it was going to happen and it didn’t. They were listening to us talk. That’s when I was like, oh, I know how to get people’s attention. From there they trusted me to write my own promos.”
Mendez goes on to talk about her infamous pipebomb promo as one of her favorites.
For the full interview, you can check it out below.
