AJ Lee traced her underdog path to WWE on State of Mind with Maurice Benard, from a rough childhood to the cheese-and-crackers hustle that funded her tryout.
Mendez said the environment she grew up in shaped how she was raised to handle conflict.
“We lived in very dangerous neighborhoods. If you were going to get into a fight, you were either going to win or lose, so they had to prepare you to win. You’d get rewarded if you successfully beat somebody’s ass,” she said.
Saving For The Tryout
Money was the first obstacle to a WWE career, and Mendez described an extreme way she stretched her paychecks. “You had to pay to try out for WWE and I didn’t have any money, so I saved up all my paychecks. I worked at a spa, and there was a cracker tray and cheese. I’d just eat that every day. That’s how I saved money to try out, and I got signed,” she said.
Once she was in, Mendez found the character that defined her almost by accident during a promo. “They said just cut a promo, but something in my heart was like, ‘Be a bitch.’ This character came out and I realized that’s my sweet spot, performing larger than life,” she said. That persona carried through memorable moments of her run, including the night she and Kaitlyn ignored instructions during their Divas Championship match.
The Old “Keep Going” Culture
She did not romanticize everything about the era she came up in, criticizing the way injuries were once handled. “A lot of the culture when I was younger was you just keep going, because it’s going to keep going without you. So if you’re injured, you just kind of fake it and say you’re fine and keep going injured. That’s not cool,” Mendez said.