AJ Lee

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AJ Lee United StatesUnited States
AJ Lee (2015)

AJ Lee (2015)
Data
Ring name AJ
AJ Lee
April Lee
Miss April
Additions to names "Black Widow"
"Crazy Chick"
"Geek Goddess"
height 157 cm
Fighting weight 45 kg
birth March 19, 1987 (age 33)
Union City , New Jersey , United States
Announced from Union City, New Jersey
debut September 29, 2007
retirement 3rd April 2015

April Jeanette Brooks (* 19th March 1987 in Union City , New Jersey as April Jeanette Mendez ) is an American author and former wrestler who until April 2015, the WWE was under contract. Her greatest successes so far are the triple receipt of the WWE Divas Championship and the second-longest reign for this title after Nikki Bella with 295 days .

Life

Childhood and youth

April Jeanette Mendez grew up as the daughter of a vehicle manufacturer and a housewife as the youngest of three children. The family has its roots in Puerto Rico . Mendez said of her childhood that her family struggled with poverty, mental illness and drug addiction. They often moved between apartments and sometimes lived in motels or in their cars when they couldn't afford rent.

Brooks first came into contact with wrestling through her brother and has been a fan of this entertainment sport ever since. After graduating from high school, she worked as a caretaker in a daycare center, as a cashier and as a secretary to get money for training as a professional wrestler. She gave some of the money to her family because they had financial difficulties. Because of a lack of funds, Brooks finally finished her studies after six months at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University without a degree.

Independent Leagues (2007-2009)

After leaving college, she enrolled in a wrestling school. On October 10, 2008 Brooks debuted under the ring name "Miss April" in the wrestling promotion Women Superstars Uncensored (WSU) and lost her first match against Soul Sister Jana. In February 2009 she was allowed to defeat the Beatdown Betties together with Brooke Carter and thus received the WSU Tag Team Championship.

World Wrestling Entertainment (2009-2015)

Florida Championship Wrestling and NXT (2009-2011)

On May 5, 2009 Brooks was able to sign a contract with the market leader World Wrestling Entertainment . She played the first match for their training league FCW on August 14, 2009 under the name "April Lee". In September 2009 her ring name was changed to "AJ Lee". She contested a program there for the title of Queen of FCW and defeated Serena on February 4, 2010 to get this.

On August 31, 2010 it was announced that she would be participating in the third season of the WWE NXT series under the name "AJ" . There, young talents were presented to the wider public in order to prepare them for the change to the main squad. She was given Primo as a mentor. She finished the season in third place in November 2010. Brooks then appeared again at FCW and won the FCW Divas Championship . She was also briefly seen in the following seasons of NXT .

Main roster debut and Raw General Manager (2011-2013)

In May 2011, she made her debut alongside Kaitlyn on the SmackDown show in the main squad and formed the Chickbusters team with her . Until August of that year, Natalya was at their side as a mentor.

In November 2011, Brooks began a storyline with Daniel Bryan that became a relationship after Bryan won the World Heavyweight Championship . After Bryan lost the title, the relationship was ended by him as he blamed Brooks for his loss of the title at WrestleMania XXVIII . In the course of this, she took on the character of a mentally troubled woman and then feuded against Bryan. She also turned to his new feuding opponents, such as WWE Champion CM Punk and Kane , by intervening in matches or acting as a referee herself before they reconciled in July 2012.

At the 1,000th edition of the WWE Raw show , Brooks was named RAW's new general manager by Mr. McMahon during her staged wedding to Daniel Bryan . She held this post until her resignation on October 22, 2012. Brooks played against Cena in his match against Dolph Ziggler at the major event WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2012 . Since the following evening, AJ Lee briefly formed a group with Dolph Ziggler and Big E , but this was dissolved again.

WWE Divas Champion and Resignation (2013-2015)

At the Payback event on June 16, 2013, Brooks won the WWE Divas Championship against Kaitlyn . Tamina Snuka then stood by her side for a long time before she was injured and had to be operated on. Brooks' reign, the longest in the history of the title at 295 days, ended on April 7, 2014 when RAW lost to Paige . Brooks returned to RAW on June 30, 2014 and won the Divas Championship from Paige again. At Summerslam on August 17, 2014, she lost her title to Paige again, but was able to recapture it on September 21, 2014 at Night of Champions . At the Survivor Series on November 23, 2014, she lost the title to Nikki Bella .

In April 2015, WWE announced Brooks' resignation via Twitter. After the reasons were initially unclear, especially since she had just won a match with Paige against the Bella Twins at Wrestlemania 31 and was also victorious in the following Raw edition, she later commented on it in her biography. On the one hand, her cervical vertebrae were affected by the wrestling, and on the other hand, she felt caught between her chairs when her husband left the WWE controversial. However, she wanted to continue until she achieved her goals in wrestling.

After the wrestling career

After wrestling, she wrote her biography Crazy Is My Superpower: How I Triumphed by Breaking Bones, Breaking Hearts, and Breaking the Rules , which was released on April 4, 2017 on Crown Archetype and became a New York Times bestseller . In the book, she also wrote openly about depression and the phenomenon of bipolar disorder , which were inherited in her family and which she also suffers from. The success spurred her to tackle another book that is said to contain anecdotes and events that she left out in the first book. The first book is also to be implemented as a television series.

As an actress, she is currently in front of the camera for a remake of the David Cronenberg classic Rabid - The Roaring Death .

In other media

Mendez was one of sixteen participants who took part in a video game tournament as part of WrestleMania XXVIII Axxess . Was played WWE '12 . In the final, Mendez beat Mark Henry , becoming the first woman to win this annual tournament. For this she received an entry in the Gamer's Edition of the Guinness Book of Records .

In the by Dwayne Johnson produced biopic Fighting with My Family by Stephen Merchant on the life of Paige's parents is from the NXT -Wrestlerin Thea Trinidad shown.

Private life

AJ Lee has been married to former wrestler CM Punk since June 13, 2014 . They divide their time between homes in Chicago, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. AJ Lee sees himself as a tomboy with a penchant for comics, animes, and video games. She has the numerical date of her first WWE Divas Championship win tattooed in stick figures on her neck.

AJ Lee is involved in the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

Wrestling successes

AJ Lee as WWE Divas Champion (2014).
WWE
Florida Championship Wrestling

Pro Wrestling Illustrated

  • Woman of the Year (2012-2014)
  • Second place in top 50 female wrestlers (2014)
Women Superstars Uncensored
  • 1 × WSU Tag Team Champion - (with Brooke Carter)
  • 1 × WSU / NWS King and Queen of the Ring - (with Jay Lethal ) (2009)

Wrestling Observer Newsletter

  • Worst Worked Match of the Year (2013) as part of a 14-Woman Elimination Tag Team Match in the Survivor Series

bibliography

  • AJ Mendez Brooks: Crazy Is My Superpower: How I Triumphed by Breaking Bones, Breaking Hearts, and Breaking the Rules . Crown Archetype 2017. ISBN 978-0-451-49666-9 .

Filmography

Without wrestling appearances

  • 2012: The JBL & Cole Show (talk show, one episode)
  • 2013: Total Divas (TV series, one episode)
  • 2013: Chris Hardwick 's All-Star Celebrity Bowling (benefit show, one episode)
  • 2014: Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery (animation, dubbing)
  • 2014: The Monday Night War: WWE vs. WCW (documentary series, three episodes)
  • 2015: The Madden 16 (miniseries)
  • 2016: The Evolution of Punk (documentary)
  • 2017: Last Call with Carson Daly (talk show)
  • 2018: Then, Now, Forever: Evolution of WWE's Women's Division (documentary)
  • 2018: WGN Morning News (Interview)

Video game appearances

  • 2012: WWE '13 (as DLC)
  • 2013: WWE 2k14
  • 2014: WWE 2k15
  • 2014: WWE SuperCard

Web links

Commons : AJ Lee  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b James Wortman: Is AJ Lee the worst GM of all time? wwe.com, October 23, 2012, accessed January 22, 2013 .
  2. ^ AJ Mendez Brooks: Crazy is my superpower: how I triumphed by breaking bones, breaking hearts, and breaking the rules . First ed. New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-451-49666-9 , pp. 24-27 .
  3. ^ AJ Mendez Brooks' memoir Tackles Mental Illness, Family Dysfunction . In: WTTW News . April 11, 2017 ( wttw.com [accessed November 14, 2018]).
  4. ↑ a b WWE's AJ Lee Convinces Us to Watch Pro Wrestling Again . In: Esquire . August 20, 2012 ( esquire.com [accessed November 14, 2018]).
  5. ^ AJ stood up Bryan at the altar and was named Permanent Raw General Manager by Mr. McMahon , accessed on January 27, 2013 from wwe.com
  6. ↑ BREAKING: AJ Lee (April Mendez) has decided to retire from in-ring competition with WWE. We wish AJ the very best , accessed on April 3, 2015 from twitter.com/WWE
  7. ↑ WWE Diva AJ Lee retires from in-ring competition . In: FOX Sports . April 3, 2015 ( foxsports.com [accessed November 14, 2018]).
  8. ↑ Mendez Brooks 2017. Chapter 14
  9. ↑ Hardcover Nonfiction Books - Best Sellers - April 23, 2017 - The New York Times . April 23, 2017 ( nytimes.com [accessed November 14, 2018]).
  10. ↑ a b AJ Lee: Breaking Tradition. In: NAMI. July 12, 2017, accessed November 14, 2018 .
  11. ↑ April Mendez Brooks on Her Candid New Book and Her Days as WWE's AJ Lee. In: IGN. April 4, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2018 (American English).
  12. ^ Matt Fowler, AJ Lee's Life is Becoming a TV Series. In: IGN. December 19, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2018 (American English).
  13. ↑ a b Various News: AJ Lee Shares Set Photo From Rabid, Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa Are Counting Down the Days Until TakeOver | 411MANIA. Retrieved November 14, 2018 (American English).
  14. ^ AJ Lee talks video games, pro wrestling . In: ESPN.com . August 9, 2012 ( espn.com [accessed November 14, 2018]).
  15. ↑ First female WWE Superstar Challenge winner . In: Guinness World Records . March 20, 2012 ( guinnessworldrecords.com [accessed November 14, 2018]).
  16. ^ Josh Foster: AJ Lee And Paige Comment On Their "Fighting With My Family" Counterparts . In: StillRealToUs.com . February 24, 2017 ( stillrealtous.com [accessed November 14, 2018]).
  17. ↑ WWE: "Yes, I do!" - CM Punk and AJ Lee married on cagematch.de
  18. ^ Former WWE Superstar AJ Mendez Brooks Talks Honesty on Social Media, Spooning Her Mini-NES and Her New Book . In: pastemagazine.com . April 11, 2017 ( pastemagazine.com [accessed November 14, 2018]).
  19. ↑ PWTorch.com - CALDWELL'S WWE TLC PPV RESULTS 12/16: Complete "virtual-time" coverage of final 2012 PPV - Cena vs. Ziggler main event, Shield makes a statement. Retrieved November 14, 2018 .
  20. ↑ PWTorch.com - CALDWELL'S WWE RAW RESULTS 12/8: Complete "virtual-time" coverage of live Raw - Slammys theme, final TLC PPV hype, Cena vs. Show, Seth Green, returning stars, more. Retrieved November 14, 2018 .
  21. ↑ PWTorch.com - RAW NEWS: "Big" NXT debut concludes Raw, teased MITB cash-in, Punk-Rock hype, full list of returns & Slammy winners. Retrieved November 14, 2018 .
  22. ↑ PWI Awards. In: Pro Wrestling Illustrated. Retrieved November 14, 2018 .
  23. ↑ Pro Wrestling Illustrated (PWI) Female 50 for 2014 - The Internet Wrestling Database. Retrieved November 14, 2018 .
  24. ↑ AJ Lee (Character) - Giant Bomb. Retrieved November 14, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Lee, AJ
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brooks, April Jeanette; Mendez, April Jeanette
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American wrestler
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1987
PLACE OF BIRTH Union City , New Jersey