Kevin Nash Criticises AJ Lee's "Phoney S***" WWE Return (WWE News)
WWE and WCW legend Kevin Nash has strong words for AJ Lee's WWE return.
Kevin Nash has criticised AJ Lee's WWE return, laying into the former Divas Champion's "semi-crazy" portrayal.
On his podcast, Kliq This, Nash asserted that Lee would have benefited from a more serious tone in her and CM Punk's feud with Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch. The founding nWo member compared it to Hulk Hogan's 1996 'Hollywood' heel turn to aid his point.
"If you go back in time - the NWO takes off, Hogan drops the leg, and then the next time you see Hulk, he's still in the yellow and red," said Nash (h/t WrestleTalk). "Does it work as well as the Hollywood, or do you go with the complete change because now you've got some f***ing intrigue? I'm only going by shit that works. When she came down to the ring, that was the lowest-rated Netflix Raw that they'd had since they'd been on Netflix."
Nash's point on Raw's viewership is wide of the mark. Lee's return episode (8 September) drew 2.6 million global viewers, per Netflix. The previous week hit the all-time Netflix low of 2.4 million.
Nonetheless, the former Diesel's criticism continued: "The reason she's coming down is not to make a phoney s*** wrestling angle - the reason she's come down is because another woman is putting her hands on her husband and he can't do anything about it."
"If she would have just stormed down, and not even said a word, just went right to her and pummelled the s*** out of her," Nash continued. "Then if she wants to come out the next week and fucking skip, she can do what she wants. If she would have just stormed down, and not even said a word, just went right to her and pummelled the s*** out of her. Then if she wants to come out the next week and fucking skip, she can do what she wants."
AJ Lee, 38, returned to WWE for the first time since 2015 on the 5 September episode of SmackDown. Aligning with husband CM Punk in a rivalry with Becky Lynch and Seth Rollins, she attacked Lynch, leading to a real-life couple vs. real-life couple match at Wrestlepalooza. Punk and Lee defeated the heels on the 20 September premium live event, with Lee scoring the decisive submission.
AJ's character in 2025 is largely indistinguishable from her previous run. To this, Nash said: "So then you have her still kind of playing the 'I'm semi crazy' character, and you have Bayley kind of playing the semi crazy character also. So now we have two mentally unstable women on the same show. That's good? There's no mentally unstable men on the show."