10 Female Wrestlers Ignored In WWE's Revisionist History

As the most recent star on this list, the full extent of AJ Lee's effect on the future of WWE is hard to gauge.

While earlier wrestlers may be clear inspirations for newer talent, Lee hasn't been out of the business long enough to necessarily have spawned her own imitators. However, even if Lee never again steps inside a wrestling ring, and even if she's never name-dropped in a Hall Of Fame induction speech, the sweeping changes she helped make to WWE programming cannot be understated.

When Lee debuted in 2011, the state of women's wrestling in WWE was... unfortunate, to say the least. The Divas Championship had replaced the Women's Championship, and through no fault of their own, the female talent was constantly shunted into short matches, romance angles, and awkward, unflattering gimmicks. Lee was no exception, with a significant portion of her first few years on the main roster spent bouncing around different relationships. By the time she captured her first championship in 2013, she'd been paired with Daniel Bryan, John Cena, Dolph Ziggler, and Big E Langston.

It was after finally splitting from male wrestlers that AJ Lee began to take center stage, both in and out of the ring. With three title runs and constant storylines, Lee nevertheless knew that she deserved better. After the #GiveDivasAChance hashtag first surfaced, it was Lee who called out Stephanie McMahon on Twitter, and was a constant voice for changing the presentation of women in WWE. Without her popular character and tireless work for a more equal representation, who knows where the women's division would be today?

Sadly, Lee herself never got to experience the new look of the "Women's Revolution", retiring due to injuries in April of 2015. By itself, that would hardly affect her standing with the company, by the truly tragic thing is that the scrubbing clean of her role in WWE has almost nothing to do with her.

Rather, she was caught in the middle between WWE and her husband, CM Punk.

As long as there's animosity between the company and the man who called himself the Best In The World, it seems like AJ Lee might never be cemented in WWE history as the pioneer she was.