Awesome / A.J. Lee

• Winning the Divas Championship at Payback 2013, fulfilling a lifetime goal. That wasn't all though. Her victory came in a match against her (kayfabe former, real life current) best friend Kaitlyn, and in one of the best-received Divas matches in years, receiving 3 stars from Dave Meltzer.
• TLC 2012: Had enough of John Cena's thoughtless toying with her affections and threw him off a ladder, leading Dolph Ziggler to win the match and retain his Money in the Bank briefcase for the World Heavyweight Championship. The pop from the crowd when she turned on Cena was deafening.
• Her epic "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the Total Divas cast on the 8/26/13 Monday Night Raw.
  AJ: “Do you want to know what I see when I look in that ring? Honestly? A bunch of cheap, interchangeable, expendable, useless women. Women who have turned to reality television, because they just weren’t gifted enough to be actresses. And they just weren’t talented enough to be champion. I have done more in one year than all of you have done in your entire collective careers. I have saved your divas division, I have shattered glass ceilings, I have broken down doors. Why? So a bunch of ungrateful, stiff plastic mannequins can waltz on through without even as much as a ‘Thank You’?! You guys can’t even go backstage, and shake my hand and look me in the eye because you know that I worked my entire life to get here. I gave my life to this, and you were just handed fifteen minutes of fame. I didn’t get here because I was cute, or because I came from some famous wrestling family, or because I sucked up to the right people. I got here because I am good. I earned this championship. No matter how many red carpets you guys want to walk, in your four-thousand dollar ridiculous heels, you will never be able to lace up my Chuck Taylor's. You are all worthless excuses for women, and you will never be able to touch me. And that is reality.”
  • Her last line is probably even better, being equal parts a Badass Boast for herself, and a Dare to Be Badass challenge to the Total Divas cast:
  AJ: "Prove me wrong."
  • The even more awesome part about it is how she manages to win the crowd to her side despite the fact that AJ's the heel in the feud.
    • Like her later husband's famous Pipe Bomb, it was arguably a Worked Shoot, and the exact same sentiment has been expressed for real by people like Jim Cornette in his infamous "women wrestlers vs hoes" rant.
• On the September 9, 2013 edition of WWE Raw, while doing guest commentary, she runs circles around Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler and JBL, but no one got it worse than Lawler:
  AJ: I have the date I won this title tattooed on the back of my neck! This is all I cared about.
  Jerry Lawler: So, uh, you got any other tattoos?
  AJ: I think I'm a little too old for you, Jerry, I'm 26. I know you like 'em younger.
  • That was not only a reference to Jerry being a Dirty Old Man and wanting women younger than him (granted, Lawler's in his sixties, so he has some leeway there), but also him being accused in the past of being with barely-legal girls. It also contains a touch of Self-Deprecation, since based on one of the examples on her Funny moments section, she knows she could be mistaken for younger because of her appearance—and takes it all in stride.
  • Even better - Jerry just resorted to acting like a petulant child because he couldn't come up with a decent retort. Hell, he even said she was too ugly for him.
• It's more Funny than Awesome, but when accidentally tagged in against Kane, AJ beats him... by skipping around him like a schoolgirl, and then planting a HUGE kiss on the lips, causing Kane to be utterly flabbergasted, forcibly tag in his partner, and silently walk out of the arena. Either AJ was so damn sweet and cute it sent Kane into a Villainous BSoD, or SO DAMN CRAZY that KANE wanted to put as much distance between him and her as possible! Either way... AJ Lee just sent KANE PACKING FROM A MATCH!!!
  • And even better- when Kane tags Bryan, he does it by carefully walking around AJ so at no point does he have his back to her. That's right, Kane was so freaked out that he wouldn't even turn his back on her for the five seconds it took to tag Bryan.
  • Everything she does prior to that match counts as Awesome. While Bryan and Kane each walk out separately and get their themes played, AJ and Punk walk out together and only his theme is played, reinforcing the idea that she barely counts as a competitor. She spends the entire time up to getting tagged looking terrified, and the commenters keep talking about how having AJ on Punk's side doesn't make it a 2 vs 2 match, it's a 2 vs 1 with handicap match. Finally she gets pulled in to face Kane, walks up to him, still looking terrified... and then she smiles, and the whole match takes a turn into batfuck insane territory.
• Surpassing Maryse's record as longest-reigning Divas Champion at 213 days and counting. At WrestleMania 30, she had held the title for 295 days and successfully defended it against every other diva on the roster. The next night on Raw? It takes someone she's never faced in Paige to lose the title.
• Her match against Kaitlyn on Raw in March 2013. Kaitlyn beats the crap out of her, they end up outside of the ring and Kaitlyn tries to spear her... and AJ simply moves aside and watches Kaitlyn spear herself on the barricade, knocking herself loopy and leaving her unable to continue the match. And AJ spends the entire time from the spear onwards smiling as she goes back into the ring and lies down like she's watching TV.
• She won the Divas Battle Royale by very effectively Playing Possum: early in the match, she gets kicked in the face and pretends to be knocked out until there's only one other contestant left, Layla. Layla thinks she's won until the ref tells her that to win, she must get every opponent out of the ring. So she does her best to haul an 'unconscious' AJ over the ropes... until AJ pulls away and kicks her out of the ring.
• Paul Heyman proposes to her, saying that he likes them young, dumb, uninhibited and ambitious. AJ's response is to pretend to consider the offer for several seconds... and then she slaps him and walks out.
• Back when she was dating Daniel Bryan, at one point in a match between him and Kane, she was watching outside the ring when Kane started brutally beating up Bryan. AJ's response was to jump onto Kane's back and start clawing at his eyes. It stopped Kane in his tracks until Bryan pulled her out of the ring.
• AJ Lee Against The World, a video released the day before WrestleMania 30. It can best be summed up as 'You guys think you can beat me? Bring it the fuck on, I'll take you all down.'
  • And as it turned out, she wasn't lying... but sadly, it didn't last.
• AJ flatly telling Vickie Guerrero to either fire her or shut the hell up.
• AJ refereeing Punk vs Bryan at Money In The Bank 2012. Once she gets back after accidentally getting hit by Punk, she picks up a chair, goes back into the ring, pretends to offer it to both men and then sets it down in the middle of the ring, steps back and reclines against the ropes, smiling smugly as they fight for it.
• Returning in epic fashion on the 6/30/14 Raw, taking the Divas Championship back from Paige in a similar Batman Gambit that garnered Paige the title, capped off with an Ironic Echo slap!
• Her promos before and after a match with Brie Bella, the night after she lost the title to Nikki. Not only did she successfully blast the twins by pointing out that they had to work together to beat her (and even then it wasn't even in anything resembling a real match), she also told them that "Talent isn't sexually transmitted".
• In real life, after Stephanie McMahon tweeted in support of Patricia Arquette, thanking her for fighting for women's rights, AJ tweeted Stephanie, essentially calling her a hypocrite for talking about fighting for women's rights when the Divas do just as much as the men and get paid a fraction of what the men get.
  • Even better when you think about it is that WWE could not punish her for this like they have done with Zack Ryder and the Colons, and other lower card talent complaining about their spot. If she'd received even the mildest depush from this, feminists, WWE fans, basically everyone would call them on it and create a PR black hole. Also of note is Darren Young doing the same regarding their tour of a homophobic country around the same time.