Turned on John Cena to join Dolph Ziggler, claiming that Cena had toyed with her emotions and broke her heart when he was unwilling to let her join him at ringside for a match...but Ziggler had insulted her so much she attacked him in the locker room. Then again, this is AJ we're talking about.
She hooked up with Ziggler precisely because of what he did that night. Number one, the part about making someone her entire world over the tiniest sliver of attention had to have struck a nerve for a reason—maybe Cena didn't love her back anymore than Daniel Bryan, Kane, or CM Punk ever did. From there, she was bound to perceive Cena's continued hot-and-cold way of dealing with her as toying with her heart and thus turn against him for it, as even to the sane it seemed as if he was getting her hopes up while keeping her at arm's length romantically. With that being the case, in that one moment of telling her off Dolph was more honest with her than any guy she'd tried to be with (or vice versa)—and he did it all without calling her crazy. It stands to "reason", for lack of a better term, that in her mind he would be the most real and passionate romantic partner she could have in WWE. And so far it's worked out so well she currently has the most foundation she's had mentally since Bryan dumped her…
That headscratcher is no longer a problem. In fact, none of this is even a thing anymore. Between Ziggler and Alberto Del Rio's Face/Heel Double-Turn, along with AJ and Big E becoming more focused on torturing Kaitlyn together, she and Dolph gradually grew distant as a couple until she cost Dolph a world championship rematch and he decided he'd had enough. As a result, AJ went full-on bazonkas for awhile with her no-longer-requited love for Dolph and arguably Kaitlyn, before focusing her energies on dissing the cast of Total Divas while keeping her Divas Championship away from them. Speaking of which…
The real reason she cut the promo on the Total Divas cast, under the pretense of wanting to 'save' the Divas' division:
WWE's shows typically feature one women's match and it's almost always a Divas' Championship match. As the reigning Divas' Champion, AJ gets priority. Meaning she will likely be in every women's match as long as she is champion. But at SummerSlam before she cut the promo, there were two Diva matches. The Natalya vs. Brie Bella match had nothing to do whatsoever with the Divas' Championship - i.e. it wasn't a #1 contenders' match or anything. While AJ was merely in a mixed tag match.
Total Divas was not expected to succeed. Fans believed the Girl-Show Ghetto would come into play and it wouldn't catch on. However its sudden popularity justified WWE putting a match featuring the cast members on a big PPV. AJ is bound to feel threatened by that, suddenly being fearful of her spot and having to compete with the success of the show.
So her promo ensured that the cast mates would challenge her. Think about it, who is the common denominator in all of it? AJ. Although members of the cast would come forward to challenge her, the attention would still all be on AJ. Even if she's not a member of the show, she's still finding a way to be prominently featured by piggybacking off the show's success. By picking a fight with the cast, she guarantees that she'll be featured.
She interferes in a triple threat match, seemingly not considering that she'll have to defend against all of them. But at the time Brie was still a heel and there could only be one winner. A Fatal 4 Way is much easier for AJ to hide in than a singles match. She could easily bank on Brie to turn on Natalya and Naomi and let them fight amongst themselves - which is exactly what happened. Bear in mind that out of the rest of the cast, Nikki was still injured, Cameron was still fairly new while Eva and Jojo were untrained. So AJ felt she would prove her dominance by winning the Fatal 4 Way. However she wasn't expecting the cast to unite against her. After failing to get Alicia Fox, Aksana and Layla to do her dirty work for her, she recruits Tamina. She manipulated the first three while with Tamina she was straight up and made her a bodyguard.
So basically the entire situation is AJ trying to make sure she got all the attention and the Divas division remained entirely about her - and biting off more than she could chew.
Why is AJ constantly playing along with Paige's manipulative head games like she's trying to catch up to her, even though she knows how completely disingenuous it all is, even as it crosses from Friendly Enemy territory to in-match pseudo-lesbianism? Like with Ziggler above, it's precisely because of how phony Paige is. Not only is AJ is the genuine cloudcuckoolander of the two (it's Paige whose skip is the imitation, after all), she's the one who's used to naturally dipping into Les Yay with close friends and enemies without it ever becoming a plot point. AJ knows she's willing to at least entertain crossing boundaries that Paige might not be. By "returning" Paige's "advances", she's throwing her off course and trying to push her to a breaking point that she can take advantage of to turn the tables. This would be confirmed when AJ's plan beat out both Paige's and Nikki Bella's plans as AJ recaptured the title at Night of Champions, and Paige subsequently abandoned her strategy altogether.
As an alternative to Career Versus Family above, her retirement could have very well been a simple case of "I did what I came here to do" from a storyline standpoint: She had become a multiple-time Divas champion and one of her last acts before calling it quits was setting up the #GiveDivasAChance movement. Not only does the future for women's wrestling in WWE look bright by all indications of the current NXT roster, but rumors coming out of the WWE offices say that Triple H and Stephanie are prepared to move the Divas' division in the direction back toward quality matches and quality booking a la Trish and Lita's peak in the mid-2000s, and the only thing standing in their way is Vince McMahon himself.
Who they clearly convinced, as the very movement she started indeed resulted in the simultaneous main roster debuts of Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch (with Bayley following a few months later). Note that those women would become full-blown main eventers. Not just on Raw, or some minor PPV, but for Charlotte and Becky in 2019, then Sasha in 2021* Night 1, it was the main event of WrestleMania! AJ Lee, especially the "Pipe bombshell" promo, was the real start of the Women's Revolution (and yes, "Women's", as the patronizing "Divas" moniker was finally dropped).
