The first competitor for this year’s Mae Young Classic was announced this week. I, for one, am probably way too excited about it. Once you reach my age, you get nostalgic for wrestlers making a come back. Especially when its a wrestler that you had a certain fondness for years ago. How have they changed? Will they recapture their former glory? Can they attain more glory than before?

Season 3 of the original version of NXT is fondly remembered as a dumpster fire of a television show. It did introduce mainstream viewers to a number of women that would go on to fame & fortune in the wrestling business. AJ Lee went on to become one of WWE’s most beloved & successful female competitors in history. Maxine went on to greater glory as Lucha Underground’s Catrina. Naomi has held the SmackDown Women’s Championship & is a popular member of WWE’s main roster today.

The winner of the competition had a pretty solid career herself, though not many would have predicted it at the time. Kaitlyn wasn’t even supposed to be on the show. She was a replacement for 6’9 Lindsay Heyward, who pulled out of the competition just before the first episode. I didn’t even have any notes on her for my preview.

The Introduction

For whatever reason, Kaitlyn immediately connected with the NXT Universe. I’m sure it mostly had to do with her Pro, Vickie Guerrero. Vickie was always a master at getting a crowd to hate her guts and to like whoever she was railing against. The dynamic between Vickie & Kaitlyn ended up better for the show than a Vickie/Aloisia pairing would have been. It gave fans an underdog that constantly had to put up with Vickie’s nonsense. Kaitlyn wasn’t exactly a master on the microphone, nobody on the show was, but her lack of natural ability was a part of her charm.

Another part of her charm…well, let’s be honest. Celeste Bonin is & was an attractive woman.

Nothing against AJ, Naomi or the other women on the show at the time, but Kaitlyn was on a different level. She had that bodybuilder/fitness model thing going for her, along with pictures like the one posted above. I remember everybody being very excited when they were discovered. I’m not sure what it says about me that these are the things I remember from those days.

The Main Run

You can say Kaitlyn was underutilized. She wasn’t alone, as pretty much all of the women on the roster were underutilized during her time with the company. Women’s wrestling was not a priority for WWE in the early 2010s. Kaitlyn didn’t get much to do, but when she got opportunities she did well with them. She won the Divas Championship on the 20th anniversary episode of Raw, and her title reign led to the feud most people probably remember her for, a feud against her former best friend & tag team partner AJ Lee.

AJ was the best in-ring performer among the women at the time, and Kaitlyn never looked better (in the ring) than when AJ was selling her offense. Those spears looked brutal.

Charlotte Flair wishes AJ was around to take her spear. The AJ feud was the best we saw from Kaitlyn, and it was also the last we saw from her. She left WWE to pursue other interests. Marriage. A clothing line. Fitness. Pretty much the usual stuff except I don’t think she tried anything musically.

Sadly, the marriage didn’t work out. There were issues stemming from it that she needed to work through. Kaitlyn looked like she was doing fine if you looked at her social media accounts, but she was anything but fine. A lot of us go through similar issues, deal with them the same way & end up worse than we were previously.

The Comeback

The Mae Young Classic is two years old, but themes are already starting to develop. Serena Deeb entered last year’s tournament as a veteran that had fallen on hard times, but got better & attempted to use a strong showing in the tournament to further her career. She made it to the second round & lost a tough match to Piper Nevin, but it paid off in the end. Now she’s a trainer at the WWE Performance Center.

Kaitlyn will be playing the role that Deeb played last year. She re-entered the wrestling business early this year and has been training for this moment. Will she succeed? We certainly hope so. There’s certainly nothing wrong with likeable attractive women being used on WWE television. Hopefully this is something we can all agree on.