Former Divas Champ & Current Women's IC Champion vs. Bayley Set for Raw on March 16th
On the March 9th, 2026 episode of Monday Night Raw, Bayley became the top contender for the Women’s Intercontinental Championship after winning a six-woman Gauntlet Match. She is set to go against the current Women’s Intercontinental Champion, AJ Lee, next week. This upcoming match is both AJ and Bayley’s dream match to go up against each other. This dream match is 10 years in the making.
Lee had posted on social media before Bayley even became the top contender for the Women’s Intercontinental Championship, explaining, “My dream match would be Bayley. I think I got to have one match with her way back in the day when I had the Diva's Title, so it'll be really cool to see who we are now and get my hands on her in the ring." During her last match in 2015, before retiring, AJ was seen wearing Bayley’s “I’m a Hugger” merchandise. Bayley acknowledged that moment, calling AJ an inspiration and expressing deep respect and admiration for her during her days in NXT.
The former three-time Divas Champion recently won the Women’s IC Championship from Becky Lynch at the Elimination Chamber. Bayley is a two-time WWE Women’s Champion, two-time WWE Women’s World Champion, two-time Women’s Tag Team Champion, and a one-time NXT Women’s Champion. This will be Bayley’s third time trying to go for the Women’s IC belt. Most noticeably, last year at Evolution, Bayley faced Lynch and Lyra Valkyria for the belt.
Lee has also stated that she considers Bayley to be one of her close friends in WWE. This makes the upcoming match on Raw very interesting. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and whether there will be more future matches between the two, especially if the former four-time Women’s World Champion does not win the Women’s IC title this time around. This could also be an opportunity to keep these two going in a program against each other until WrestleMania 42.
Next week’s match could go two ways: either AJ will lose the Women’s IC belt after only holding it for just one week, so she can go back to being part-time, or she will retain and keep the belt and hold on till WrestleMania. A win for Lee could add more opportunities for a contender and another dream opponent for WrestleMania 42. If Bayley loses this match, this could throw Lynch back into the circle to try to win back the championship or add a different contender, possibly another huge Lee fan in Roxanne Perez. The former three-time Divas Champion might hold the championship for now, but due to her past injury, which resulted in her retirement all those years ago, she might have her last match during WrestleMania 42 before going back into retirement.
