Since officially retiring from WWE in 2006, Trish Stratus has been doing anything but hanging out on the beach waiting for her next royalty check. From working for Canada's Got Talent, to serving as a trainer on WWE Tough Enough, and even working 14 matches for the promotion over the proceeding 17 years, including working mixed tag matches with John Cena, John Morrison, and MVP, to a Royal Rumble appearance, and now her current run on RAW, where she joined forces with and then betrayed the tag team of Lita and Becky Lynch, Stratus has been keeping her legacy alive and actually building upon it moving forward.

But how did this all come about? Well, according to Stratus, it all began in 2022, when she appeared on a WWE live event with Lynch in Toronto, as she detailed to Corey Graves and Kevin Patrick on an episode of After The Bell.

“Did I know I was going to go back to wrestling? No, but let's keep in-ring shape, let's keep in condition, let's keep on top of the product and watch it closely in case there is a moment and if the opportunity presents itself,” Stratus said via Fightful. “I took a keen interest in Becky Lynch last summer when they did a live event in Toronto, and we got into an exchange of words. People were interested, and I thought, ‘that's interesting in how interested they are in this.' I did a post right before WrestleMania saying, ‘It's so cool,' Lita and Becky are lying, ‘they march to their own beat.' I saw a lot of me in Becky. I see the drive, the passion, and, unequivocally, will not accept anything less than excellence. That is what I did. I see it in her. I admired, and I loved that, but then being with her. They say don't meet your heroes, not that she was my hero, I should be her hero. I was like, ‘Cool, okay, cool.' It was just too much, and she was very patronizing on that end. That end note of, we didn't win that match, for whatever reason, and she was like, ‘It's okay, we'll get them next time.' It felt like the right moment to deliver a message.”

Jeez, even in an interview, Stratus has fully embraced the heel energy she's been exhibiting on RAW, which is a clear sign of true potential in this feud. If the self-proclaimed GOAT is looking to fully embrace this angle and commit a few months to being a WWE Superstar once more, the real beneficiary will be the fans watching along in the arenas and watching from home.

Trish Stratus believes she has plenty of stories left to tell in WWE.

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Elsewhere in her media blitz explaining her in-ring comeback, Stratus stopped by Busted Open Radio to discuss her decision to return and to turn on Lynch after a successful showing at WrestleMania 39. In the opinion of Stratus, she still has few boxes left to check in her in-ring career.

“I'm constantly proving myself to myself, I think, and when I got the call to do WrestleMania, that is fun,” Stratus noted via Fightful. “It was fun to be in that capacity, to do it at that level, and at that stage on that stage, and then this is just an — I don't know, I'm all about layers. I hadn't dipped into this territory again, you know, for a long time. It was like, ‘Could I do this?' When I did it, I loved it, this territory that we're in now and so, to be able to go back in this capacity, it's fun, and it's a good story. I think it's interesting. I always say, whatever went back, it was like, it has to check a few boxes. Is it interesting? Is it challenging for myself? Will the fans be intrigued by it? Will it tell something different than we've told before, a story that's different than we've told before?”

From her nostalgia-fueled match at WrestleMania 39 to her attack on Lita backstage and her eventual turn on Lynch shortly thereafter, emphasized with a muscular promo that lasted over five minutes on the subsequent edition of RAW, it's clear Stratus isn't sleepwalking her way through her return to WWE. If she can build on those betrayals and really set the stage for a satisfying crescendo at the end of the story, Stratus' final major storyline may go down in history as on-par with the best angles of her entire career regardless of the year.