WWE star Bayley earned the opportunity to challenge AJ Lee for the Women’s Intercontinental Championship earlier this week when she won a gauntlet match on “Monday Night Raw.”

The match, which will take place on Monday, is nearly 13 years in the making. The last time the two professional wrestlers competed against each other was on Aug. 21, 2013, for the Divas Championship. Lee, a veteran at that point, got the better of Bayley, who was still a newcomer.

A lot has changed since then. Lee departed the company in 2015 while Bayley went on to become a four-time women’s champion and two-time women’s tag team champion. Bayley helped shape the WWE women’s division into what it is today. The Women’s Intercontinental Championship wasn’t even a glimmer in anyone’s eye five years ago, let alone 13 years ago.

Lee returned to WWE in September, potentially putting the two wrestling greats on a collision course with each other at some point. With Lee winning the title against Becky Lynch, Bayley was able to solidify her path toward a chance at championship gold.

“Man, it’s so weird. So weird to think, it’s just like the universe works in mysterious ways,” Bayley told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. “I remember 13 years ago, getting that text that I would be wrestling AJ Lee for the divas title and I had just started my character stuff on NXT. I remember that seeming like, ‘What do you mean? What am I? Why? What? This can’t be possible.’ And that’s sort of what I feel like now, just because nobody thought that AJ was going to come back, let alone there be an intercontinental women’s championship, let alone she’d be the champion or ever.”

“It just seems like one of those things where she would just come back as a one time, dream match type thing,” she continued. “And even when she did come back, and I’ve told this to her, I was just happy to have her around. We’ve kept in touch these last 10 years and been actual friends outside of the business and just to think that now I get to be in the ring with her, I wasn’t like, ‘I need to have a match with you,’ because I got my match. I just wanted to have my friend around and the fact that we got to do this now, it just seems right. Now, I’m like, ‘Of course we’re supposed to have this match together.’

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“I would love, love, love to win this championship because I have to finish my grand slam role. I gotta get this one. I gotta get to the United States one, and I gotta get to WrestleMania. So, I have a lot of feelings going into this, and I kinda have to put aside the nostalgia feeling of it.”

Lee’s return was a shock to the WWE Universe when she teamed up with her real-life husband, CM Punk, to take on Lynch and Seth Rollins. Still, for many WWE fans, Lee’s return still seems unreal.

She returned on an episode of “Friday Night SmackDown,” which took place in Chicago at the time. Bayley told Fox News Digital she was in the city filming something and heard the rumors that Lee may have been returning.

Even as best of friends, Bayley said Lee never tipped her hand.

“She did not say anything to me,” she said. “I had heard rumors. I’m a big believer and I hold a lot of hope for a lot of things that I truly feel and I just so happened to be in Chicago to film something that day for SmackDown and I was like, I’m just going to stick around. I don’t need to go back to my hotel. I’m just going to stick around and yeah, I was right. And I’m so happy that I followed my heart, but she was very quiet about it.”

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Soon, the two will meet in a dream match of sorts.

Bayley and Lee will face off with the Women’s Intercontinental Championship on the line Monday night on RAW. It can be seen on Netflix, starting at 8 p.m. ET.

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North Carolina football is less than two weeks from opening summer camp ahead of its second season under seven-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Belichick.

Belichick led the Tar Heels to a 4-8 record in his first season in Chapel Hill, but a string of off-field headlines largely overshadowed the team.

The controversy has carried into the offseason, apparently prompting at least one prominent UNC football alumnus to forgo attending games in person when the 2026 season begins this fall. 

Marquise Williams, who earned All-ACC honors during his four-year run with UNC, announced his plan to skip games this year.

“I will not be attending any UNC football games this year!” Williams wrote Thursday on X. “The things I’m hearing man I would have never thought.” He added a broken heart emoji but did not elaborate on exactly what put him off.

Williams still lives in North Carolina and serves as quarterbacks coach at Louisburg College. He ranks sixth on UNC’s all-time passing yards list.

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While Williams’ exact reasoning remains unclear, much of the chatter surrounding the program has centered on Belichick, 73, and his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson.

During last year’s widely discussed “CBS News Sunday Morning” interview, Hudson faced accusations that she attempted to exert control during the former NFL coach’s sit-down. The interview was part of a promotional tour for Belichick’s new book, “The Art of Winning — Lessons from My Life in Football.”

The viral moment sparked questions about Hudson’s involvement in both his personal and professional life and whether it could affect football operations.

North Carolina football general manager Michael Lombardi recently addressed the scrutiny and outside criticism that surrounded the program last season, defending the team’s response amid what he characterized as inaccurate accounts.

“All during those stormy times, all during when the boat was getting capsized, when people were attacking us with fake rumors and fake stories all over — nobody’s corrected them yet, but that’s OK, we understand — our players hung together,” Lombardi told the “Pat McAfee Show” last week.

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CHICAGO — This was hardly a masterpiece of Big Ten basketball, what with the barrage of bricks and busted possessions. Nor was it the sort of night to convince you of UCLA’s chances as a surefire conference contender.

But amid the mess of its 72-59 win over 14th-seeded Rutgers on Thursday night, UCLA showed the sort of mettle it may need to keep its season kicking this March.

It started with Donovan Dent, whose masterful month continued with his first career triple-double — and the first triple-double in Big Ten tournament history. The senior tallied 12 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists. He and Tyler Bilodeau, who added a game-high 21 points, were the rare bright spots on offense for the Bruins.

Otherwise, UCLA struggled to find any sort of rhythm. It shot just 38% from the floor, worse than it had in any win this season. And still, the Bruins were in control for most of the game after pulling away early in the second half.

None of that will fly against No. 3 seed Michigan State on Friday at 6 p.m. PDT, which beat UCLA by 23 points the last time they met.

But until Thursday it’d been quite some time since UCLA actually managed to win away from home. Not since Jan. 29 had it won outside of L.A., and only once this season had it won outside of the Pacific time zone.

For a while, it didn’t seem like UCLA intended to win Thursday, either. Even as Rutgers gave it every chance to pull away.

The Bruins did shut down Rutgers’ Tariq Francis, who was fresh off a 29-point performance in a first-round win over Minnesota. Francis didn’t score until the nine-minute mark in the second half. He finished with six points on two-of-11 shooting.

The two teams spent most of the first half trading wasted possessions and taking turns with their respective shooting slumps. Four minutes scoreless for Rutgers. Three scoreless for UCLA. Four scoreless for Rutgers. Then three scoreless for UCLA. Back and forth they went in their futility.

The Bruins had plenty of chances to build a lead early. While Rutgers struggled to find rhythm on offense, settling mostly for contested shots inside the arc, UCLA got its share of open shots all around the floor. It just wasn’t able to hit many of them. Both teams shot a meager 31% before halftime.

Those shots fell more frequently in the second half, as UCLA pushed its lead to 15. The Bruins still struggled to put the Knights away, until Dent took matters into his own hands late, pushing UCLA to victory.