Lita recently made her long-awaited return to WWE for the first time in three years as an entrant in the Women’s Royal Rumble.
The WWE Hall of Famer revolutionised women’s wrestling when she burst onto the scene. Firstly, Essa Rios’ valet and then as a member of Team Xtreme with the Hardy Boyz. Her cool and edgy style made her stand out, and she became an instant hit with the fans.
Lita, real name Amy Dumas, holds many accomplishments throughout her WWE career. She is a multi-time women’s champion and alongside Trish Stratus competed in the first women’s match to headline a Monday Night RAW.
After the Rumble Lita made a shocking return to RAW and laid down a challenge for Becky Lynch for a match at Elimination Chamber in Saudi Arabia on February 19th. So in the lead up to her first title match since 2006, here are 5 things you don’t know about Lita.
5. Lita fronted her punk band The Luchagors
Lita retired from professional wrestling in 2006 and returned to her first love, punk rock. A life-long fan of the genre it influenced her personality, style and outlook. So she jumped at the chance to start her own band post-WWE superstardom.
The same year she retired from WWE she founded The Luchagors with guitarist and horror movie make-up artist Shane Morton, bass-player Jay Leslie Hedberg and ex-Wednesday 13 drummer Racci Shay Hart.
The following year the band released their first and only self-titled album and toured America and Europe several times before breaking up in 2014.
4. Lita was cast as a villain in James Cameron’s Dark Angel
Like a lot of wrestlers, Lita transitioned from the ring and into acting. In 2002 she scored a role as a villain in the series finale of Dark Angel starring Jessica Alba as a genetically enhanced super-soldier running away from the government in a post-apocalyptic Seattle.
Dumas played the role of Thula, the leader of a crew of elite warriors known as the Phalanx sent to kill the lead character, Max.
However, the shoot wasn’t a pleasurable experience for the WWE Hall of Famer. During a big fight scene, Lita executed her signature hurricanrana but the stunt double dropped her mid-move cracking her vertebrae in the process.
Lita shook off the injury and continued the shoot in excruciating agony with assistants having to pry apart her numb, purple fingers so she could hold her prop gun. The injury would result in her missing seven months of action and neck fusion surgery.
3. Lita was supposed to have a lengthy feud with Chyna
Lita and Chyna were two of the biggest names in women’s wrestling in the late 1990s and early 2000s and it may come as a surprise to some that they only met in singles action one-time during their wrestling careers.
The two clashed at Judgement Day in 2001 with the WWF Women’s Championship on the line. Chyna was the champion in her first and only reign having beaten Ivory for the title at WrestleMania X-Seven. The Ninth Wonder of the World defeated Lita at the PPV, which ended up being her final match in WWE as she left the company shortly after.
Speaking to Corey Graves on, After the Bell, Dumas revealed it was planned to have a series of PPV matches with Chyna, which were scrapped as the former three-time Intercontinental Champion exited the promotion.
“When Chyna was transitioning from working with only men and then to women, she went through Ivory and Right To Censor and then into a program with me. We had one pay-per-view match together and it was supposed to be a three pay-per-view program. So, intentionally, the first match we had was solid.
It was okay, but we wanted to give the people just enough for them to go, ‘There’s something here. We want to see more.’ We held back knowing, thinking, that we were going to have two more matches, but she ended up not working there. That was the end of her time with WWE and we didn’t have that program.”
2. Lita hosted her own TV show exploring extraterrestrial aliens
Lita has a fascination with aliens. So much in fact that she hosted her own show titled ‘The UFO Sho’. Back in 2018, she launched a three-episode series on ASY TV where she visits UFO hotspots Roswell, Santa Fe and Sedona, Arizona in the hope of understanding the alien/UFO phenomenon further.
Speaking to Punk Rock and UFOs Dumas explained more about the series and how it isn’t about proving the existence of aliens but rather exploring the culture they’re the center of.
“My premise of the show is incorporating being on the road and stopping and pulling over at every (UFO themed) road side attraction, but we weren’t going to be that show that actually proves anything.
We aren’t ‘hunting’ UFOs. It’s more of a human interest show. The theme that links all the parties together.”
Dumas’ interest in the culture of UFOs came when she came across an advertisement for a UFO in Sedona:
“I saw a pamphlet for a UFO tour that said ‘sightings guaranteed or your money back’ and I wanted to go off the flyer alone. We went up there with night vision goggles and she (tour guide) is a lifetime experiencer and researcher, and is a trip to be around. When she got in her zone and started talking, the things she was talking about were making sense.
We saw so much crazy shit up there. Basically, showed us how to measure altitude, and what military grade planes can fly at and after what after a certain area is considered unidentified . That from there that made me go and want to learn everything about it; it was my new leisure research subject.”
1. Lita nearly quit WWE during the Edge and Matt Hardy angle
In 2005 Lita was involved in one of WWE’s most controversial angles, the infamous love triangle storyline between herself, Matt Hardy, and Edge. The trio became headline news when Hardy revealed his girlfriend at the time, Lita was having an affair with his best friend Edge behind his back.
Hardy and Lita had been an on-screen pairing since 2000 along with Jeff as Team Xtreme. Matt and Lita’s real-life relationship had begun in 1999 and continued until it came to a screeching halt in 2005 when it emerged that Lita had been romantically involved with Edge.
Hardy took to the internet to inform the world of the news and was ultimately let go by WWE during this time. His time away would be short-lived however as on-screen the company as paired Edge and Lita as gloating, vindictive villains, Hardy soon emerged from the crowd for several weeks to attack Edge.
The angle made Lita enemy number one in the eyes of the fans, which resulted in her becoming a victim of severe backlash and unwarranted abuse online.
Dumas was a guest on Renee Paquette’s Oral Sessions and spoke candidly about the controversial angle and how it nearly forced her out of the company:
“But I’ll tell you it was not easy. I mean, for sure, I almost quit a month [into] the whole love triangle. At that point, not only was it so hard, it was also out of shame. Like, I wasn’t proud of how I conducted myself. Yes, if I had to do it all over again, I absolutely would have handled myself differently. But I didn’t. So, I was like, make the bed, and you lie in it. And at that point, I was just like, I deserve all of these terrible things that everybody is saying to me.
I deserve not wanting to wake up every morning. It was also difficult, as time passed, to let myself off the hook. The only way you can move forward with your life is, sure, you learn from your mistakes and keep going, but you have to forgive yourself.”
“I don’t know. So, it’s interesting, ’cause with age comes wisdom. It’s hard to hypothesize because that just wouldn’t happen. I have a better skill set to communicate and navigate my day-to-day. But, that happened to me, and there was very limited social media at that point, so I can only imagine in that current day and age with social media. But then now, I think I would have some people, at least, taking my side, whereas I just felt like literally, everyone was against me. I felt very alone and isolated and just in a really bad place.”
