Wrestling / Lita

Lita (born Amy Christine Dumas on April 14, 1975, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida) is a retired Professional Wrestler. She traveled in Mexico to learn the sport and debuted as a manager in EMLL before working Maryland MCW and various NWA promotions, managing Skull Von Krush and Christopher Daniels as Angelica, and former affiliate ECW as Miss Congeniality. Lita's the best known name she has wrestled under, though, starting in WWE from 2000-2006.

She made her debut in the WWF managing Essa Rios, but after he attacked her, she switched her allegiance to the Hardy Boyz and eventually used that to branch into a singles career, where she took female wrestling by storm with her high-flying wrestling. She also gave Edge the biggest push of his career by cheating on Matt Hardy with him in Real Life. She eventually became a four time WWE women's champion, and in 2014 was inducted into WWE's Hall of Fame.

After a number of cameo appearances over the years, Lita would return to WWE in a limited in-ring capacity in 2022, challenging Becky Lynch for the RAW Women's Championship at Elimination Chamber, and a year later teaming with Lynch to successfully win the Women's Tag Team Championships, her first Championship since 2006.

Outside of wrestling, she had a brief acting career, has founded animal rescue A.D.O.R.E., and is one of the band members of The Luchagores.

Not to be confused with Lita Marez.

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"I know when I get you alone, there's gonna be a trope list":

• Abhorrent Admirer: Dean Malenko, whom Lita only paid attention to because she wanted his Light Heavyweight Championship, but was unable to take it from him.
• Action Girlfriend/Dark Action Girl: Action Girlfriend as a valet, but she went solo she became a loner badass.
• Arch-Enemy: Trish Stratus. Subverted as of Raw's 15th anniversary, which finally gave way to their Real Life friendship. Angelica had Lexie Fyfe in PGWA. Lita and Lexie would have a "reunion" at UPW Proving Ground during the stretch of time WWE was scouting Ultimate Pro Wrestling for talent.
• Ascended Extra: Made some appearances as an anonymous member of the Godfather's Ho Train, before becoming a manager and later a wrestler in her own right.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: When she and Trish teamed together in 2003.
• Battle Strip: She once ripped her shirt off before performing her Finishing Move. To make it even more humiliating for her opponents, it was a Bra and Panties match and she hadn't lost any clothing.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: The side of her head was kicked open by Ivory in Lita's failed challenge for the women's title. After her triumphant return to save Trish she got a busted mouth in her very next match, leading her to joke about forgetting what it was like to get beat up every week.
• Big Damn Heroes: In 2003, the team of then-WWE Women's Champion Molly Holly and Gail Kim had beaten everyone else in the division and were dead set on ending the career of Trish Stratus. With Eric Bischoff's support, they were about to succeed, but then Lita unexpectedly returned to Raw and made the save.
• Black Comedy Rape: Actually, WWE and its fans alike would probably prefer to forget how it went down with Kane.
• Clothing Damage: Her split with Essa Rios, following his loss to Matt Hardy on the May 25, 2000 SmackDown!, involved him powerbombing her and her pants partially falling off exposing her butt. The commentary gave a good sense of what JR and Lawler saw as important.
  Jim Ross: Lita, losing her meal ticket.
  Jerry Lawler: Lita's losing her pants.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The chorus of her "LoveFuryPassionEnergy" theme included the repeated lyric "So fuck your rules, man/So fuck your rules, man!" While the song was edited to play a sound of static over the actual F-bomb, it was still abundantly clear what was being said. Somehow, this was regularly played on WWE TV for the rest of her career and special appearances.
• Combination Attack: Her and Jerry Lynn performing a double suplex on Christy Hemme and Austin Starr in the United Wrestling Federation.
• Cool Teacher: Ricky Santana, Ace Steel, Dory Funk Jr., Kevin Quinn (Christopher Daniels's International Male tag team partner)... she had quite a few. The Hardy Boys also offered.
• Cute Bruiser: Jim Ross made the point of mentioning how she struck with her fist when fighting Trish, who was using more technically legal forearms (in spite of being the heel).
• Distaff Counterpart: To Essa Rios, and after splitting from him, the Hardys.
• Evil Redhead/Fiery Redhead: Evil at the start since she and Rios were tweeners at best. Fiery later (what with the theme song LoveFuryPassionEnergy) then evil after she turned on Kane for Edge. She is a natural brunette who has had her hair dyed red for her WWE career. On the indies, natural redhead April Hunter sometimes served as her evil foil.
• Face/Heel Double-Turn: In her feud with Trish she was the face and Trish the heel. They reignited it two years later with the roles reversed. Her affair with Edge and her heel turn killed off FIVE YEARS of the fans loving her.
• Finishing Move: The Litasault and the Twist of Fate, latter of which was turned in for a leg-swinging snap DDT and Edge's Spear.
• Fragile Speedster: First to use the Waif-Fu style in WWE. She could fly and move fast, and not surprisingly her style led to some injuries.
• Friend to All Living Things/Pet the Dog: Literalized, in Real Life. She is well known for her work at animal shelters and had her own animal adoption organization called ADORE (Amy Dumas Operation Rescue and Education.).
• Friendship Moment: During Stone Cold's beer bash at the end of the Raw 15th Anniversary, Trish and Lita could be seen walking down the ramp together chatting just like old friends.
• Fun with Acronyms: Along with ADORE, her autobiography was titled Lita: A Less Traveled R.O.A.D- The Reality of Amy Dumas.
• Gimmick Matches
  • Was in the first WWE women's steel cage match, against Victoria. Has also been involved in street fights and TLC matches even if she wasn't a participant. And of course she's done a couple of Bra & Panties matches in her time.
  • After failing to win the women's title, Mickie James was inexplicably forced to compete in a series of gimmick matches stacked in Lita's favor in the weeks leading up to her next title shot. Lita would get to wrestle normally while Mickie had her hands tied, feet shackled, was blindfolded, ect
• Girl Next Door: Came across as much more approachable when she was with The Hardyz.
• Girliness Upgrade: When she turned heel.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Trish Stratus. Lita was even named the godmother of Trish's son Maximus.
• Idiot Ball: It wasn't just that she cheated on Matt, but that in the process she turned her back on the fans who had loved her for some five years and that she was surprised that the fans resented her for that.
• I Have Many Names: In order before Lita: Misty, Angelica, Miss Congeniality
• I Know Judo: It was Angelica's primary approach early in her career and Lita's late career after she returned from the neck injury. She actually did competitive judo before getting into pro wrestling.
• Irony
  • The woman everybody derided as a slut in 2005 (and in Kayfabe in 2006) for one romantic indiscretion, was one of the few Divas WWE contacted about returning for the WrestleMania XXV Divas battle royal who refused to take part in the indignity of that event.^note She may have had a point, since the match was won by "Santina Marella" (Santino playing his own "sister" in drag).
  • The famous in-ring promo with Trish Stratus where the fans started chanting "slut!". Trish said to the fans "don't call her a slut" but phrased it in a way that she was implying the fans were calling Trish the slut but she was pretending they were untruthfully chanting at Lita. The irony of course being that the fans were chanting at Lita and Trish was attempting to get the heat onto herself since she was meant to be the heel.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: This was basically her gimmick when she managed Essa Rios. Rios would defeat his opponent with a Moonsault, then after his victory, would have Lita perform a Moonsault of her own on his defeated opponent and count the pin to add extra humiliation to the defeat.
• The Lad-ette: Between Essa Rios, Team Xtreme, and Edge, you could say her entire WWE career that wasn't spent behind the announce table saw her trade in some of the ubiquitous Diva femininity in favor of derivative aspects from the man she was closest to.
• Love Triangle: Matt Hardy-Lita-Jeff Hardy in late 2001, Matt Hardy-Lita-Kane in 2004, Kane-Lita-Edge in 2005.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: The Matt Hardy-Edge-Lita love triangle in 2005.
    • Laser-Guided Karma: A.J. Lee going from her Little Miss I'm Your Biggest Fan to marrying CM Punk after Punk left Lita.
• Lovely Angels: With Trish Stratus in 2003 and early 2004.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: Mostly avoided. As a heel she was indeed fitting the Whore archetype. As a face however she was not a Madonna. She still had her thong on display, removed her top in matches and took part in bikini shoots. Yet still presented as virtuous and heroic.
• Mentor Archetype: To Christy Hemme, though she has less success than Lita and was mainly trained to fight Trish or April Hunter when Lita was unable to herself.
• Morality Chain: Played with; despite the Rated-R Couple being a heinously cheap bully and his manipulative vamp of a girlfriend, it became very clear following Lita's retirement that she had in fact been this to heel Edge. Literally a month after she left he and Randy Orton were savagely beating and bloodying Ric Flair, and his next relationship was a case of nepotistic nuptials with Eddie Guerrero's widow, who he later threatened with Hell when things fell apart due to his own infidelity.
• Ms. Fanservice: She usually wrestled in midriff baring clothing with her thong riding high over the waistline of her pants. She also did several segments in her underwear.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: When she turned heel, more and more of her outfits displayed this.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: After being taunted for losing her baby, Lita unleashed one on Trish Stratus. She'd do so again at Survivor Series where Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler grew extremely concerned not just with how vicious the beating on Trish was, but what Lita put herself through to cause more damage, ending in an attack that could have broken her own neck, again.
• Official Couple: Her and Matt Hardy. Then her and Edge.
• One of the Boys: Non-Kayfabe, the Two Man Power Trip gave her a beating no less brutal than one they'd deliver to a guy.
• Power Copying: She would take finishers from male wrestlers she teamed up with and/or was in relationships with and use them herself, most notably the Moonsault (Essa Rios), the Twist Of Fate (Matt Hardy), and the Spear (Edge).
• Retcon: Her marriage to Kane was briefly moved into Canon Discontinuity thanks to the whole Love Triangle situation with Matt and Edge. Years later, in The New '10s, it was moved back into continuity because of Matt's subsequent release and blackballing from the company. In return, the Love Triangle was (mostly) retconned in its place, only acknowledged during the week of Edge's retirement the following year, due to it being pivotal to his rise as a main event star.
• The Rival: While she had more high profile feuds with Trish and even Mickie James, Lita's most faced opponent in WWE was Molly Holly. The two even teamed up occasionally during Molly's superhero phase with The Hurricane.
• Self-Deprecation
  • She described her WWE original's effort as sounding too much like a cheerleader's song.
  • After running into some legal trouble she posted about all of Team Xtreme possibly doing jail time and was insulted no one had made any demotivational posters or anything to that effect about it yet.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: When she was going to marry Edge, with a Navel-Deep Neckline to boot.
• Signature Move: Aside from finishers above, the Litacanrana.
• Slut-Shaming: Initially, WWE was going to keep the Matt-Lita-Edge stuff behind closed doors. Unfortunately, it hit the dirtsheets when WWE mysteriously released Matt Hardy and RAW was going to be in heavily-smarky Madison Square Garden. Sure enough, babyface Lita was greeted with chants of "YOU SCREWED MATT" and "SLUT", despite Trish (playing the heel) doing her best to deflect the heat off Lita. Reportedly, Lita was in tears after the segment, but soon found the best way to deal with her massive heat: turn heel on-screen in similar fashion.
  • Mickie James had no problem resorting to using this against her when they feuded during one of the unfair matches mentioned above.
  Mickie: I'll tell you what, after the match, I'll give these (the shackles) to you, Lita, because everyone knows you're the one who needs your legs tied together."
• Statuesque Stunner: By comparison, being one of the taller divas of the 2000s.
• "Take That!" Kiss: Trish called Lita the "Walking Kiss of Death" (because Lita appeared on Dark Angel right before it was cancelled), no point for guessing what happened next.
• Tomboy: Except when she was Miss Congeniality, who was more girly girl and Jazz was the tomboy. Also when Future of Wrestling was in Peru, Angelica was a girly girl compared to Riptide.
• Took a Level in Badass
  • Once she split as Essa Rios' valet, watching Lita was like watching Buffy Summers, Sydney Bristow or Lara Croft in the ring.
  • And again during her lost baby angle: some male wrestlers were never as vicious and brutal as she was when Trish taunted her.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After her affair with Edge she was forced to turn heel and acted like the fans treated her... in other words really bad, skanky and evil.
• UFO: She hosts The UFO Sho' on ASY TV, where she investigates areas where UFO's were said to be seen.
• Unconventional Wedding Dress: In 2004, Lita is forced to marry Kane. To show her contempt for him on the occasion, she wore black to contrast the all-white reception.
• The Unfair Sex: Inverted. Matt being seen as impotent because Lita strayed, or Edge being condemned because he couldn't say no to a hot woman wanting him, only happened sparingly compared to how she was treated as a monster, turned heel, and eventually had to retire because of the hatred from the fans, who had loved her for FIVE YEARS. The reactions did gain some parity over time, but not until the Diva's descent since her retirement and Matt's personal meltdown kicked in.
• Unkempt Beauty: Most of the time she wore pants and a tank top. Subverted occasionally.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: From a mostly kayfabe standpoint, she and Edge incidentally set the course for the Hardy brothers' tumultuous path that eventually culminated in Broken Matt Hardy and Brother Nero. You're welcome.
• The Vamp: Subverted, Edge tried to offer her services to get favors from other wrestlers but it only ever worked on one guy: Snitsky, who they were clearly stringing along using his foot fetish.
• Villain Has a Point: After her betrayal of Kane for Edge, she correctly pointed out that she'd only been with Kane in the first place because he'd abducted, raped, and impregnated her before forcing her into an unwanted marriage with him.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: One of the most bizarre cases ever — she tried to strip her top off and failed.
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • (in ECW): Sabu put her through a table to send her out of ECW.
  • (in WWE): Dean Malenko locked her in the Texas Cloverleaf.
• You Go, Girl!: Competed occasionally in various intergender matches and very often got involved in others by performing either a moonsault or Litacanrana on men.

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