Matt: Amy came up to WWE in February 2000, after a year working in Philadelphia with ECW. Of course, she wasn't Lita back then -- when she worked in the indies, she was known as Angelica. Eventually she became Miss Congeniality, valet to Danny Doring and Roadkill.

Tommy Dreamer and some of the other ECW wrestlers kept telling Paul Heyman, the owner of ECW, that she was a talented athlete and that he should start to let her do more things, but he wasn't interested in females wrestling. He was more concerned with catfights and spanking and so forth.

While she was working in ECW, she was also paying her own way through Dory Funk's Funkin' Conservatory -- this was after they'd severed their relationship with WWE -- and was the star pupil of her class.

Dory and his wife had sent one of Amy's tapes up to Stamford, and one night Bruce Prichard and J.R. came to me with a question. "You know this Amy Dumas, right?" Bruce asked. "Is she your girlfriend?"

What! "No," I said, "but I do know her. We hang out some."

It's funny how gossip travels, all the way to the top of the food chain. Vince wanted to know, "Is this one of your girlfriends? What kind of person is she?"

"She's real cool," I told him. "She's got a great attitude. In fact, she's almost got the personality of a guy, so she'd fit in here real well."

Russo had also watched Amy's tape and he hated her. "She's got nothing going on," he said. "And look at that terrible tattoo! There's nothing we can do with her."

On the other hand, Terry Taylor really liked what Amy was doing, and he pushed real hard for her to get signed. Amy became a part of the WWE just as Russo left for WCW.

When Amy first came to WWE, we weren't really a couple, we were still in hanging-out mode. It was probably being together so much that caused us to grow closer and closer. It was good because it was a gradual thing.

I really didn't want a girlfriend at that time because I was really enjoying being a WWE Superstar. It was fun to be on the road, it was fun to be free. It was a new experience and I was definitely living for the moment. But Amy was totally understanding. I told her what I was feeling and she didn't take offense at it. The punch line, of course, is that it turned out to be even more fun being on the road with her, having somebody to hang out with every night.

WWE came up with the character of Lita and paired Amy with Essa Rios,a talented lucha libre wrestler who was pretty much relegated to the bottom of the card.

From day one, I was sure that Amy would break a lot of barriers, because she does things that no woman's ever done before, especially in America. I knew she would like to be idolized by the girls, but I didn't know how the guys would react to her.

There's never been a woman like her in WWE. Traditionally women in wrestling are either blonde-bimbo sexpots or scary bruisers. Amy is more like a real person, in a way that people in the audience feel like she's somebody that they could hang out with.

She is so different from the other Divas, and her physicality creates so many more options for Lita as a character. They spend hours getting made up to be sexy, but Amy is sexier than any of them, just by being herself. I think that's the reason why so many guys dig her -- because she's real.