Former WWE Women’s Champion Lita, real name Amy Dumas, has opened up about the reason she left WWE in a great new interview with Colt Cabana’s Art of Wrestling podcast.
Dumas dispels many rumors on the Internet about her departure, saying: “[It wasn’t because of] being bitter because they made me a heel, which is a good rumor, or saying, ‘She didn’t like being called a whore’, or the Matt and Adam thing which happened years [before] at that point by the time I retired, or people saying [it was because of] my injuries – I hadn’t had injuries for a few years. It wasn’t my body, it wasn’t my head, it was like, alright, I feel like I’ve done everything there is to do right now.”
Commenting on why she decided to leave the WWE in November 2006, the four-time champion reveals: “It was time to renew my contract. They’d started doing negotiations, and I was like, ‘How about this. I’m going to figure out if I want to be here or not, because I’m not for my ego, going to negotiate this contract because we both know I’m not going to accept this’… They just throw at you, ‘Okay, we’d like to renew for the same [salary]’.”
“Before I stroke my ego and try to see how high I can get my contract negotiation before I’m like, ‘Yeah, never, I don’t want to do that anyways’, let me just figure out if I want to do it and if I do, we can talk and figure out what works for both of us. But if I don’t [want to return], I don’t want to waste my time or your time over the business aspect of things.”
Dumas reveals that she felt she had done all there was to do in WWE at the time.
She says: “I kind of felt like, I did not get into wrestling for a paycheck. Because I felt I had gone as far as I could go as a woman in the business, it had become a paycheck. It’s fairly easy for me to go out there and do my thing and not really feel stimulated from it, which isn’t a horrible thing — you go in waves in any career, whether you’re feeling stimulated or not. But having felt like I’d done everything I could possibly do as a female in the business, and the schedule, and the career taking up so much of your time, that it wasn’t like, ‘I’ll still do this and collect a paycheck while still doing this’. There’s no ‘while doing anything’ other than doing your laundry or paying your bills.”
“If I want a next chapter, I need it to be without wrestling just for the sake of the fact that there are 24 hours in a day.”
Amy also talks about how she didn’t get into wrestling for the fame. She adds:
“It was cool but I looked at it more like an experience and a byproduct of doing what I loved, not, ‘This is so awesome that I’m famous’. I loved being in the wrestling ring for my job and seeing places I hadn’t seen, and okay, if you’re inspired by that, or you’re into, then great.”
Check out the whole interview, which is an excellent listen, here.
