Lita: A Less Traveled R.O.A.D.-The Reality of Amy Dumas - Amy Dumas & Michael Krugman

For those of you who don't know who 'Lita' - Amy Dumas is, she is one of the present female wrestlers in the WWE today.
I haven't called her a Diva, because she isn't one. She is a wrestler. As Amy says in the book, Divas are girls who arte used as time fillers and to be sexy and show off their bodies, they only know a few moves and that is the opposite of Lita. There's a difference between a female wrestler and a diva. Amy hates being called ...
...shoots and so on, she really isn't a Diva.

Ever since I first saw Lita I instantly liked her, everything about her. Her personality, her dress sense and of course her wrestling style. She is a female who doesn't mind standing out from the crowd, she in a true individual and that's the best thing about her. Her wrestling style is kind of Lucha Libre, which is Mexican style wrestling - the best wrestling style ever, it is brilliant.
more

For those of you who don't know who 'Lita' - Amy Dumas is, she is one of the present female wrestlers in the WWE today.
I haven't called her a Diva, because she isn't one. She is a wrestler. As Amy says in the book, Divas are girls who arte used as time fillers and to be sexy and show off their bodies, they only know a few moves and that is the opposite of Lita. There's a difference between a female wrestler and a diva. Amy hates being called a Diva, even though she takes part in Diva photo shoots and so on, she really isn't a Diva.

Ever since I first saw Lita I instantly liked her, everything about her. Her personality, her dress sense and of course her wrestling style. She is a female who doesn't mind standing out from the crowd, she in a true individual and that's the best thing about her. Her wrestling style is kind of Lucha Libre, which is Mexican style wrestling - the best wrestling style ever, it is brilliant.
She is one of the best female wrestlers today. As I was a fan I just had to buy her book to know more about her and what motivated her and made her want to become a wrestler.

I won't explain the book in full, just briefly, so I'll cut a lot of stuff out so it's not massive!

The book is called 'A Less Travelled R.O.A.D - The Reality Of Amy Dumas', with Reality Of Amy Dumas meaning the R.O.A.D. part. The book is written by Amy herself with the help of Michael Krugman. Michael Krugman is the co-author of The Hardy Boyz - Exist 2 Inspire (you'll here some more of the Hardy's in the review, as you would expect.) He is also the co-author of Generation Ecch! And is the author of Oasis: Supersonic Supernova.
The book is dedicated to Cody, Amy's dog who she had for 10 years, and she explains that her life would have been very different if she had not met Cody. Cody has a big part in the book, but I'm not going to write too much about Cody as it is a very sensitive and sad story which will spoil it for someone who wants to read the book who hasn't read it yet.
The introduction follows the dedication and this is written by……wait for it……you guessed it……MAT FRIGGIN HARDY. Matt writes about how great Amy is as a person and as a wrestler. He explains that she is very talented and he is very lucky to have met her. She is a very brave woman who inspires many young females.

In the first few chapters, Amy writes about her childhood. She explains that she was always close to her Mum and grandparents, but never that close to her Dad or younger brother. She tells us how her brother, Billy, was a real handful and as he grew older he had a really bad temper. She even ran away once because of him. She tells us how she hardly speaks to him anymore.
She tells us how she always had to move around a lot because of her dad's job, so she never had any proper friends as she always had to leave them to move to another Cutie or State.

After telling us of her childhood, her next topic is her music. She tells us how she got really interested in Rock music and that it felt like Rock was a whole other world. She joined a small band that travelled around and did shows, and they always lived in 'the van'. She met a lot of people in her 'van' days, including her first proper boyfriend, Beau. He was a Rock fan so they had a lot in common, except Beau was also a wrestling fan, Amy wasn't. She always thought wrestling was stupid and fake, like most of you do, but one night when Beau was watching WCW Nitro, Lita looked at the TV and what she saw took her breath away. A small Mexican guy was twirling around in the ring - it was like poetry in motion, and that little guy was Rey Mysterio. Rey Mysterio is a Lucha Libre wrestler, and he's brilliant! Amy was instantly hooked and tuned in to watch Nitro every Monday.

After getting interested in wrestling, she travelled to Europe - London, Italy, Germany etc, but she ran out of money and headed back home. She decided that she wanted to train to be a wrestler and so she took up Judo when she was back home in DC. After the Judo training, she wanted to go to Mexico to check out the Lucha Libre scene in person, and so that's what she did. One of Beau's friends hooked Amy up with someone they knew in Mexico called Penny. So Amy headed off to Mexico and met up with Penny. The second day in Mexico, she went to find an arena. She never knew where she was going; she was just looking for anywhere that had wrestling action. She asked people on the streets, most couldn't speak English, but even the ones who did speak English had no idea what this wrestling thing was, so they were telling her to go to loads of different places that had nothing to do with wrestling. It was like a secret business in Mexico, just like the Rock thing was a secret world for Amy. Finally she found an arena and took a seat. A guy came and sat next to her and asked her all about her tattoo. Amy has a tattoo of a demon on her arm, not something you'd expect a female to get!

After talking to the guy, Enrique, she found out that he worked backstage and that she had came into luck as he had acquaintances in the wrestling business. She met up with Enrique every night to watch the shows and he invited her ringside near the 'announcers'. She headed back home to DC, but saved up straight away to go back to Mexico. She hooked up with 2 friends of Enrique's who trained Amy up and booked her into independent shows. Cutting a long story short, she headed off to Charlotte, North Carolina to go to a local wrestling school down there. Whilst she was there, Enrique's friends booked her into a show which had to guys wrestling who had recently signed up with WWE. These 2 guys were of course Matt Hardy and Jeff Hardy. After meeting Matt and Jeff they took her to some woods, where Amy saw a wrestling ring right in the middle of the woods. This all seemed weird to her as she never thought there'd be a wrestling ring in someone's back yard, never mind in the middle of some woods. Whilst in these woods, she met a few 'soon to be' WWE superstars. These included Shane Helms (The Hurricane), Shannon Moore and Joey Abs. It was in these woods where she first tried a Moonsault after seeing Shannon Moore do one. She fell in love with the Moonsault instantly.

Not long after the woods, she joined Dory Funks wrestling school, where she was the only female. She told Dory to treat her like one of the guys, and that's what he did. She finally graduated the school, and was ready to do some professional work.

This was when she joined ECW. She had a hard time backstage, especially with Bubba Dudley, who ignored her and was a bit 'off' with her. She wondered why he was like this. Was it because she was a female, was it because she was new etc. It was weird for her working with guys she'd been watching on TV for years and soon realised that Bubba was testing her. It was his way of gaining her respect. When Bubba found out that Amy knew his 'test' he respected her as a person and became friendlier with her, and not long after became a very good friend.

Amy then tells us how she joined WWE and how she enjoyed the violent matches whilst in team extreme with Matt and Jeff. She tells us lots of stories of how she and Matt started dating and what they did in their spare time. The WWE career takes up lots of chapters with lots of stories including very personal ones. She explains about her injuries including the worst one ever, the broken neck. She had a very bad doctor who said nothing was wrong with her, but Stone Cold Steve Austin saved Amy's life!

-------------------------

That is the 'brief' of the book, if you can call it that. I've never reviewed a proper book before so I apologise if too much is given away. I have cut out a lot of stuff which is very compelling and I am dying to write about, but you will have to get the book to find out!

●COVER●
The cover is very catchy. It has a simple white background and a picture of Amy as Lita is her Rock gear, fiery red hair and nice make-up. She has a pink net top on which is ripped on her tattoo to show the 'demon'. A very beautiful picture. The title is simple bold black letters, of course with the WWE logo. Most of the pages inside have the demon tattoo as the background in black and white which I think is very good, and makes the pages catchier than a simple plain background. There are plenty of pictures of Amy with family, friends, Matt and Jeff, alone and with pets, and of course other WWE superstars which I can't name as there's too many! The photos add a lot to the book, and it is nice that she has shared a lot of younger photos with us.

●MY OPINION●
If you are a Lita fan, then this book is a must. In fact, you don't have to be her fan to read this book. It is very personal and there is a lot of sensitive and emotional stories in the book. She explains everything that has happened in her life up until her neck injury that had her out of action for nearly a year, which is when she wrote this book. I would definitely recommend this book to WWE fans. It's brilliant, I couldn't put it down, it took me 2 days to read it!

It cost me £6 on Used and New on Amazon.co.uk
It is paperback with 352 pages
It is with Pocket Books and World Wrestling Entertainment Books
Written with the help of Michael Krugman
Was released on paperback in late 2004
 

...less