Opening the 23 May 2005 episode of Raw, Lita (Amy Dumas) summarises what on-screen husband Kane has put her through over the past year:
“Where do I start? Maybe the kidnapping, the whole boiler room incident. Oh yeah, maybe forcing me into having sexual relations with him. And then I got pregnant. Oh, and let’s not forget the marriage I didn’t want to be in either. And because Kane couldn’t protect me, I lost my baby.”
All seems pretty bad, right? Lita might expect some audience sympathy? Thing is, the audience’s booing the hell out of her every word. See, during the climax of the previous week’s Raw, Lita betrayed Kane (who somehow is now a babyface) to turn heel and side with the man standing alongside her in the photo above, Edge.
But more important is what’s going on beyond the screen. For the fanatical, autodidactic WWE audience has been feasting on their regular diet of online insider gossip (hey Dave Meltzer, how you doing?), so knows that in real life, Dumas has been cheating on fan favourite Matt Hardy with, you guessed it, Edge (Adam Copeland).
Why does all this crazy shit matter? Well, this is one of the first times the WWE commodified their performers’ personal lives in an extended on-screen storyline. Within a post-Millennium cultural landscape enamoured with reality TV and constructed reality, WWE used its in-built reality/fiction friction device, kayfabe, to, well, make some bloody money. Thing is, by that time the WWE had bought out its main competitors WCW and ECW, so was effectively a monopoly. As Brian Jansen says, “performers are free to take their talents elsewhere, the only problem being that there is nowhere else to go (and, by the way, they may not take their name, likeness, or character with them, though they will be accompanied by the physical handicaps wrought by their time as in-ring WWE performers)”. In other words, did the wrestlers really have a choice but to air their real-life dirty laundry in public?
This 2005 angle is autofiction, but not autofiction like Édouard Louis’ superb novels, or Bo Burnham’s Netflix special, or even Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer. It’s autofiction in which the protagonist has little to no ownership over their story. It’s autofiction in which profit is prioritised over the wellbeing of the performers involved. It’s autofiction in which Dumas’ on-screen performance of her private life forms a layered, but at times evasive, confession, resulting in the mostly male audience repeatedly re-traumatising, re-provoking and re-exhausting her into retirement.
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This 2005 angle forms a key part of both my academic research and my creative work. In this intro to the story, let’s lay out the timeline of events:
April 19, 2004, Raw: Kane (for the uninitiated, see Kane’s bonkers back-story, or just know, he’s billed as a seven-foot monster) intimidates Lita after a match and whispers something in her ear
May 10, 2004, Raw: Kane kidnaps Lita in a boiler room and tells her he’ll continue to assault her boyfriend (on-screen and in real life) Matt Hardy unless she gives him what he wants
June 21, 2004, Raw: Lita reveals she’s pregnant with Kane’s baby – the idea being she was coerced into sleeping with him, to protect Hardy
August 15, 2004, Summerslam: Matt Hardy and Kane wrestle in a pay-per-view bout, with the winner marrying Lita. Of course, Kane wins
August 23, 2004, Raw: Despite Hardy’s efforts to crash the wedding, Lita is forced to marry Kane, ‘cos, ya know, pro-wrestling stipulations = law
September 13, 2004, Raw: When ringside, ‘supporting’ Kane during a match, an accident causes a pregnant Lita to fall and lose her baby. The loss of his unborn child turns Kane babyface
December 6, 2004, Raw: For the first time ever, a women’s match main-events Raw, with Lita beating Trish Stratus for the Women’s Championship
April 2005, off-screen: Hardy reveals in the forums of his own website that Amy Dumas (Lita) has been having a real-life affair with Adam Copeland (Edge)
April 11, 2005, off-screen: Hardy is legitimately fired by the WWE, seemingly for making the affair public without their permission. This could show a reluctance of the WWE to commodify real-life events
April 18, 2005, off-screen: Respected pro-wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer reports that at both TV tapings and house shows, the audience is very audibly chanting ‘slut’ at Lita, but the WWE persists with her babyface presentation
May 16, 2005, Raw: Lita turns on Kane to side with new real-life partner, Edge. This is the first heel turn of her WWE career, and appears to show the WWE giving in to the crowd’s increasingly negative reactions towards Lita, showing the crowd’s power to co-construct the company’s narrative direction
May 23, 2005, Raw: Raw opens with Lita justifying her actions against Kane. Yet the crowd ignores this storyline by chanting, ‘You screwed Matt!’. Lita responds by smirking directly into the camera, and confessing, “No man that I’ve ever been with could’ve satisfied me… Except one. The man I’ve been seeing behind your back for months now”, appearing to collapse the boundary between real life and fiction
May/June 2005, off-screen: Via his website, Hardy continues to rally the support of his online audience
June 20, 2005, Raw: Hardy’s entrance music interrupts the televised ‘wedding’ of Lita and Edge. Though this is framed as a prank by Lita and Edge to piss off the audience, it also signposts Hardy’s possible WWE re-employment
July 11, 2005, Raw: Hardy ‘crashes’ Raw to attack Edge, calling Edge and Lita by their real names rather than their character names
July 13, 2005, Byte This!: On the WWE’s live phone-in web show, Hardy ‘crashes’ an interview with Lita. Among the kayfabe-shattering highlights:
– Hardy continues to use real-life names, going as far to say, “the Amy Dumas I know is dead. She is gone. Lita is all I know. This filthy whore hanging out with Edge, that’s all I know. I don’t even know who Amy Dumas is anymore”
– Lita tells Hardy to stop “cutting wrestling promos in a personal context”
– Hardy slams the WWE for firing him and promotes his upcoming appearances in independent wrestling promotion Ring of Honor
August 1, 2005, Raw: Hardy is ‘officially re-employed’ on-screen by the WWE, though of course he has been re-employed since appearing on Raw in July
August, 21, 2005, Summerslam: A year after fighting Kane for Lita’s hand in marriage, Hardy fights Edge live on pay-per-view (in 2022, podcast host Chris Van Vliet told Hardy, “I remember buying that PPV [pay-per-view], I legitimately thought you were going to murder Edge”)
October 3, 2005, Raw: Hardy loses a ‘Loser leaves Raw’ match to Edge, effectively ending the storyline between the three
January 9, 2006, Raw: Edge and Lita conduct a ‘live sex celebration’ in-ring – one of Raw’s highest viewed segments in years
November 20, 2006, Raw: Lita announces her upcoming retirement at the age of 31, citing abuse from the fans as the prime reason
November 26, 2006, Survivor Series: After losing her retirement match, to celebrate her farewell, comedy tag team Cryme Thyme set up an impromptu ‘ho sale’, selling ‘belongings’ of Lita’s such as a vibrator, yeast infection medication and underwear
January, 12, 2021, live Twitch stream: Years later, Dumas claims the WWE threatened to fire her if she refused to take part in her and Edge’s infamous ‘live sex celebration’ segment
June 21, 2021, The Sessions with Renee Paquette podcast: Dumas outlines her personal feelings on bringing her real-life story to TV, “it was also out of shame … and so I was very much like, make the bed, you lie in it. And at that point, I was kind of just like, I deserve all these terrible things that everybody’s saying to me, I deserve not wanting to wake up every morning.”
References/credits:
Jansen, B. “’It’s still real to me’: Contemporary professional wrestling, neo-liberalism, and the problems of performed/real violence”. Canadian Review of American Studies, 50(2), 2020, pp.302–330.
Meltzer, Dave. “April 18, 2005 Observer Newsletter: Matt Hardy Released by WWE, Ultimate Warrior/New Japan, More.” Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 18 Apr. 2005. Wrestling Observer Figure Four Online, members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/april-18-2005-observer-newsletter-matt-hardy-released-wwe-ultimate/
Meltzer, Dave. ‘May 30, 2005 Observer Newsletter.’ Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 30 May. 2005. Wrestling Observer Figure Four Online, members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/may-30-2005
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