In 2014, Lita became the sixth woman inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame. She made her mainstream debut in ECW as Angelica, soon earning notice by Vince McMahon, who turned her into one of the top female stars of the Attitude Era. Lita’s record in the ring speaks for itself, with four WWE Women’s Championships to her name over her six-year career. Lita also earned great recognition for her feuds with Trish Stratus and Stephanie McMahon, which brought women’s wrestling to the main event of Raw for the first time. Regardless of these personal accomplishments, it seems the thing about Lita fans find most interesting is her relationship history, particularly the fact she’s dated a few more wrestlers than the average WWE Diva.

Let’s be clear about two things: there’s nothing wrong with Lita dating whoever she wants whenever she wants and it isn’t fair to define a woman exclusively through who she dates. However, it’s also fair to be interested in Lita’s love life as a fan of her work, considering the men she’s dated have often been intrinsically linked to her career, both on screen and off. There’s more to Lita’s story than simply whom she was dating, of course, but in this particular case, the men in her life often weren’t a bad place to start. Keep reading to learn 15 things you never knew about Lita’s past relationships and discover how they affected her as a performer.

15 15. An Ex Introduced Her To Wrestling

Each passing women’s revolution in wrestling brings more female fans to the industry and yet the perception still exists that the WWE audience is predominantly, if not entirely, male. This obviously can’t ever have been the case considering female wrestlers started appearing not long after the industry was formed, though it isn’t an entirely baseless notion, as even a future WWE Hall of Famer like Lita needed to be introduced to the sport by her boyfriend when she was a teenager. In fact, Lita apparently wasn’t that impressed the first time her beau made her watch wrestling with him, until she saw a match featuring a number of Mexican luchadors, including Rey Mysterio, which instantly made her a fan for life. Not long after that, Lita dumped the guy she was dating and headed for Mexico, figuring there would be no better place to train than the land that created the style she loved most.

14 14. She Was Allegedly Linked With El Dandy While In Mexico

Not much concrete information is known about Lita’s time in Mexico, as the only stories she’s actually told about the era were extremely vague and without detail. All we know for sure is that she loved Mexican wrestling and started her training after attending dozens of shows in the country, mimicking her favorite wrestlers to create her own unique-amongst-women highflying style. Many sources also point to Lita having trained with El Dandy while in the country, with some of the rumors about their relationship bordering on slander if not true. Most wrestling fans probably only know of El Dandy for the infamous Bret Hart promo where he asked Gene Okerlund who we were to doubt him, though he genuinely was a fairly big name in Mexico. Lita very well may have received some training for him and possibly even dated him, but there’s no evidence to support the worst rumors about their time together, so we won’t even dignify them with an explanation.

13 13. She Trained With And Probably Dated Danny Doring

The late ‘90s were a different time, when apparently all you needed to do to get a job in the third biggest wrestling company in America was show up and ask for one. It worked for a shocking number of superstars, including Lita, who claims to have gotten hired by Paul Heyman to work for ECW simply by showing up and highly impressing with her look and style. Because ECW was short on other female wrestlers, Lita, then known as Angelica, was linked with Danny Doring, an up-and-coming star who would later win the ECW World Tag Team Championships with his longtime partner, Roadkill. According to Doring, the relationship shared between himself, Lita, and Roadkill was pretty much the same in real life as it was on TV, meaning he and Lita got along extremely well while Roadkill, for whatever reason, didn’t like her at all. Though Doring didn’t implicitly state it, the fact his character once proposed to Lita probably implies some sort of relationship transferred into real life, as well, or in the very least, the two were such close and comfortable friends that they could do something like that as a big joke.

12 12. Ridiculous Rumors Filled Her Stay In ECW

Outside of the positive remembrances of Danny Doring, not much good has been said about Lita’s time in ECW. Her work was never highlighted and she hardly appeared long enough to get noticed, and yet in truth, these issues were hardly the worst of Lita’s concerns while in the company. The rumors about Lita and El Dandy and Mexico are only the beginning of the horrible things people have said about her, with the pinnacle appropriately, while not fairly, coming when her career took a turn for the extreme. Once again, we’re not going to explain the full extent of these rumors, since absolutely no evidence backs them up. However, the fact remains questionable stories have been spread linking Lita with ECW mainstays Axl Rotten, Steve Corino, Hack Myers, and CW Anderson, possibly at the same time she was allegedly dating Doring. Lita herself has never acknowledged the rumors, nor have any of the men allegedly involved, strongly suggesting some disturbed fan must have invented them.

11 11. Essa Rios Was Her Favorite Mexican Wrestler

Thanks to her look and ability to perform more aerial moves than the average female wrestler, Lita was such an instant hit in ECW that she was on her way to WWE in less than a year. After training with Dory Funk, Jr. and spending some time in developmental, Lita made her debut as the valet of Essa Rios on Sunday Night Heat. In a match that was also Essa’s debut, he easily defeated Gillberg for the WWE Light Heavyweight Championship, after which Lita jumped in the ring and performed a celebratory moonsault, instantly endearing her to fans. Though Lita and Rios weren’t dating at the time, she still had a great admiration for his work, explaining during an interview on Talk Is Jericho that Rios was her favorite wrestler while she was in Mexico. Around that time frame, Rios was wrestling for CMLL and Promo Azteca as Mr. Aguila, a gimmick he occasionally took to the WWE for matches against Taka Michinoku.

10 10. She Started Dating Matt Hardy In 2000

It wasn’t long before Lita was getting significantly louder cheers than Essa Rios ever would in America, so WWE made the decision to have Rios dump her after less than four months together. Lita moved on to an alliance with The Hardy Boyz, which ultimately lead to a real life romance blossoming between Lita and Matt Hardy. The exact date the two started dating in real life is unclear, though we can pinpoint their onscreen romance to have begun on February 19th, 2001, when Matt first kissed Lita after she improbably defeated Dean Malenko in an intergender match. Coincidentally, it was allegedly around the time the storyline with Malenko began that Lita and Matt started taking their friendship to a romantic level. Lita and Matt would spend the next four years together, though their on screen characters would take many sabbaticals apart over that time, the longest occurring when Lita broke her neck in 2002.

9 9. Matt Was Injured When She...

Shortly after Lita recovered from her severe neck injury, she and Matt Hardy were reunited on screen in late 2003. Unfortunately for Matt, he went down with a knee injury himself in the summer of 2004, again separating them on screen while Matt had surgery and started the recovery process. As it would turn out, the injury indirectly lead to the two splitting up in real life, as well, because Lita began cheating on Matt with his best friend, Edge, while Matt was away. Making matters worse, Edge was also married at the time, and recently no less, to his second wife, Lisa Ortiz. Edge had previously been married to Alannah Morley, the sister of Val Venis. Hardy somehow discovered the affair and publicized it with a number of posts to his website, with Ortiz eventually joining in to share her side of the story, harshly criticizing Edge and Lita for covering up the relationship instead of simply telling the truth.

8 8. The Reason Matt Got Fired

In the eyes of many fans, even less fair than the fact Matt Hardy’s girlfriend cheated on him with his best friend while he was recovering from an injury was WWE’s decision to fire him for publicizing it. After complaining about Lita on his website, Matt was released from his contract in April of 2005. The WWE Universe refused to ignore this, loudly chanting “We Want Matt” whenever Edge or Lita were on screen. Paul Heyman addressed the situation at ECW One Night Stand, screaming Hardy’s name at Edge, and over 15 thousand people signed a petition demanding WWE re-hire Matt. After a brief stint in Ring of Honor, Hardy made his return on July 11th, attacking Edge in a moment many fans believed was unscripted. It was, of course, as was every subsequent event between the three—although it turns out Lita and Edge may have wished otherwise…

7 7. It Was Matt's Idea To Turn The Story Into An Angle

Wrestling is a world of contradictions, which is how Edge was quoted to say that nothing is off limits in WWE, but also that the storyline with him, Matt, and Lita made the new couple extremely uncomfortable the whole time it took place. Once they were finally forced to confront Matt about the affair, Edge and Lita both admitted they felt terrible about what they did to Matt, simply wanting to leave things there and move on. It was actually Hardy’s idea to turn the ordeal into a long term storyline, that saw the two cut deeply personal promos on one another and engage in high impact, hard hitting matches. Ultimately, Edge and Lita came out of the situation as the bigger stars, thanks to the fact Edge won most of the matches, plus Matt giving a few weak interviews. Even so, the personal nature of what they were doing and saying made the two feel bad, which, granted, is how guilty parties usually feel when confronted with their misdeeds.

6 6. She Hated The "Live Sex Celebration" 

Once the storyline with Matt Hardy played out, Edge and Lita took their relationship to the main event when Edge became the WWE Champion at New Year’s Revolution 2006. The next night on Raw, Edge announced he and his real life girlfriend would celebrate with a “live sex celebration” in the middle of the ring. Sure enough, WWE put a bed in the squared circle near the end of the show and the raunchy couple started to go at it, though they were soon interrupted by Ric Flair and John Cena. The segment helped cement Edge’s reputation as the Rated R Superstar, earned one of the highest Nielsen ratings of the modern era, and brought Lita to new heights as a heel, but that doesn’t mean she was entirely happy with how things went. From the minute it was announced, Lita called the idea “mortifying,” later claiming she begged her friends and family not to watch the show that night. It could have been even worse, as she also alleged Vince McMahon originally wanted her to do the segment completely naked.

5 5. She Dated Her Guitarist For Two Years

Sometime in 2006, Lita and Edge ended their relationship and she met guitarist Shane Morton, whom she soon began dating. Feeling her time in the ring was nearing an end, Lita and Morton decided to form a band together, employing bassist Jay Hedberg and journeyman drummer Racci Shay to create The Luchagors. With Lita on vocals and Morton as the guitarist, The Luchagors released one self-titled album in 2007, produced by Rachel Bolan of Skid Row. Though Lita and Morton’s time as a couple ended in 2008, the band stayed together an additional six years after that, establishing a relationship with Hellcat Records touring with famous bands like NOFX and Bad Religion. Despite moderate record sales and popular tour mates, The Luchagors were never able to become a financial success and thus broke up in 2014 without releasing a second album.

4 4. She Allegedly Started Dating CM Punk In 2009

With her band on the rise, constant pain affecting her back, and her heart no longer in the business, Lita retired from the ring in late 2006. However, as we just mentioned, her band wasn’t particularly successful, so she’s made plenty of trips back to WWE and various other wrestling events since her retirement. Throughout these visits, Lita soon became close with fellow tattooed counter cultural icon, CM Punk, allegedly forging a romantic partnership in 2009. The relationship was first broken by The Sun, along with a report neither Edge nor Matt Hardy had any problems with it. However, Matt Hardy gave an interview not long after stating that the rumors were false and Punk and Lita were merely close friends. Reports the two had tattoos confirming the relationship turned out to be coincidental and false, and exactly how far the relationship went isn’t completely clear. At least, that’s the first time they dated…

3 3. She And Punk Got Back Together In 2013

As couples sometimes do, Lita apparently got back together with CM Punk four years after they first dated, rekindling their relationship in 2013. Fans started speculating the two were dating again that spring, with confirmation coming when the two were spotted together at the premiere of Iron Man 3. Around this time, Punk had just ended his final record-setting reign as WWE Champion and found himself fast growing wary of WWE and COO Triple H in particular. At WrestleMania 29, Punk was defeated by The Undertaker, after which he took two months off, during which he and Lita started the process of getting back together. Its unclear whether or not Lita supported him in his rally against WWE executives, though it wouldn’t matter long, as this phase of their relationship was as short as the first. This time, though, the reason for the split was more clear, and in a sense, Lita got a taste of her own medicine…

2 2. Punk Cheated On Her With AJ Lee

Lita and Edge were both on record for having felt bad about the way they handled the Matt Hardy situation, a fact this list has already covers. It bears repeating, however, because Lita would later learn first hand just how much pain she inflicted upon Matt, when CM Punk did the same thing to her by dating AJ Lee while still officially in the middle of his second relationship with Lita. The affair was broken by Konnan during an interview MLW Radio, though earlier pictures had already linked of Punk and Lee together at a baseball game, leading to fan speculation Punk and Lita were through. Neither Lita, Punk, nor AJ have commented on their love triangle, with the general low profile of Punk and Lita’s relationship making it easy to ignore. Punk and AJ were married approximately one year after they started dating, meaning it was also only a year since Punk and Lita had broken up.

1 1. Her Ex's Wives Love Her

There’s a reason inter-office dating is generally frowned upon in society and it isn’t a manner of simple social conservatism. If a person’s dating pool consists primarily of ex-coworkers, things tend to get extremely messy, extremely fast. Throw in recognition as an innovator who changed the profession for women everywhere and some really confusing things happen, like Lita’s exes dating younger women who spent their whole lives idolizing her. The most blatant example is AJ Lee, who was spotted at 12 years old on an episode of SmackDown, hysterically crying tears of joy when given the opportunity to meet Lita. Lee later married CM Punk, Lita’s twice ex in 2009 and 2013. There is also the case of Beth Phoenix, who called Lita her “dream opponent,” and no doubt a huge inspiration for why she entered the business. Phoenix later married Edge in 2016. Lita has never revealed how she feels about these women or the fact they idolized her, but chances are she tries not to get into the psychology of their dating habits.