With a tattoos up and down her arms, bright red hair, and a tendency to take her top off when she climbed to the top rope, Lita certainly caught the eyes of wrestling fans. All the more so, her moonsault, hurricanrana, and other aerial offense foretold the athleticism to come in the women’s division. Indeed, while there are a number of women who’ve had an impact on WWE, few were ever as influential as Lita. But before she played the femme fatale to Edge’s Rated R Superstar, and before she was joined The Hardy Boyz in Team Xtreme, Lita was positioned as the manager to a young cruiserweight billed as Essa Rios.
Essa Rios Had Humbler Beginnings As Aguila
In the late 1990s, WWE tried its hand at emulating the style of exciting wrestling and international flair WCW had adopted with its Cruiserweight Division. The WWE Light Heavyweight Championship entered the mix, and featured a number of very talented champions over the course of its run. One of the division’s early highlights saw Taka Michinoku defend the title against a luchador named Aguila, who hadn’t yet celebrated his twentieth birthday.
After some time off TV, Aguila made his return under the name Essa Rios, a heel with a bit more swagger who won the Light Heavyweight Championship on Sunday Night Heat in February 2000. The biggest change to his act may well have been the addition of his manager, Lita, who had a tendency to hit Rios’s signature moves—most notably his high flying, top rope moonsault—on prone opponents after her guy had won matches.
Essa Rios And Lita Were Packaged Together In 2000
Lita was not simply shoehorned in as a manager to Essa Rios because she was a fellow young talent WWE was figuring out a spot for. Despite being born in Florida, Lita traveled to Mexico at a young age to learn the wrestle in a lucha libre style (a story she recounted in both her visit to Steve Austin’s podcast and her Hall of Fame induction speech). So, Lita and Rios were a natural fit for one another’s working style.
The duo’s run included working opposite the all-star pairing of Eddie Guerrero and Chyna. Ultimately, the Rios character took out the frustration of a series of losses by attacking his manager, which prompted the Matt and Jeff Hardy to come to her rescue. While Rios didn’t exactly catch fire during any part of this era, it’s nonetheless telling that his year-and-a-half under this name became what WWE fans best remembered him for. Of course, that’s less a testament to this being an iconic run than a point of trivia--Rios was the one to first introduce fans to Lita, who would ultimately become a legend.
Lita Went On To Have An Iconic WWE Career
Lita became one of WWE’s most popular female managers for her work with The Hardy Boyz, but her skill set also contributed to WWE starting to take women’s wrestling more seriously. She would later become a beloved wrestler on her own. This period included her being the one to take the Women’s Championship off Stephanie McMahon, not to mention the long story of her rivalry with Trish Stratus that came to define the division for a time.
After her real-life breakup with Matt Hardy became a major talking point among wrestling fans, Lita's character made a heel turn and added an important chapter to her WWE career. While she may be best remembered for managing Edge to his first WWE Championship during this era, she also continued to accumulate accomplishments of her own. In the end, she won four Women’s Championships and entered the WWE Hall of Fame in 2014. Her legendary status was reaffirmed with return appearances for the Royal Rumble and for the all-women’s Evolution PPV, not to mention that she was very purposefully chosen as the respected legend to introduce the new Women’s Championship at WrestleMania 32.
The pairing of Essa Rios and Lita as a wrestler and manager, and as a mixed tag team has largely been lost to the sands of time. However, in retrospect, they were an exceptionally talented duo. Lita went on to the more decorated WWE career, between her own accomplishments as a wrestler, and her supporting role for The Hardy Boyz and later Edge. Rios carried on, too, with a career that included decorated runs in top lucha libre promotions AAA and CMLL.
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