fciwomenswrestling.com article - wikimedia photo
Amy Lewinski influenced a women’s wrestling generation with great sportsmanship.
The elite sports world is full of pre and during game rituals. You’ve seen them too. The kicker who always needs to gently touch the shoulder of his holder before the big boot; the basketball superstar who has to blow white powder into the air as though sending it gift wrapped to the basketball gods; the baseball pitcher who has to scrape the mound over and over with his cleats before the wind up.
In the women’s submission wrestling world they have their rituals as well. If Dylan is the happy wrestler, (see FCI Dylan Submission Wrestler) and Penny is the most talkative wrestler, (see FCI Penny Mom Wrestler) then what do you make of Amy O, one of the best submission wrestlers of all time?
I would call her the friendly wrestler.
Whenever I watched an Amy Lewinski match, almost EVERY time she was getting the best of an opponent and I wanted her to amp it up and go in for the close, instead she’d do something both surprising and momentum killing.
She’d shake their hands.
During the match!
What did I want to scream at the video screen and sometimes did?
Amy, could you stop that?
Some of us male fans need our female wrestling intensity fix and there is nothing like a smile, audible compliment and a handshake during a match to reduce the street value.
Talk about watered down smack.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I love Amy O. Truly. I’m sorry I don’t see much of her wrestling anymore. I wish I did (minus the handshakes).
While interviewing with hollymoodentertainment.com Amy relates she enjoys a wrestling match whether she wins or loses. She enjoys female competitors with good energy and who aren’t out to hurt one another. She enjoys the cat and mouse aspects of it all.
Trained by the sensational Virago group in San Francisco, Amy has wrestled for many private wrestling companies in the United States and Europe as well where she traveled to meet the DWW female warriors.
The information site wrestlewiki.com states, “Amy has been trained at Virago by Helen Von Mott and since that has wrestled for Video Sports Limited, DWW, Femwin, California Wildcats, and is one of the more popular wrestlers at Academy Wrestling.”
Amy hails from San Francisco.
There are so many fascinating aspects to San Francisco to focus in and given the myriad of female wrestlers that FCI has written about that live in the city by the bay, pondering Amy’s free spirit personality, like wrestling in flip flop styled sandals; for an inspirational artist like the beautiful red head, we decided to briefly review San Francisco in the 1960’s, a time period we feel might best suit one of our favorite and most friendly female wrestlers of all time very well.
Be sure and wear some flowers in your hair.
We’ll start with rockument.com which informs, “From 1964 to 1968, there swelled a gigantic wave of cultural and political change that swept first San Francisco, then the whole United States, and then the world. What was fermenting in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco was a powerful brew that would ultimately stop a war.
As any history book will tell you, the Haight’s popularity grew as the Beat Generation in San Francisco was dying out. Many of the Beats, such as Allen Ginsberg, crossed over, but a younger generation gravitated to the Haight-Ashbury district, where the rents were cheap. Many were students at nearby University of San Francisco, UCSF, and S.F. State University. Others were musicians (such as the Grateful Dead), philosophers, artists (such as Alton Kelley), poets (such as Allen Cohen), apartment-dwellers, panhandlers, and even future CEOs of companies such as Pepsi, the Gap, Smith-Hawken, Lotus, and Rolling Stone magazine.”
The respected news source the huffingtonpost.com adds, “During its heyday, which culminated in 1967’s infamous Summer of Love, young dreamers converged in the Haight by the thousands. Historians deem the neighborhood the birthplace of the hippie movement, marked by peaceful protests and psychedelic experimentation. The era’s greatest luminaries, from Jerry Garcia to Allen Ginsberg to Jimi Hendrix, all lived nearby.
Of course, the Haight still has a certain appeal. There’s no better jazz-and-pizza combo in the city than at Club Deluxe, Amoeba Music offers a truly epic collection, a parklet just popped up in front of Haight Street Market and the 12-piece band that assembles in front of American Apparel on Sunday mornings always move crowds to dance in the street.
Yet we can’t help but heave a sigh while pushing past gaggles of gawking tourists or stepping over the man sleeping on the sidewalk at noon. While a stroll down Haight Street today certainly evokes nostalgia, it also makes us yearn for a place that was once the epicenter of peace and love and youth in revolt, a place we never had the chance to experience ourselves but will be forever engrained in San Francisco’s complex, progressive history.”
Fortunately I did experience that myself. Sort of.
As a boy, this writer lived in foggy and windy San Francisco during the 1960’s and at a safe distance on top of Bowdoin Street near Woodrow Wilson High; it didn’t seem as turbulent as it’s often described. Instead what it felt like for me was an awakening to a new and more liberating era from a very limiting old and ugly one. I loved the music of Motown, the great British Invasion and American country rock because the artists truly were trying to tell us something, not just sell records and they did have an impact on me and the rest of the world.
This is in part why the FCI main site along with high lighting women wrestlers will also focus on great women like Alice Paul, Debra Winger, Alicia Silverstone and many others who are looking beyond selfish interests and are truly trying to promote an important cause that will help make the world a better place for future generations.
“People ask me if I ever get sick of playing ‘Daydream Believer’ or whatever. But I don’t look at it that way. Do they ask if Tony Bennett is tired of ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco?”
……..Davy Jones
You cannot write songs like these for money.
To name a few: The Walker Brothers – The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, The Troggs – Love Is All Around, The Supremes – Nothing But Heart Aches, Aretha Franklin through great pain – Ain’t No Way, We Five – You Were On My Mind, Ruby and The Romantics – Our Day Will come, Jimmy Ruffin – What Becomes of The Broken Hearted and so much more.
We can change the world.
We can make it a better place.
We can allow people to be who they want to be without fear of being beaten or murdered.
Above all, we can still have fun and enjoy an enlightened life on a beautiful green earth.
Amy Lewinski was truly a skilled technician. Yes, she was heavy into the erotic side but when she was serious about wrestling, she got the job done and afterwards it was certainly a job well done.
There is no doubt by her kindness, grace, sensational sportsmanship and fun spirit that in a very positive way, Amy impacted and helped change the competitive women’s wrestling world forever.
We all admired her willingness to show up and support one wrestling event after another with a smile and compete against the top stars like she did at one event that featured super star Liz Lightspeed.
I kid her about the handshakes because deep down inside I know it’s a San Francisco thing and that’s one of the reasons why I deeply respect Amy O and I sense her spirit will always live on reflecting what good sportsmanship in women’s submission wrestling should always be about.
~ ~ ~
Femcompetitor.com subscribes to fciwomenswrestling.com news source. No affiliation.
Sources: brainyquote.com, hollymoodentertainment.com, wrestlewiki.com, rockument.com, huffingtonpost.com, fciwomenswrestling.com, photos thanks Wikimedia Commons.
