Amber Deluca

About Amber Deluca

Amber Anne Deluca (born 1967 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American bodybuilder, adult model, porn star, and session girl (as Amber Steel).

She earned an athletic scholarship in volleyball at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania. and helped lead the team to their first national appearance, where she still holds the all time kills record. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Communications/English in 1990. While at Gannon, Amber trained for arm wrestling under Dann Carr, the creator of American Gladiators. Amber won the Pennsylvania State Arm Wrestling Championship as well as several charity events. She went on to enlist in the United States Air Force. She eventually served one tour overseas for in Operation Southern Watch in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. She was Air Combat Command Athlete of the Year in 1992 and led the Air Force to two World Military Championships in arm wrestling. While at Cannon AFB, Amber taught rock/sport climbing, and became a proficient climber. Amber completed a Master's of Science degree in Human Resources Management before being honorably discharged in 1994.

Dann Carr invited Amber to star as one of the American Gladiators in 1996 at the live show in Orlando, Florida. She briefly appeared as "Apache", but her career as a gladiator ended quickly by an anterior cruciate ligament tear while practicing backstage, and she returned to New Mexico to recover, and seek employment. From 1995-1998, she worked as a Security Administrator to the Mescalero Apache Tribe. In 1998, she was selected as a Human Resources Specialist, working for the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs. Amber specialized in recruitment and placement and employee and labor relations before she resigned her position in 2006 to start working on a graduate degree in Educational Leadership at the University of New Mexico.

By her own admission, grew up as a tomboy and began weight training when she was thirteen years old in order to better herself for her high school sports. She was extraordinarily strong for her age, and was bench-pressing 135 pounds for ten reps by the time she was 14 years old. Amber won her first figure competition, National Amateur Bodybuilding Association Ms. Figure America show in Phoenix, Arizona, 2001 and competed in the Ms. Universe, New Castle, United Kingdom in 2002. She competed in the early days of the National Physique Committee bikini show and at that time, was photographed by the photographer, Bill Dobbins. Dobbins encouraged her to to compete in bodybuilding after their first shoot in 2002. Dobbins featured DeLuca as one of the models in the book, Modern Amazons. Amber decided to compete, and won her first show was the NPC Mid-USA in 2003, in which she won the heavyweight class, where she weighed in at 170 pounds. She continued to compete in bodybuilding, placing 13th in the heavyweight class at NPC Nationals in 2005, winning the Excalibur in Los Angeles, California, 2005, and competing in her last show in 2007, the NPC Master's Nationals, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During this time, Amber was a highly sought physique model for many of the top bodybuilding and fitness publications and fantasy wrestling companies that filmed videos.

DeLuca took a brief break from bodybuilding competition, and moved to Den Haag, Netherlands, to live and train with a professional female bodybuilder, Saskia Salemink and then under world class strongman Mark Phillipi. It was during this time that DeLuca began practicing Russian Kettlebell training, and took one lesson under two prominent RKB men in the USA, Zar Horton and Mike Mahler. Amber passed her RKB certification with flying colors, and coupled with training at PSI, her strength base climbed. During the summer of 2011, an amateur strongman, John Posen, discovered DeLuca in an Albuquerque gym overhead pressing 185 pounds for repetitions. He encouraged her to compete in strongwoman shows. Amber made Las Vegas, Nevada her training camp, and began learning the implements at PSI and also trained with World's Strongest Man competitor, Nick Best. Amber won the New Hampshire State Strongwoman show in September 2011, which qualified her for America's Strongest Woman,. Amber placed 4th overall in the heavyweight division after three months training. She tied with the Worlds Strongest Woman, Kristin Danielson Rhodes in the log overhead clean and press, and won the frame deadlift with 24 reps at 550 pounds, and placed well in all events. In 2012, Dobbins gave her a full-length book talking about her early life and her work as a strongwoman competitor and bodybuilder.

In 2003, DeLuca launched her first called buffmuff.com. The site featured mostly bikini shots, nudes, bodybuilding stuff, lifts and carries, and some wrestling. Two years later, DeLuca launched her "Amber Steel" persona and rebranded her website to Goddess of Fetish. The new persona featured hardcore BDSM, dominas, and porn. She continues to perform under this persona through her content websites to this day.