Looking back over some of the sad and tragic stories of what became of some of our favorite wrestlers through the decades, one legend comes to mind....Chyna! What a life, what a career and what a woman! She was incredible and we'll never see another like her, she exploded on to the wrestling scene and she became a phenomenon, she had the guys running for cover and the fans on the edge of their seats.
I count myself lucky to have watched some of the greatest WWE moments when they were happening, I drove my mum crazy because I would sit up late to watch the matches and the drama, I was addicted and fascinated with these wrestlers and especially Chyna who was built like a mountain. The dreaded words of 'Enough of that wrestling, you've got school in the morning' would come from my mum but I would always respond with ''Just 10 more minutes''. I watched wrestling whenever I could and it never mattered what time it was, I was obsessed. To this day it still hooks me but I have to admit, back then it was so awesome, the Attitude era was everything.
I remember how the boys at school would make fun of Chyna because she didn't look like the other female wrestlers. Truth be told, I took Chyna more serious than the other female wrestlers because she gave it her all and she knew her craft, she didn't care how she looked at that time but she soon succumbed to the pressure of the constant negative comments from fans about her masculine appearance. Chyna appeared to be intimidating at 5 ft 10 and 200 pounds of pure muscle, she was strength and power personified but underneath all of that was a girl who was trying to heal from a childhood of abuse and neglect. She pushed herself because her life had always been hard, she never knew what a stress-free life was like. She faced ridicule and hardships from basically the day she was born. She grew a tough, thick skin but there was times when it all became too much and she'd be broken down.
I'm going to talk a bit about Chyna in this post, the pioneer who made men sit up and take notice that women could compete in wrestling and be taken seriously, the very woman that Jim Ross described as being every bit as important to WWE as Stone Cold Steve Austin is and was. Make mistake about it, when Chyna appeared on the screen, you couldn't take your eyes off of her, she was like a powerful female superhero brought to life.
Chyna (her real name: Joan Marie Laurer and also known as Joanie Laurer) came into the world on the 27th of December 1969 in Rochester, New York. Her childhood was tough due to her father's alcoholism and drug addiction which she later started to dabble in herself. Her relationship with her mother was also difficult. After a tense and unhealthy marriage her parents eventually split up and her father moved elsewhere. Chyna (I'll call her by her wrestling name to avoid confusion and also because she did eventually have her name officially changed from Joanie to Chyna) carried on living with her mother and began abusing drugs and alcohol which her mother was trying to get her help but she refused to attend any counselling or rehab. Eventually the relationship between mother and daughter deteriorated to the point that after another explosive argument, Chyna packed her bags and went to live with her father.
School was difficult for Chyna, not academically but because she felt different and was bullied for her looks and size. From a young age there seemed to be this constant theme of rejection with her feeling that she didn't fit in anywhere, she had an incredibly tough time and despite the obstacles in her way, she continued on and eventually went to university where she graduated. A lot of wrestling fans are not aware that Chyna was incredibly gifted academically, she could speak various languages and it seemed that no matter what she tried her hand at, she made it a success because she just never gave up. She graduated from university having studied German, French and Spanish which was no easy task, she could speak each language fluently. Her major was Spanish Literature and her dream at that time was to have a career in the Criminology field, preferably working with the FBI.
Despite all of the achievements she had made at university another traumatic experience was brought into her life when she had been sexually assaulted by two male students after a party. Chyna had already faced a lot of hardships in her life up to that point and dealt with it the only way she knew how at that time, to bury it and take pills. She was never on to give up and decided that she wanted to go to Costa Rica to work as a literacy teacher in the peace corps. At this stage in her life she was confused about what she wanted to do. Her plans to work for the FBI had fallen by the wayside maybe because she needed money and wanted a break from studying after working so hard at university. She started to look for a normal 9 to 5 job and this proved to be difficult so she pretty much took any job that was going. Chyna was always a hard worker and self motivated individual so she did whatever job was in front of her. She did a number jobs, bouncing from one to the other, working in car dealerships to being a waitress.
She moved in with her sister and was still trying to figure out what to do with her life. As a way to keep in shape and keep their spirits up, her sister encouraged her to join a gym and they would go together. It was at the gym that she met a guy who was a personal trainer. The pair became close and would workout together and they were both so committed (and some would say, obsessed) to their workout sessions that they would get up around 4am to train, sometimes spending two or three sessions at the gym per day. Chyna started to really beef up and after a night of resting on the sofa trying to figure out what to watch, she came across a wrestling show and then decided that she was interested in that.
Her idea to become a wrestler was something she was really serious about and with the help of her boyfriend, she was able to secure some training sessions with the late and legendary Wladek Kowalski aka Killer Kowalski. Kowalski was said to have been impressed with Chyna as soon as he laid eyes on her. He had arranged for some matches for Chyna but was struggling to find another female who could match her strength and ability. Eventually having tried to secure another female being an impossible task, it was decided that a male wrestler would dress up as a woman and fight Chyna. Some people would disagree with this but it was Chyna who wanted to work with men all of the time.
Chyna had heard that WWE were coming to Massachusetts and was determined to go, she was determined to make things happen. So along with her boyfriend she attended the show and waited backstage for the wrestlers Triple H and Shawn Michaels, her plan was to see if they could put a good word in for her with Vince McMahon. She didn't have to work hard trying to persuade the guys to help her get her chance because they were transfixed with her and wanted her to come and be a part of their tag team. They needed to run everything by Vince first but with Triple H and Shawn being quite close with Vince at the time and also two of the most popular wrestlers at that time, they figured Vince wouldn't say no.
When she went home after the show her boyfriend later said in an interview that she didn't sleep that night because she was too excited. Both Chyna and her boyfriend knew that her life was going to change completely and everything she had been working so hard for was about to become true. When the guys had originally pitched the idea of Chyna coming on board with the tag team to Vince, he was sceptical and didn't think it would work, he didn't think the fans would like seeing a strong heavily built woman throwing men around the ring but he soon changed his mind and when Chyna did make her debut it was a groundbreaking moment which many WWE fans recall at the drop of a hat. All of a sudden there was this huge, tough woman who looked like she could chew you up and spit you out. She was perfect in the role of a wrestler, it was like she was born to take on that role. All of a sudden more women were watching wrestling because of Chyna.
Chyna eventually joined the Degeneration X tag team as a bodyguard and it was fantastic, Triple H, Shawn Michaels and Chyna had all eyes on them and although there were some negative and ignorant comments about Chyna's appearance, on the whole the majority of fans were intrigued with Chyna and enjoyed having her as part of WWE.
No stranger to hard work, Chyna threw herself into her new life as a WWE wrestler and she spend a lot of time with Paul Michael Levesque (Triple H) and Shawn Michaels that they became close. Chyna found in WWE what she had been looking for her whole life, acceptance, love, security and respect. Sure there was some negativity but she was finally feeling that she was being accepted for being herself. Things got really close with Paul who actually shared a few things in common with Chyna. Paul had been previously trained by Killer Kowalski and was also from her hometown so they ended up having a relationship which lasted for four years, they moved in together and there was talk about the possibility of children and marriage in the future but the pair were still very much focused on their wrestling career path.
Chyna's popularity in WWE was continuing to grow and so was Paul's. They were very much in love and Chyna was said to have bee the happiest she had ever been in her life, she had the WWE career, the money, the boyfriend, the house, all of the hardships were to be no more, she had finally turned the corner. But again, drama was never too far from the door for Chyna. As the success continued, Chyna decided to have some surgical procedures done as she was tired of the negative comments regarding her appearance, she wanted to have a more softer jawline. Triple H (Paul) began acting as a go-between with Chyna and Vince and was reportedly making decisions without consulting her first. There seemed to be a lot of conversations and decisions being made about Chyna and her career at WWE without anyone talking to her about it. Chyna knew her worth, she knew how popular she was (especially as she had been the first woman to have ever won the Intercontinental Championship) and she started to demand certain things as well as more money which was causing tensions between her and WWE.
At the same time that this was happening Triple H was part of a storyline with Vince McMahon's daughter Stephanie and rumours began to circulate that the two of them were having an affair. The situation placed Chyna in a difficult position because she was head over heels in love with Paul, they were living happily together at the time and she knew how much his career meant to him so to have gotten that close to Vince and be involved in that storyline was a major deal for him. She thought she was just being paranoid until she found a love letter that Stephanie and written for Paul. The letter was dated from the year before so the affair had been going on for quite some time, Chyna was utterly heartbroken and again thrown into a difficult situation.
In her career she was at the top but suddenly found herself out in the cold and not knowing how to handle it because the 'other woman' was the daughter of her boss. When asked about this in later interviews, Chyna was always very respectful in how she responded but the truth was, the situation was incredibly difficult. It seemed that WWE were looking for an excuse for some reason to let her go and at the time, Chyna had been offered various outside projects (including Playboy) that would have made her more money than what she would be receiving from WWE. She explained to Vince how much she wanted and he refused. Very strange that they would choose to let go one of their biggest and most popular stars who was well worth the big pay check but some people believe that they wanted her out of the way due to the relationship between Paul and Stephanie, how awkward it would possibly be with them all being there.
Chyna did reflect on this later on and said that she would have found it difficult seeing them and with Vince being Stephanie's father. She was also unhappy with the path they were trying to put her on they wanted her to be like the other female wrestlers but she wanted to wrestle the men.
Despite the harsh way she had been treated by WWE, Paul and Stephanie, she had positive hopes that more doors outside of the world of wrestling would open for her. She had made a lot of money from her deal and photoshoot with Playboy which turned out to be a very popular issue for them. Apart from appearances in some low budget films nothing else was on the table. Today, Chyna would have been offered so many roles I believe, especially with action and superhero themed movies, female heroines are a big thing now and you could just imagine her as a James Bond villain or having a part in a Batman or Mission Impossible movie. With the realisation of having had her dreams come true then watching helplessly as her career, financial security and love life was ripped away one by one with nothing else to hold on to, it was not surprising that she found herself reaching for the bottle of alcohol again.
She entered into a relationship with a former wrestler that many people described as the worst person for her as he had a heavy drug addiction. There was a turn of events when some positive news came through that she had a chance at reviving her wrestling career by moving to Japan. She was excited at this opportunity and whilst over there she wowed everyone and was popular from the moment she arrived but things soon turned sour when her boyfriend encouraged her to 'party' with him and she became addicted to drugs again. She became someone who she was not, no longer a reliable, hardworking and focused individual. She was late, rude and had this couldn't be bothered attitude. A great opportunity went down the pan and the path of self-destruction was truly ready for Chyna to walk on unfortunately.
Things just went from bad to worse, desperate for more drugs and to help maintain the lifestyle she was no longer able to afford. Chyna and her boyfriend made homemade porn tapes with the idea to sell them but according to Chyna, they had a distributor who had conned the out of money, she earned basically nothing out of these porn tapes. The stress and strain continued and the relationship turned violent with Chyna physically assaulting her boyfriend. The toxic relationship had finally came to an end but her reputation was beyond repair.
Chyna had a habit of cutting off people in her life if they tried to help her get clean. The last person to stand by her was her sister who had put up with a lot over the years and she had seen how far Chyna had fallen back into the alcohol and drugs. Despite her sister's best efforts to try and get through to her, Chyna refused to accept help and refused to see or speak to her sister again.
At this point Chyna was viewed as a joke (I'm sorry to say) and a car crash of a person. The awful porn tapes continued to come back to haunt her, Paul and Stephanie seemed to be going from strength to strength and it seemed like WWE and the fans had forgotten her. She was seen as someone who had the talent and a great opportunity and threw it all away. People forgot about the incredible achievements she had made, it had all been overshadowed by the Playboy pictures, homemade porn tapes, the violence, the alcohol and the drugs.
As stinging as this was, when Triple H was asked in an interview why Chyna was not yet included in the WWE Hall of Fame he said that he didn't want kids to go online to look up wrestlers and type in Chyna to find all of this porn and Playboy stuff. It was a harsh statement but it was sadly true. Due to her dramatic and quick decline, Chyna had been offered reality TV show appearances and she took them because she needed the money. She moved to Las Vegas against the better judgement of the few friends that she had left.
There was a short period of time where she was attempting to get sober and there was the possibility of joining TNA, they gave her a contract but after two shows they let her go. It was disaster after disaster, part of the reason they let her go was because they found out that she'd done another porn movie and shockingly and disturbingly you might say, this 'movie' depicted Chyna having sex with various men dressed up as WWE wrestlers. Well you can imagine the reaction to that. TNA didn't want anything to do with her and WWE made it clear that they wanted no tie to her whatsoever and these decisions that she had made had cost her any chance of a future reconciliation with WWE or the chance to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Eventually she tried to escape from everything and attempt to turn her life around by moving once again to Japan. This time giving up on wrestling and fame altogether, trying to live a quiet life, turning to religion and teaching English. It was a far cry away to the life she had before but it was keeping her on the straight and narrow until yet more drama popped up. All credit to her because she had lived a quiet life in Japan for three years but issues with her Visa meant she had no choice to return to California. Back in California she had gotten in touch with her former manager and was in talks to try again at looking at some other career paths. She had been under the care of a Doctor as she had been suffering from anxiety for which she was supposed to be taking medication regularly but Chyna had become disorganized when tasked with taking pills at a set time.
On the 20th of April 2016, the woman who was nicknamed 'The Ninth Wonder of The World' (fellow wrestler, the late and legendary Andre The Giant was the eighth) was sadly found dead in her apartment at the age of just 46 from what was declared, an accidental overdose. A toxicology report indicated that Chyna had a cocktail of pills in her system which included: alcohol, a sleeping pill (Temazepam), Diazepam and Nordazepam (for anxiety), Oxycodone and Oxymorphone (painkillers).
After Chyna's autopsy there was a suggestion that her brain be donated to medical science to test for the possibility of her suffering from CTE (I mentioned this is my last post about Chris Benoit) but her brain was too far into decomposition for that ti be determined. Chyna was cremated and her ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. Despite the difficult years she had endured her memorial service set as a reminder of how much she actually was loved and admired by so many people. Attendees of her memorial service ranged from the world of hip hop right though to highly respected veteran actors. Despite her mistakes she was a gentle soul who just wanted to be loved. She was eventually added into the WWE Hall of Fame (most probably because the fans had demanded for years that she be given her flowers) but it was bittersweet. Another sad fact was it took Chyna's death to shock everyone into remembering who she actually was and how incredible she was. She never needed to do any of the porn stuff or the reality TV crap, she was a very intelligent, academically and musically gifted woman (I forgot to mention that she could also play the cello and violin) who stole the show amongst wrestling legends and wowed us all. The mistakes she made were acts of desperation, there was nobody there to guide her, she found herself trying to get through a traumatic upbringing to all of a sudden she's in front of thousands of people, living her dreams being ridiculed at the same time but on the whole having everything she ever dreamed of.
There was a lot that she went through that she never properly had the chance to deal with and just seemed to constantly throw herself into different things. It's heartbreaking when I think about how talented and lovely she was. If you watch an interview with her you'll see that gentle, sweet side come through, there was a vulnerability to her. She is so very missed and it's sad that we can look back now and see how she had fallen on to this dark path and in a way understand why. She was placed in so many difficult situations and wasn't able to fully understand or deal with these issues. She was highly intelligent in some ways but very naive in others.
One thing is for sure, Chyna is remembered for being one of the greatest female wrestlers of all time. We have some talented female wrestlers today but honestly speaking, I said it before and I'll say it again, there's only one Chyna. I'm glad that people recall her days in WWE with fondness and they don't focus so much anymore on what happened afterwards.
RIP Chyna, you will never be forgotten x
Further Reading & Sources:
- Chyna: If Only They Knew | Book by Joanie Laurer and Michael Angeli
- Chyna: The Ninth Wonder of WWE | Book by Marlow J Martin
- WWE: 100 Greatest Matches | Book by Dean Miller
- Wrestling For My Life | Book by Shawn Michaels, Daniel Butler, David Thomas & Zonderban
- Under The Black Hat | Book by Jim Ross
- WWE Encyclopedia | Book by DK
- Chyna: Biography | WWE Website
- WWE: Hall of Fame | WWE Official Website
- Chyna: Interview | Vince Russo: Youtube
- Chyna: Interview Clip 2001 | Off The Record
- Chyna: Memorial | Find A Grave
- Chris Benoit Story | True Crime With Caledonian Kitty
- Miss Elizabeth Story | True Crime With Caledonian Kitty
If you have made it this far in the post, thank you so much! I really have appreciated all of the comments, messages and emails that I've received from wrestling fans about these posts. I hope you will join me next time when I share my fourth instalment with you.
Until next time, stay safe x
