Chyna

Joan Laurer was born in Rochester, New York, to parents Janet and Joe Laurer. She had two older siblings: Kathy and Sonny. After her parents divorced when she was approximately four years old, Laurer had three different stepfathers and one stepmother. According to Laurer, her first stepfather threatened suicide at one point, and her biological father, who once accidentally stabbed her mother in the thigh with a bread knife, had a problem with alcoholism. From 1973 to 1983, Joanie Laurer, her siblings, and her mom moved several times. As a child, Laurer learned to play both the violin and cello. Joan Laurer would later claim that in seventh grade she was sexually kissed by a much older teacher who worked at her school. At age thirteen, while attending Penfield High School, Laurer began purging after she ate. She left home at age sixteen after her mother tried to force her into a drug rehabilitation facility, going instead to live with her biological father. That same year, she began working out, and because her abdominal muscles were so strong, she did not feel any pain when she developed an ovarian tumor. She finished her last year of high school in Spain. She attended the University of Tampa, graduating in 1992 with a major in Spanish Literature. During college, she also studied French and German (she could converse in either language) and later claimed during this time she was raped by two men after getting drunk at a party. She also was a member of the ROTC. She originally wanted to use her knowledge of foreign languages to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Drug Enforcement Administration. Subsequently, she joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to Guatemala.

After returning from abroad, she held several different jobs: a cocktail waitress in a strip club, singer in a band, and a 900-number chat line worker. In her mid-to-late 20s, while living in the Florida Keys, Laurer took a six-week class to train to be a flight attendant. On the way to her first flight, however, she was in a car accident and spent four days in the hospital. After recovering from the accident, Laurer’s sister Kathy helped her get a job selling beepers, and both women also worked as belly dancers. After college, Laurer began to regularly enter fitness competitions. In 1996, Laurer competed in the New York City regional level of the Fitness America competition. Because of her large size compared to the other women, Laurer usually finished in last place. Joan Laurer trained at Wladek “Killer” Kowalski’s professional wrestling school in Malden, Massachusetts. Her first match was in 1995 against a male wrestler dressed as a woman. While attending the school, she also worked for various independent promotions as Joanie Lee. Some of her earliest matches were set up by The Fabulous Moolah. Joan Laurer met World Wrestling Federation (WWF) performers Paul “Triple H” Levesque and Shawn Michaels after a professional wrestling show in 1996. After watching tapes of her matches, they decided to bring her into the WWF as a bodyguard. Vince McMahon, the owner of the WWF, initially did not want her to join the company because he did not believe the audience would find a woman beating up men believable. While waiting for the WWF’s decision, Laurer was approached by World Championship Wrestling (WCW), who wanted her to be the sole-female member of the New World Order. She initially accepted the offer, but later turned it down when Shane McMahon, Vince McMahon’s son, informed her that she was about to be hired by the WWF. Kowalski, her former trainer, however, maintains that he got her hired by the WWF after introducing her to Shane McMahon and telling him of WCW’s interest in her.

Vince McMahon later changed his mind by hiring Joan Laurer, and she made her WWF debut on February 16, 1997 at In Your House 13: Final Four; her character emerged as a plant from a ringside seat, choking Marlena while Goldust was in the ring with Triple H. Her original role in the promotion was as the laconic enforcer/bodyguard for Triple H and later, his D-Generation X group (which included Sean “X-Pac” Waltman). She often helped Triple H (then, a rising villain) cheat to win by physically interfering in matches by executing her trademark low blow to the groin. She was later introduced as “Chyna”, a play on words; fine china is delicate and fragile, which was a sharp contrast to her character. Off-screen, however, the male wrestlers were hesitant at first to let a female over-power them on-screen. In January 1999, Chyna was the thirtieth entrant in the Royal Rumble, becoming the first woman ever to enter the contest. The day after the Royal Rumble, Chyna became a villainess by betraying Triple H and aligning herself with his enemy Vince McMahon and Kane. Laurer teamed with Kane at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre pay-per-view against former allies X-Pac and Triple H. At WrestleMania XV, Chyna turned on Kane in his match by attacking him with a chair, appearing to rejoin DX. Chyna and Triple H, however, turned against DX later that evening when they helped Shane McMahon defeat DX member X-Pac. The duo became part of The Corporation and later Shane McMahon’s Corporate Ministry. Following the dissolution of the Corporate Ministry, the villainous Chyna remained at Triple H’s side. They would eventually split up later in the year.

In June 1999, Chyna became the first woman to qualify for the King of the Ring tournament. She was also the first female to be the number one contender for the WWF Championship, but lost the spot to Mankind before SummerSlam in August. Later that year, Laurer became a fan favorite again during her long feud with Jeff Jarrett. At Unforgiven, she had a match for the WWF Intercontinental Championship against Jarrett, which she lost. She defeated Jarrett for the title at No Mercy in his last WWF match, a Good Housekeeping match, on October 17 at No Mercy, in the process becoming the first and only woman to win the Intercontinental Championship. She also gained the services of his valet, Miss Kitty. Laurer claims that Jarrett demanded (and received) $300,000 from Vince McMahon in order to lose the title cleanly to a woman. His contract had expired on October 16, and he was therefore not contractually obligated to appear on the pay-per-view. If he had not appeared, the WWF would have been criticized for false advertising, and the lineage of the title would have been broken.

Chyna then feuded with Chris Jericho over the belt, defeating him at the Survivor Series, but losing the title to him at Armageddon. The two faced off again in a match on the edition of December 28 of SmackDown!, which ended controversially with both wrestlers pinning each other. As a result, then “head of authority” Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley declared them co-champions. At the Royal Rumble, Jericho and Chyna defended the title against Hardcore Holly in a Triple Threat match to determine the Intercontinental Champion, which Jericho won; Chyna’s “co-champions” reign is no longer recognized by WWE and is now considered a continuation of Jericho’s second Intercontinental reign. Afterwards, Laurer briefly teamed with Jericho. Not long after losing the Intercontinental title, Laurer became the on-screen girlfriend of Eddie Guerrero. Guerrero and Laurer, originally villains, later became fan favorites during the summer of 2000, with Guerrero dubbing her his “Mamacita”. The couple faced Val Venis and then-rookie Trish Stratus in an intergender tag team match at SummerSlam with the Intercontinental Championship on the line. Chyna won the match, but lost the belt two weeks later to Guerrero in a Triple Threat match with Kurt Angle. They officially split in November 2000 after Chyna, in storyline, found Eddie cavorting in the shower with two other women.

At the same time, Joan Laurer posed nude for Playboy magazine’s November 2000 issue. Her Playboy modeling was also worked into a WWE storyline, in which it drew the ire of the Right to Censor (a group of morally conservative wrestlers). Shortly after, Laurer began a feud with Ivory, a member of the Right to Censor, over the Women’s Championship. This culminated in a storyline at the Royal Rumble where Laurer appeared to reinjure her neck while performing a handspring back elbow. In order to better convince the audience that she was injured, color commentator Jerry Lawler left the commentators’ booth and entered the ring to check on Laurer’s condition, something he had not done since the in-ring accident that killed Owen Hart in 1999. When Laurer returned from the “injury”, she won the Women’s Championship from Ivory at WrestleMania X-Seven in a squash match, a short match where one performer defeats the other with ease. Joan Laurer also defended her title against Lita at Judgment Day in 2001. Although she won the match, she soon vacated the Women’s Championship, as this was Joan Laurer’s final WWF match. The relationship between Triple H, her former real-life boyfriend, and Stephanie McMahon (with whom Laurer claims he had an affair and then left her for) was a major factor in her dismissal. She left the WWF on November 30, 2001, several months after she had been taken off of television. In 2007, then-WWE employee Jim Ross claimed that she was not fired, but rather chose to leave for personal reasons. Joan Laurer, in a 2015 interview with Vince Russo, stated that after a meeting with Vince McMahon about the Stephanie McMahon situation, she was sent home and was later sent a fax telling her that she was not needed anymore.

In 2002, Joan Laurer joined New Japan Pro Wrestling and made her first appearance at the New Japan Thirtieth Anniversary Show, refereeing a bout between the Steiner Brothers and Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kensuke Sasaki. In September and October 2002, she wrestled several matches for the promotion. After losing to Masahiro Chono on October 14, 2002, Laurer performed her final match on October 26, teaming with a fake Great Muta played by Troy Enders in a loss to Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kenzo Suzuki. During the May 3, 2011, tapings of the edition of May 12 of Impact!, Chyna made her TNA debut, introduced by the returning Spike TV network consultant Mick Foley. He introduced her as Kurt Angle’s business associate (she had been previously referred to as his “Mistress”) and tag team partner at Sacrifice, where they would face Jeff Jarrett and Karen Jarrett. During the taping she also took part in a battle royal, from which she eliminated Jeff. At Sacrifice, Chyna submitted Karen for the win in the mixed tag team match. She left TNA shortly after.

Joan Laurer made her porn debut with the 2004 video 1 Night in China. Laurer and Sean Waltman approached Red Light District Video to distribute the homemade video, which was released in 2004. Laurer appeared in her second pornographic video, entitled Another Night in China in 2009. In 2011, Laurer starred in her first professional pornographic film for Vivid Video entitled Backdoor to Chyna. She also starred for Vivid as She-Hulk in their parody of The Avengers, released in May 2012. A spinoff feature centered around the She-Hulk character and titled She-Hulk XXX was released to video in April 2013.