In 2001, Joanie Laurer had departed her precedent-breaking reign in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF – later to be renamed WWE) under the name of Chyna and was hoping to start a new career in movies. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, she acknowledged she was not going to give Meryl Streep a run for her money.
“I’m not looking to win an Academy Award, I just want to entertain people,” she said. “It’d be a shame to waste my physique and desire. I think I can be the female Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
But Hollywood wasn’t ready for a female Arnold Schwarzenegger and Laurer’s star imploded, resulting in a slow-motion decline in professional and personal chaos that ended on April 20, 2016 when her body was found in her tiny studio apartment in Redondo Beach, California, the victim of an accidental drug overdose.
In her life, the dichotomy between the real Joan Marie Laurer and the WWF invention of Chyna was never truly a perfect fit, and her hopes to become a movie star was one of the great could-have-been tragedies in the entertainment world.
She was born Joan Marie Laurer on December 27, 1969, in Rochester, New York, the youngest of three siblings for Joe and Janet Laurer. In her 2001 autobiography, Laurer recalled that her parents lived on welfare and moved frequently. Laurer’s father was an abusive alcoholic who once stabbed his wife in the leg with a butcher knife. The couple divorced when the Laurer was four and her mother remarried twice – her father would also remarry – but none of those unions produced anything resembling a serene domestic life.
Laurer moved out of her mother’s home when she was 16 – some sources say she was thrown out after her mother discover she was smoking pot – and relocated with her father. Her teen years were difficult, as she grew taller and became more broad-shouldered than the girls in her school. During this time, she discovered weightlifting and began training during her free time.
Laurer attended the University of Tampa and graduated with a degree in Spanish Literature in 1992; while in school, she became fluent in French and German. Laurer initially hoped to use her multilingual skills in a federal law enforcement job, but instead joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to a stint in Guatemala.
After returning to the U.S., Laurer trained to become a flight attendant, but never finished her studies. She went through a skein of low-paying, low-respect jobs including cocktail waitress, singing telegram delivery person and pager saleswoman. Her weightlifting training gave her a powerful physique and she began to enter fitness competitions, but soon she turned her attention to another pursuit.
Laurer watched wrestling matches on television and was displeased at the minimal presence that female athletes were being given. She would later recall yelling “I can do that!” at a broadcast where bulky male wrestlers engaged in acrobatic feats. At 5-foot-10 and 185 pounds of muscle, Laurer believed that she could find a future in the wrestling ring.
In 1995, Laurer was living in New Hampshire with her older sister Kathy when she ventured across the border to Massachusetts to meet Wladek “Killer” Kowalski, a former wrestling champion who was running a school for aspiring grapplers. Laurer remembered going into the meeting with a what-the-heck attitude, noting how she had been “rejected at everything” to date. Kowalski agreed to train her and began placing her in small New England-based promotions. But women wrestlers were not commonplace and Laurer’s height and physique was visually more powerful than any other women in those smaller promotions – in her first match she took on a male wrestler dressed in drag and billed as “Snooki.”
After a few bouts on the indie circuit under the name “Joanie Lee,” Laurer managed to secure a meeting with Shawn Michaels and Paul “Triple H” Levesque backstage during a WWF event in Massachusetts. Both were impressed with Laurer and would review videos of her matches. They were eager to have her in the WWF – albeit in the role of their bodyguard rather than as a wrestler, as WWF’s leadership were indifferent to the concept of a powerful woman who was a physical equal to their behemothic men.
In her autobiography, Laurer said WCW, the Ted Turner-backed rival to WWF, became aware of her abilities and reached out to have her join that promotion as part of the New World Order. Once WCW’s intentions became known, WWF quickly signed her to a contract.
Laurer first appeared in a WWF event in February 1997 as the intimidating but unnamed bodyguard to the star wrestlers Michaels and Triple H, who were then among the leading heels in the promotion. Laurer would assist the duo in their dishonest shenanigans, often by aiming a violent kick into an opponent’s groin. She was eventually dubbed Chyna, an ironic joke as her commanding presence was far from the antiquated notion of a woman’s physicality being the equivalent of delicate chinaware.
Intergender wrestling was not a regular feature of the WWF agenda when Chyna joined the roster, but her physicality and personality was equal to the male stars. However, not everyone was on board with her presence.
“Initially, a lot of old-timers, including myself, didn’t think it was appropriate,” recalled announcer Jim Ross in a 2016 interview. “But she overcame all of that apprehension and proved people wrong. Chyna was a trailblazer. She broke all kinds of barriers.”
Among the barriers she broke was being part of the D-Generation X stable along with Triple H, Michaels and Rick Rude, being the first woman to participate in the Royal Rumble match and the King of the Ring tournament, the first woman to be crowned as #1 contender for the WWF title and the first (and, to date, only) woman to win the Intercontinental Championship. She was given the nickname “Ninth Wonder of the World” – Andre the Giant being the eighth.
Although Laurer’s Chyna was popular with the WWF fans, she was sensitive to the negative comments about her appearance, including taunts that she was really a man in drag. Even radio shock jock Howard Stern ruminated on whether WWF was being honest about her gender. The trash talk became so overwhelming that in 1999 Laurer took time off for a breast enhancement procedure and plastic surgery designed to soften her features and enhance her femininity.
And being the only woman competing directly against men, she was given storylines involving alleged romances with Mark Henry, Eddie Guerrero and Triple H. In reality, Laurer and Levesque had become an inseparable couple outside of the ring, although the depth of their romance was kept secret from their fans.
The 2000-2001 was a transitional point in Laurer’s life. She posed nude for Playboy’s November 2000 edition and the glamorous cover photo gave her vindication against those who repeatedly insulted her ringside appearance as being overly masculine. The Playboy exposure also brought Laurer into a mainstream pop culture realm beyond the confines of the wrestling arenas. Her star burned brightly, and she snagged guest appearances on television shows including “3rd Rock from the Sun” (where she appeared in three episodes as a police officer) and “Pacific Blue”; she also was a presenter at the MTV Music Video Awards and became a popular guest on talk shows, including her nemesis Howard Stern’s radio program. In 2001, her autobiography published under the title “If They Only Knew” became a best-seller.
But during this period, her relationship with Levesque began to fray. Reportedly, he wanted to start a family and she was not interested in having children. Behind Laurer’s back, Levesque began a relationship with Stephanie McMahon, the daughter of WWF chief executive Vince McMahon. In January 2001, Chyna was steered out of intergender competition – she claimed Vince McMahon used the Playboy spread to kibosh her route to a World Championship – and she went into a challenge against reigning WWF Womens Championship title holder Ivory, losing the match and having the indignity of being removed on a stretcher due to an alleged neck injury. She would return three months later to defeat Ivory and take her title in WrestleMania 17 and would defend it the following month against Lita in the 2001 Judgment Day.
At that point, Chyna disappeared from WWF events, and in November 2001 she was gone from the promotion. Several stories have percolated regarding the circumstances of her departure: one story placed her in an angry confrontation with Vince McMahon regarding his daughter’s relationship with Levesque, another had McMahon refusing her demand for a $1 million annual salary and another story had her voluntarily exiting to pursue a show business career. But having reached the top of the wrestling profession, found herself unprepared to leverage that success further.
But if Laurer left WWF to pursue her acting career, she made a lethal error – the company owned the trademark to “Chyna” and was not giving it to her as a going-away present. Without that moniker, Laurer had an identity crisis in promoting herself – after all, people knew Chyna but they had no idea who Joanie Laurer was. While she initially used Joanie Laurer for her billing, she would also use Chyna Doll to remind people of her claim to fame. In 2007,, she legally changed her name to Chyna to permanently re-establish that identity.
Once free of WWF, Laurer’s hopes for big screen stardom evaporated and she found herself
in forgettable straight-to-video films including “Frank McClusky, C.I.” and “Alien Tracker.” She had more luck snagging one-shot guest appearances on television, turning up on the scripted series “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” and “Relic Hunter” and the cheesy reality shows including Fox’s “Celebrity Boxing” (where she fought and lost to Joey Buttafuco) and “Fear Factor.” In 2002, she received an invitation to come back to the ring via the New Japan Professional Wrestling, but she only stayed with that promotion for a few months.
In 2002, she became a frequent guest at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion and posed for a second photo shoot in his magazine; she was also the focus of a Playboy adult documentary, “Joanie Laurer Nude: Wrestling Superstar to Warrior Princess.”
Also in 2002, Laurer began a tumultuous relationship with Sean Waltman, a former WWF wrestler who was part of D-Generation X with her under the name X-Pac. The couple went through a cycle of announcing engagement, breaking up, then reconciling and separating again. Laurer and Waltman began to fall into another cycle, this one involving alcohol and drugs.
In 2004, Laurer hit a career nadir. She signed with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling to wrestle again as “Chyna Doll,” but she was abruptly dropped due to what the company called “unforeseen circumstances.” Later in the year, she appeared at an Ultimate Pro Wrestling show and was reportedly booed by the audience. She found a more appreciative crowd as a judge in a Las Vegas production called “The World’s Most Beautiful Transsexual.”
If there was a career high point for her that year, it would be a homemade sex tape she made with Waltman that was sold to Vivid Entertainment and released as “1 Night in China” (obviously not using the “Chyna” spelling to avoid a WWE trademark infringement lawsuit). The tape would become a commercial hit in the porn video genre and later win the Best-Selling Title honors from the AVN Awards, sort of the Oscars for X-rated fare.
After “1 Night in China,” the relationship between Laurer and Waltman became more combustible. On New Year’s Day 2005, Laurer was arrested after Waltman reported to police that she assaulted him. They later made up and appeared together on the reality TV show “The Surreal Life,” but in one episode they captured in a loud and nasty fight, with Laurer clearly intoxicated while on camera.
Still, the old saying that all publicity is good publicity seemed to work for Laurer, and she began snagging small supporting roles in movies – albeit obscure flicks including “Just Another Romantic Wrestling Comedy,” “Illegal Aliens” co-starring Anna Nicole Smith and “Cougar Club” with Joe Mantegna and Faye Dunaway. In a 2007 interview with Slam Wrestling, said she was being considered for a possible big-screen adaptation of Wonder Woman – but nothing ever came of that project. Laurer admitted no wrestling promotion made any inquiries for her services.
“Well, I’ve never been asked,” she said. “But I haven’t always been treated nicely in wrestling, so I don’t know why I would. And anyway, that’s not my ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to do more films.”
But film producers were not interested, especially as her alcohol and drug usage created situations where she would not show up for meetings to discuss possible roles. Under her reclaimed name Chyna, she appeared on the TV series “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” in 2008 but denied having an addiction problem. On December 26, 2008, she was hospitalized after mixing a heavy dose of pills with alcohol.
In 2009, Laurer’s entertainment career hit a new low when she began to appear in a series of porn videos both as herself in “Another Night in China,” “Backdoor to Chyna” and “Chyna is the Queen of the Ring” plus two comic book parodies as She-Hulk. Although she would snag an AVN Award for “Backdoor to Chyna,” her porn appearances effectively ended her hopes for a Hollywood film career.
Laurer briefly returned to wrestling in 2011 by appearing on Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in a tag team with Kurt Angle, but she left after two matches; while she would appear at wrestling-focused autograph shows and fan conventions, she never sought a wrestling comeback again. In 2012, she moved to Japan to teach English and slowly began to re-establish a relation with her mother via email, with whom she had no contact since leaving home at 16, but the women would never completely reconcile.
Laurer returned to the U.S. in June 2015 and did a series of interviews seeking to reinvent herself as someone who moved beyond her personal problems with a healthier diet and a better focus. She told Sirius/XM’s Opie and Jim that her life was in “complete, total chaos” when she left for Tokyo, and she told Vice Sports that there was “a misconception out there, in the media, about everything that I’ve done, that I’ve become some monster. I’m a different person now . . . I’m doing yoga.”
Unfortunately, Laurer was not being honest. Her alcohol and drug use never abated while she was Japan, and in 2013 she attempted suicide in her Tokyo apartment. She lost her teaching job and then lost another teaching gig due to her increasingly erratic behavior and had been arrested after climbing up a pole outside of her apartment complex at 2:49 a.m. and screaming at the top of her voice. She tried to find faith-based stability by joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but she ultimately walked away from the religion.
By late 2015, Laurer sought to reanimate her entertainment career by agreeing to become the focus of a documentary called “The Reconstruction of Chyna.” The filmmaking team captured emotional high points where Laurer fans reacted ecstatically at her arrival, but there was also an embarrassing moment where she arrived unannounced at WWE headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, seeking money that she felt the company owed her – the building’s security guards forced her to leave. WWE would rebuff her attempts to reconcile their differences, and the only reunion she had with members of her former employer came at the August 2015 funeral for Roddy Piper, including a brief encounter with Levesque.
Laurer also shot her final television appearance on the reality series “Botched,” where she consulted with doctors to correct problems that arose from her previous endeavors with plastic surgery. Her manager, Anthony Anzaldo, was growing concerned about her drug and alcohol use and secretly reached out to the producers of another reality series, “Intervention,” about having her on an episode that would involve her going into rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic.
The world last saw Laurer in a video she posted to YouTube on April 17, 2006. The 13-minute and six-second video found Laurer consuming an energy drink and making a spinach smoothie while discussing plans to start a health food delivery service. She also shared a view of the Pacific Ocean view from her apartment and remarked, “It looks like it’s going to be a gorgeous day out there. How lucky am I?”
Three days later, Laurer’s body was found in the apartment. An autopsy would later determine she died on the day she posted her video, with an overdose of drugs mixed with alcohol as the cause of her death. She was 46 years old.
The news of Laurer’s death created an outpouring of grief across the wrestling world. Stephanie McMahon was the first to pay tribute via social media, followed by her husband Levesque. A memorial service was held at Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, but no one from WWE attended, although Waltman spoke briefly in tribute to Laurer and stated, “I want to say in front of everyone that, Joanie, I’m really, really sorry. I hope you forgive me for not taking better care of you.” WWE would create a tribute segment on “Raw” in her honor.
Laurer’s death began to create a new wave of questioning regarding Laurer’s absence from the WWE Hall of Fame. No official reason for her omission has ever been given, although Levesque ruminated in an interview that her post-WWE work in pornography was being held against her.
Laurer and Michaels, along with Waltman’s X-Pac, Levesque’s Triple H, Road Dogg and Billy Gunn were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2019 together as D-Generation X. Waltman claimed WWE planned to induct the stable in 2013 but opted instead to honor Bruno Sammartino.
Ahead of the 2019 induction, Levesque told ESPN Laurer “absolutely, definitely deserves to be in there. It’d be tough to pick a female that was more impactful on the business. She did something that was completely so out of left field that it wasn’t even being considered when we first brought it up for her to come in. It wasn’t even a consideration … it wasn’t an easy thing, and against all odds she did all of that.”
Levesque is now Chief Content Officer at WWE, and the Hall of Fame ceremonies fall under his responsibilities. To date, Chyna has yet to receive an individual induction into the Hall of Fame.
(Photo courtesy of WWE)