Nearly two decades after her final appearance in a professional wrestling ring—and three years after her premature death at age 46—the iconic female bodybuilder-turned-wrestler known to fans as Chyna will enter the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Hall of Fame, an honor that her fans say is long overdue, according to the sports site Bleacher Report.
Chyna, who was born Joanie Laurer, will not enter the WWE Hall purely on her own merits, despite her status as the first and even now only woman to hold a major WWE (formerly World Wrestling Federation) belt. Instead, Chyna will be inducted as a member of the 1990s wrestling stable D-Generation X, a group of, at different times, six wrestlers who played an essential part in propelling the WWE—then still the WWF—into the mainstream of American TV and pop culture.
But about a decade after her retirement from the ring and following a series of personal problems including failed relationships, mental health issues, and the unauthorized release of a “celebrity sex tape” featuring Chyna and then-boyfriend Sean “X-Pac” Waltman, a fellow pro wrestler, the former WWE “diva” launched a new career: porn.
She kicked off her brief but high-profile adult career with the Vivid Entertainment Group production, Back Door To Chyna, which upon its release in 2011 was described by AVN.com as featuring the former wrestler “paired up with a group of the most well-endowed male performers the industry has to offer. Clearly, Chyna’s always been a size queen.”
The AVN.com review decsribed Chyna as appearing tentative in her on-camera sex scenes initially, but noted that her performance quickly gained steam.
“Chyna is a bit more demonstrative in the fucking she receives from Evan Stone—and even bends over and takes it in the ass! Her b/b/g scene with Mick Blue and Jerry proves Chyna can handle two dicks at once,” AVN.com wrote.
Chyna told The Daily Beast at the time that performing in the adult industry played an important role in helping her move past the traumas she had experienced.
“This tape empowered me. I felt respected. I felt beautiful. I got paid well. This movie didn’t happen to me. I cast it. I was involved from beginning to end,” she told the online magazine. “In a way, it fixed me. I feel like it helped me get over trauma that I needed help with.”
She went on to star in a series of porn superhero parodies, tinting her skin green for the role of the Marvel Comics character She-Hulk—the porn version of the superhero, anyway.
But she will now be honored at last for her achivements in the pro wrestling industry.
“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,” wrestler-turned WWE executive Paul "Triple H" Levesque, who had a committed relationship with Chyna during the late 1990s, told Fox News. “I’m just happy that it’s here. I’m happy for her family, the people that she was close to, that hopefully this is super meaningful to them. I know it would be to her. It’s a great thing — very deserving.”
Joanie “Chyna” Laurer died on April 20, 2016, from what a coroner ruled was an accidental overdose caused by mixing alcohol with Valium and other prescription drugs.
