Joanie Laurer - Chickipedia

Joanie Laurer (December 27, 1969) is an American actress and retired professional wrestler billed under the names "Chyna" and "Chyna Doll." A former bodybuilder, she is best known for her career with the World Wrestling Federation from 1997 to 2001, where she was billed as "The Ninth Wonder of the World" (with the eighth wonder being André the Giant). She was notable for wrestling in intergender matches. She is also the only woman to ever compete in the Royal Rumble.

There's no getting around the fact that Joanie looks like a man. She's abused steroids for so long that in her home-made sex tape One Night In Chyna, the effects on her genitalia were obvious and dramatic. Her clitoris in particular had grown to gargantuan proportions.

Little is known about Joanie's childhood, other than the few details that she herself provided for us in her best-selling autobiography If They Only Knew. Prior to her parents' divorce, her drunken father used to physically and verbally abuse both her and her mother. Not that things got any better after the two were separated: Joanie's mother had "revolving door marriages." Joanie claims that she was raised mostly by Kathy, her sister, up until she was 15.

When she turned 15, Joanie left home to study in Spain with a grant and, because she liked it there so much, she also enlisted at the university upon graduating from high school. In 1992, she graduated from the University of Tampa with a degree in Spanish literature but, still, she would not return home, lingering there for yet another five months, traveling and keeping odd jobs to support herself. Initially, she thought of taking a job within the FBI or the Drug Enforcement Administration but, for some reason or another, she was repeatedly denied admittance. Instead, she joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Costa Rica to teach literacy - to her credit, Joanie was more than fit for the job, possessing both impressive pedagogical skills and thorough knowledge of Spanish, German and French.

In 1996, Joanie was back in the US, competing in the New York City regional of the Fitness America, as a means of pursuing another older dream of hers. However, one year afterwards, while belly-dancing in a bar, she met Paul Levesque and Shawn Michaels who, impressed by her stunning and massive physique, introduced her to the world of wrestling. From that moment on, but not before training with none other than Killer Kowalski, Joanie slowly elbowed her way into the business but her trajectory was far from the ones of other female wrestlers.

Initially working as the bodyguard of Levesque (stage name "Triple H"), she soon became a heel in major confrontations against established male wrestlers and, later on, a face, only to switch back to heel after a short period.

In between 1997 and 2001, Joanie, now going under the name "Chyna (Doll)" was the most feared woman in the ring, both by men and women wrestlers, a multi-champion and a virtual money-making machine.

Truth be told now, with her strength and body size that could easily have put a slimmer man to shame, Chyna took female wrestling to lengths it had never been before, while also becoming the 'most beautiful woman in the history of wrestling'. But good things never last for too long and Chyna herself would soon find out all about that.

In 2001, after rumors about her then-boyfriend doing the Executive Vice President of Talent and Creative Writing at WWE ("doing," as in, "making sweet, passionate love to"), Chyna refused to have her contract renewed and left on her own will, thus putting an end to her career as a professional wrestler. Unfortunately, this also meant that she would never again be the celebrity that she had been so far, but she couldn't have known it at the time. Already with many champion titles, a couple of extremely successful Playboy covers and spreads, and with more modeling gigs than any other woman in her branch under her belt, Chyna probably thought that she could live the superstar dream for eternity.

Therefore, she boldly threw herself into the world of movies and television, only to be met with the utmost sarcasm and skepticism for forgetting that what had made her a star had been wrestling and not other talents that she might have (or not) had.

The whole debacle culminated in 2004, when a sex tape featuring her and former boyfriend and WWE colleague Sean Waltman was released by the same company that also marketed One Night in Paris.

Unlike Paris Hilton's amateur porn tape, Joanie's 1 Night in China revealed a truth that had long been suspected, meaning, that her steroids abuse throughout the years had changed her body in ways that made her even more manly than before. Aside from making her bass-voice more noticeable by being shot in a small, quiet hotel room, the tape also showed her pierced, three-inch long clitoris (which seemed to have a fully formed glans) and a very severe case of buttock acne, a clear indication of steroid abuse.

But, hey, at least she got payed for showing off the massive heat that she was packing: both she and Waltman cut a deal with the X-rated movie studio and got a share of the profits - again, unlike celebutante Paris Hilton (meh, cough, cough).

One year later, Joanie was in police custody for beating the crap out of Waltman -- and, thus, a beautiful love story came to an end.

Since then (2004), Joanie continued her downfall by constantly putting herself in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons and by continuing to give contradictory television interviews.

In early 2005, Joanie appeared on The Surreal Life, with house mates Da Brat, Jane Wiedlin, Adrianne Curry, Christopher Knight, Marcus Schenkenberg, and Verne Troyer. She remains good friends with Adrianne Curry and made a brief cameo on her reality show My Fair Brady. Even in a show devoted to exposing the massive train wrecks that are the lives of celebrities, and even with house mates that included a serious BDSM dominatrix and a dwarf who urinated in a corner while drunk, Joanie's personal train wreck was the most spectacular seen to date.

Joanie starred in the movie of the century, called Illegal Aliens, next to the late glamor model/equal attention seeker Anna Nicole Smith, that she tried to promote even immediately after Smith passed away in strange circumstances.

More recently, Joanie admitted to a history of drug and alcohol abuse, as well as to the many plastic surgeries she underwent throughout the years, including her big flotation devices/breasts, custom made to fit her large frame and resistant enough so as not to be busted during wrestling (an implant once burst during a confrontation and had to be replaced). She also claimed to have found God and religion and vouched for a new life dedicated to the greater good.