Forever Chyna
It is with great sadness that The Dark Match must report the death of Joan Laurer, better known in the wrestling world as Chyna.
Joan had her problems, they were well documented and she was never shy about talking about them whether it be on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew or her appearances on Howard Stern’s show, but Chyna is a legend and will forever hold a special place in my heart for a lot of the same reasons that I was never willing to boo HHH even at his Authority worst. She’d just always been there. She is the only woman, if we stay in the PG world, that will ever hold the Intercontinental Championship belt. She was fearless. She was a great entertainer. And even in a world where she won that title belt in a “Good Housekeeping Match” because that’s what Vince McMahon thinks women are for, to be half naked all the time and clean shit, she was a role model for little girls that wanted to break the mold.
Unfortunately she will never get her due place in the WWE Hall of Fame. As Triple H mentioned in an episode of the Stone Cold Podcast, fear that children would Google her and discover both her drug issues and porn are a nonstarter when her name is mentioned in the conversation each year.
To her credit, Chyna has held the Women’s Championship (when it existed before the Butterfly Vagina Divas belt) one time and was technically the Intercontinental Champion on 3 different occasions even though WWE only chooses to recognize 2 of them because of some shenanigans with being co-champion with Chris Jericho (before he was lame dad Jericho). She went on to both New Japan and TNA before ending her wrestling career completely after only a few weeks with TNA and another feud with Jeff Jarrett.
Her porn credits, even to my surprise, extend beyond One Night in Chyna, the homemade video with none other than X-Pac (Shawn Waltman). She starred in six porn films, including an Avengers parody (Avengers XXX) as well as a spin off where her She-Hulk character was the lead (She Hulk XXX). She won two Adult Video Awards.
This woman was such a bad ass that she was the enforcer for DX, a collective of bad ass dudes. Literally, there was a guy in the group who’s character was Bad Ass Billy Gun. And yes, there’s a possibility I chose this photo because Triple H has resting bitch face in it.
If you have the WWE Network, and judging by the fact you found The Dark Match you most likely do, you can search their archives for Chyna and find hundreds of pages of videos featuring the 9th Wonder of the World. If you don’t have the network, it’s available for $9.99 a month, but you can find tons of Chyna content on YouTube, though at this point the first like 8 pages are reaction videos to her death.
Rest in peace Chyna. There will never be another.