Chyna (born Joan Marie Laurer; December 27, 1969 – April 17, 2016) was born in Rochester, New York, on December 27, 1969. She left home at 16 when her mother tried to force her into a drug rehabilitation facility and lived with her biological father. That year, she began working out. She finished her last year of high school in Spain.

Laurer attended the University of Tampa, graduating in 1992 with a major in Spanish literature. She studied French and German there (she could converse in either language). She 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. She subsequently joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to Guatemala.

After returning from abroad, she held several 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, she took a six-week class to train as a flight attendant. On the way to her first flight, she was in a car crash and spent four days in the hospital. When she recovered, her sister Kathy helped her get a job selling pagers; they both also worked as belly dancers.

After college, Laurer began to regularly enter fitness competitions. In 1996, she competed in the New York City regional level of the Fitness America competition. Because of her large size compared to the other women, she usually finished in last place.

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.

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, 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. However, Kowalski said that he got Laurer hired by the WWF after introducing her to Shane McMahon and telling him of WCW's interest in her.

Laurer 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. The next night, she appeared on Raw and bearhugged Marlena. Her original role in the promotion was as the laconic enforcer/bodyguard for D-Generation X, which was founded by Shawn Michaels and Triple H. She often helped them (then, a rising villain) cheat to win by physically interfering in matches by executing her trademark low blow to the groin. She was later given the ring name "Chyna", an intentionally ironic moniker; fine china is delicate and fragile, a sharp contrast to her character. Offstage, however, the male wrestlers were hesitant at first to let a woman be seen overpowering them.

During her time in D-Generation X, she was put in a romantic storyline with Mark Henry, member of the rival stable Nation of Domination. It started in August 1998 after The Rock ordered Henry to kiss Chyna to humiliate her, during which she fought back. Henry would chase her romantically, eventually threatening her with a storyline sexual harassment demand over one of her beatdowns if she didn't go to a date with him. Chyna accepted and eventually reconciled with him, becoming his on-screen girlfriend and ally. However, in January 1999, she revealed it was all a ruse to humiliate Henry.

A week after her storyline with Henry, Chyna was the 30th entrant in the Royal Rumble, becoming the first woman ever to enter the eponymous match. In the match she eliminated Mark Henry before being eliminated by Stone Cold Steve Austin. The day after it, she turned heel by betraying Triple H and aligning herself with his enemies Vince McMahon and Kane. She teamed with Kane at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre pay-per-view against former allies X-Pac and Triple H. At WrestleMania XV, she 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 split up later that year.

In June 1999, Chyna became the first woman to qualify for the King of the Ring tournament. She was also the first woman to be the number one contender for the WWF Championship, but lost the spot to Mankind before SummerSlam in August. Later that year, she became a fan favorite again during her long feud with Jeff Jarrett. She challenged the British Bulldog to a match on the October 4, 1999, Raw, and defeated him. 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, 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 said that Jarrett demanded (and received) $300,000 from Vince McMahon 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 title's lineage would have been broken.

Chyna then feuded with Chris Jericho over the belt, defeating him at Survivor Series, but losing the title to him at Armageddon. They 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, Chyna briefly teamed with Jericho.

Not long after losing the Intercontinental title, Chyna became the onscreen girlfriend of Eddie Guerrero. Originally villains, they became fan favorites during the summer of 2000, with Guerrero dubbing her his "Mamacita". They 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.

From 1996 until 2000, Laurer dated fellow wrestler Paul "Triple H" Levesque. They initially hid their relationship from their co-workers because she felt people might think she "[​slept] her way to the top". They also lived together for some time. There is some debate as to whether Levesque started his relationship with Stephanie McMahon while still with Laurer. However, after Laurer's death, her sister Kathy Hamilton told Bleacher Report that while Levesque "was very good to Joanie", the couple disagreed about future family plans (Levesque wanted children and Laurer did not), and that Laurer's addictions and mental health problems also contributed to their breakup.

Chyna posed nude for Playboy magazine's November 2000 issue.

Chyna began a feud with Ivory, a member of the Right to Censor, over the Women's Championship. It culminated in a storyline at the Royal Rumble where Chyna appeared to reinjure her neck while performing a handspring back elbow. To convince the audience she was injured, color commentator Jerry Lawler left the commentators' booth and entered the ring to check on her condition, something he had not done since the in-ring accident that killed Owen Hart in 1999. When she returned from the "injury", she won the Women's Championship from Ivory at WrestleMania X-Seven in a squash match. She also defended her title against Lita at Judgment Day in 2001. She soon vacated the title, however, as it was her final WWF match.

She left the WWF on November 30, 2001, several months after she had been taken off of television. Various accounts of her departure have circulated over the years. Behind the scenes, her former real-life boyfriend Paul "Triple H" Levesque began a relationship with Stephanie McMahon; Chyna said the pair began seeing each other before she and Levesque had broken up. In a 2002 interview with The Baltimore Sun, she indicated that the breakup with Levesque had nothing to do with her leaving WWF and that she left to pursue an acting career. Jim Ross, then Executive Vice President of Talent Relations, reports that it was "mutually agreed" to let her WWF contract expire in order for her to explore other career options. In a 2015 interview with Vince Russo, she said that after a meeting with Vince McMahon about the Stephanie McMahon situation, she was sent home and later received a fax telling her that she was not needed anymore. After her death, her sister said that in 2001 she was offered a new WWF contract with a minimum salary of $400,000 per year and the potential for substantially higher income via merchandising and pay-per-view appearances, but she refused to sign a contract for less than a base salary of $1 million per year. Ross later confirmed this account, characterizing the demand for $1 million per year as "outrageous" and unrealistic, leaving WWF officials reluctant to negotiate with her despite her fan popularity.

In 2002, following her departure from the WWF, she appeared in a second nude pictorial. She also filmed a Playboy adult documentary, Joanie Laurer Nude: Wrestling Superstar to Warrior Princess, which followed her on the set.

Beginning in 2003, Laurer had a tumultuous relationship with fellow wrestler Sean Waltman. They were engaged for a period in 2003, then broke up, then became engaged again, a pattern that continued for the next two years. In January 2005, she was arrested for domestic assault after allegedly beating Waltman in front of his children.

She appeared in 3rd Rock from the Sun as Janice, a police officer who briefly dated Harry Solomon. She provided her voice for stop-motion animation renditions of herself in Celebrity Deathmatch. In early 2005, she debuted on The Surreal Life with housemates Da Brat, Jane Wiedlin, Adrianne Curry, Christopher Knight, Marcus Schenkenberg and Verne Troyer. On the show, she drank heavily, appeared nude, and got into an argument with her ex, Sean Waltman.

Laurer made her adult film 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 adult video, Another Night in China in 2009. In 2011, she starred in her first professional pornographic film for Vivid Video, Backdoor to Chyna. In one of her final YouTube videos before her death, she said that she'd had no ambitions to go into porn, but was "making lemonade out of lemons" after the video of her and X-Pac was released "without her permission".

Laurer's breast implants were custom-made for her after her first implants were ruptured during a wrestling match. She had also complained to her plastic surgeon that their largest implants did not suit her frame as she desired. The custom implants became the model for the Chyna 2000s, now marketed to large-framed women and female bodybuilders. Laurer said she paid $6,000 for them.

After leaving the WWF, Laurer was unable to use the name "Chyna" because of its trademark. She began using the name "Chyna Doll" for public appearances. In November 2007, she legally changed her name to Chyna.

On April 17, 2016, Laurer was found dead at her home in Redondo Beach, California. She was 46. A report of her autopsy was released in December 2016 which determined that she died on April 17 of an overdose of alcohol, combined with the anxiety drugs diazepam and nordazepam, painkillers oxycodone and oxymorphone, and sleeping aid temazepam.

In 2019, Chyna was posthumously entered into the WWE Hall of Fame as a member of D-Generation X, making her the first woman to be inducted as a part of a group or team.

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