Chyna
Career
Born Joan Marie Laurer, she competed at the New York City regional level of the Fitness America competition in 1996 before training at Wladek "Killer" Kowalski's professional wrestling school in Malden, Massachusetts, wrestling her first match in 1995. She debuted in the WWF in February 1997 as a founding member of D-Generation X and became the only woman ever to hold the WWF Intercontinental Championship, winning it twice, alongside a WWF Women's Championship reign. Her 2001 autobiography If They Only Knew reached the New York Times bestseller list. She entered adult film in 2004 with 1 Night in China, followed by Another Night in China in 2009, both for Red Light District Video, then Backdoor to Chyna in 2011 for Vivid Entertainment — her first release for a major studio — and a further Vivid parody pairing in 2012–2013. She died in Redondo Beach, California, in April 2016, and was posthumously inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2019 as part of D-Generation X, the first woman inducted as part of a group.
Signature: The only performer on this list whose pre-industry record is a national wrestling promotion rather than a studio or a dance company — a competitive-fitness-to-wrestling pipeline with no direct equivalent elsewhere in the field.
Index score — The Pornstar Ranked Performer Index v3.0
Scores are normalised within a single ranking's field, so this breakdown is Chyna's placement inside The Best Figure Pornstars, Ranked by Documented Background — the largest field she appears in. Her rank on each of the other 2 rankings below was computed against that ranking's own field and is not the same measurement.
Best known for
Studios
Mainstream credits
- WWF Intercontinental Championship, two reigns — the only woman to hold the title
- WWF Women's Championship, one reign
- Posthumous WWE Hall of Fame induction, 2019, as part of D-Generation X
- New York Times bestselling autobiography, If They Only Knew (2001)
- The Surreal Life (2005) and Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew (2008)
Appears in
Also ranked on
Ranked alongside
Sources and verification1 source
- Exact Intercontinental Championship reign dates not individually itemised
- Specific cause of death not stated in the cited source
