Chyna's Former Manager Claims WWE Offered Her a WWE Championship Reign

Throughout her WWE career, Chyna (real name Joanie Laurer) established herself as a pioneer of [...]

By Connor Casey

Throughout her WWE career, Chyna (real name Joanie Laurer) established herself as a pioneer of intergender wrestling — becoming the first woman to hold the WWE Intercontinental Championship (twice) while also competing for the European, Light Heavyweight and WWE Tag Team Championships before eventually moving on to the WWE Women's Championship in 2001. Laurer even floated around the WWE Championship picture in 2000, competing in a handful of No. 1 contender matches that featured the likes of Triple H, The Undertaker and Mankind.

The WWE Hall of Famer never got an outright shot at the title, but according to her former Anthony Anzaldo the WWE was almost on the verge of making her WWE Champion. He explained in an interview with Wrestling Inc. this week that in an attempt to stop her from posing in Playboy in November 2000, Vince McMahon offered to crown her as the first woman to hold WWE's top prize.

"They offered her the WWE Championship belt, but Vince said, 'But you can't do Playboy' because she got offered to do Playboy," Anzaldo said. "She chose Playboy over the belt."

Laurer departed from the WWE in 2001 and passed away at the age of 46 in April 2016 due to an accidental drug overdose. The WWE inducted her posthumously into the WWE Hall of Fame as part of D-Generation X in 2019, though fans are still campaigning for her to receive her own induction. Several of Chyna's peers in DX, including X-Pac and Shawn Michaels, agree.

"I would argue I don't think there's anybody that's been quite like her since," Michaels said in a March 2019 interview with ComicBook. "For that time, and in the role we had her in, it was so just incredibly innovative. I can remember way back when Hunter and I were talking and thinking about how awesome it would be to be able to have this big, huge, awesome-looking bodyguard but have it be a woman. And she's protecting the guy. And my goodness, that was a really tough sell back then, and it took a lot longer than we thought it would, but man when she did it it worked like a million bucks. Of all the people in this group, and D-Generation X as a whole is deserving, but I don't think there's anybody that would argue that Joanie is not the most deserving of (an induction)."

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