In her teens, she began bodybuilding, bulking up to the point where she drew stares from strangers when she lumbered into a restaurant or department store. Now, the woman who’d later be known as Chyna was throwing it all away. Her older sister, Kathy, had found her a job--a nine-to-five sales job--and Joanie was hopeful that the position would her the stability she’d never enjoyed in her life.

“My earliest memories of my parents are very unhappy ones,” Joanie recalls. “My father drank for many years throughout my childhood. There were stories about him chasing my mother around the house with a butcher knife and stabbing her in the leg, or just picking up and leaving to hook up with other women.”

Interestingly, Joanie’s parents didn’t come from the underbelly of society. Both were educated, and extremely intelligent; her mother was an executive for a large corporation, and her father was a self-made entrepreneur. But Joanie says that their book knowledge and business smarts provided them with surprisingly little guidance on how to raise a family.

“I still cannot get along with my mother, but I believe that’s a result of the abuse she took from my father, and that’s a shame. She was basically a psycho co-dependent who had revolving-door marriages,” says Chyna. “It seemed like I had a new stepfather every year. I always tried to accept them because I wanted another daddy. But you could tell what oozed from them: ‘Oh, why do I have to deal with these brats?’”

Today, Chyna attributes what she describes as a compulsive personality to her years as an attention-starved child. “I would do anything to get my mother to pay attention to me,” she says. “I would eat all her husband’s cookies, just to make him mad, and cause trouble between him and my mother. I would steal my mothers jewelry and wear it around. Now I know why I did it, but at the time, I didn’t understand.”

Chyna recalls that when she was 15, her mother became convinced that her erratic behavior was being triggered by drug abuse, and forced her to go to a rehabilitation center. The counselors quickly realized that Joanie was not a drug user. But they also concluded that she was a very angry teenager who had many of the same psychological problems as the typical addict. “I needed help,” Chyna says.

She sought that help in the form of her father, who had stopped drinking and remarried. “We have to make up for lost time,” she remembers him telling her. “We’ll be a team, and I’ll help you get ready for college.”

Joanie needed little convincing. She moved in with her father, and his new wife, and soon found herself getting snared into his business schemes. “My father’s a bright guy,” she says. “And, now that he was sober, he was easy to get along with. The problem was that he was a shyster.”

Once, Joanie was sitting with her father in his late-model Jeep. They drove past the library, then up to the river. “Chuck the keys,” she remembers him telling her. The car keys went into the water, followed by the house keys. Whatever past he had in Rochester, New York, was being left behind. That night, he, Joanie, and his wife were on a flight to Germany. “I have a really good line on something,” she recalls him saying. “We’re going to hit it big.”

From Germany, the three took a train to Prague, the capital of what was then Czechoslovakia, and then Romania. the communist system was eroding in Eastern Europe, and Joanie’s father told everyone he met that he had many valuable lessons for those who’d been locked behind the Iron Curtain. “He’d say, ‘Your country has to learn how capitalism works,’” Joanie reminisces. “If you just give me your money, I’ll be glad to show you.”

At night, Joanie attended numerous social functions with her father’s clients. Her understanding of other languages and cultures widened. She felt more cultivated than the girls she knew in Rochester. But, there were other things that made her suspicious. “He’d take me into a bank, and have me sign all these papers,” she claims. “I wonder how many bank accounts I have in that part of Europe.”

Her father’s schemes brought her back and forth between Europe and the United States, where Joanie had developed another interest. It started while watching her mother’s exercise videos. “Like I said, I have this compulsive personality,” Chyna says. “When I started working out, I didn’t stop. I might not have been the world’s greatest athlete, but I had good genetics. I started developing fast. Pretty soon, I realized the other girls didn’t have these little lumps on their arms, or their shoulders sticking out. I thought, ‘Hey, I think I’ve got something going on here.’”

But, few admired her hard-fought achievements. “Everybody hated it,” she recounts. “In school, the other kids whispered and laughed about me. My stepmother, who was this stark, German lady who wore bows in her hair and a skirt every day, was horrified because I couldn’t fit into any clothes, and she thought that was just disgusting.”

Even today, Chyna remembers every cruel word. “People told me, ‘You’re not a man. Why would you want to look like a man?’... ‘There are no feminine, pretty girls like you.’... ‘Why would you want to do that to your body?’” Still, Joanie had come too far to give into resistance. “I realized I had something very special, and kept working at it,” she says. “I liked being different, having my own identity. I guess I figured that I was never going to be popular anyway, so I might as well just go for it.”

The justifications only worked so far. At the University of Tampa, Joanie looked on in frustration as girls who lived up to more conventional standards of beauty snared the most desirable guys. “I didn’t have a whole lot of boyfriends,” she says. “But I knew that certain guys liked the way I looked. I had the tightest buns in the whole school, and there were guys who’d want to be with me, but they’d never admit it to their friends. I was always the ‘behind closed doors’ kind of girlfriend. We could be together, but as soon as we got out in public, I’d be treated like an alien. I thought, ‘What’s the matter? They liked me enough to see me an hour ago. Now that people are watching, they act like I’m ugly, and they can’t stand me.’ It really toyed with me mentally. I became very bitter.”

Joanie’s relationship with her father was also suffering, particularly when she says she discovered his lust for the dollar extended to opportunities within his own family. She claims that he took out numerous student loans in her name and kept the majority of the money himself. She maintains that the that the scam left her $40,000 in debt by the time she graduated from college. “This unfortunately continues to affect my life today. Even though I have a good job, and can finally pay off these debts, I can’t get a credit card. I can’t get a car without a co-signer. There have been many nights that I’ve cried over this, because I pride myself on being an independent and responsible person. And this has taken my independence away.”

After graduating from college with a degree in foreign languages, Joanie found herself adrift in the Florida Keys, surrounded by people with borderline personalities who spent most of their time drinking, wandering around the beach, and falling out with one another.

One crisis after another seemed to ensnare her. She found a boyfriend, but when he hit her, she left. She qualified for a job as a flight attendant, but, en route to her first trip, her car was struck by a drunk driver. Joanie was left with a broken nose and ankle--not to mention the liability from her unpaid college loans.

“I was physically powerful, but emotionally weak,” she admits. “If I kept living this way, I probably would have contemplated suicide. I had really endured a lot of pain and rejection. Everyone has a breaking point. I sometimes wonder what it would have been for me.”

Joanie had often felt close to the breaking point since her childhood in Rochester.

Then, one day, her sister called out of the blue, hoping to rekindle their relationship. The havoc of their childhood household was something neither sister had caused. Why couldn’t they become friends now?

“I would have latched onto anybody at that time,” Joanie says. “I was just looking for somebody to love, who would love me back.” With barely a second thought, Joanie packed up her car and left the Florida Keys, driving to her sister’s home in New Hampshire. There, Joanie was told that Kathy could set her up with a job--at a mobile communications company, selling cellular phones and pagers.

“My sister, who’s a lot more conservative than I am, is in her glory because we’ll be working in the same company and she knows I’m going to do so well,” Chyna recounts. “We go to the mall, and I’m actually trying to find a business suit that will fit my shoulders and arms. I was just miserable.”

She was willing to deal with that misery in order to feel “normal.” “It was the most horrible nightmare I could think of, not entertaining people and working nine-to-five. But, I took the job and became pretty good at it. Every morning I would wake up and go into the ‘hood, meeting these guys in McDonald’s who were going to spend their Christmas money on buying beepers from me. I became the number one salesperson in the country. My sister was so proud of me. But I hated every freaking second of it.”

The course of Joanie’s life changed, though, when she and her sister were watching television one day and wrestling appeared on the screen. Suddenly, everything clicked. “I said, ‘I could do that. It’s entertainment, and I’m a big girl. And you put the two together, and I could do it.’ In reality, it could have been anything. The circus could have come to town, and I would have tried out for the circus. I just wanted to get away from selling beepers.”

A friend informed Joanie that Walter “Killer” Kowalski, a wrestling icon of the 1950’s through the 1970’s, lived in her area and trained wrestlers. She called area gyms, but nobody knew him. She looked for ads in the newspaper, but couldn’t find any. Somebody told her that Killer Kowalski was dead. Finally, she picked up a Malden, Massachusetts, telephone book and called the only Kowalski listed. The legend answered the phone.

Joanie entered his gym, with an envelope filled with the $2,000 required for her training. Only later would she realize that Kowalski’s bookkeeping skills were nowhere close to his wrestling scholarship, and it was difficult for him to remember if students paid him at all. But, she immediately knew that she had found a place where she belonged. Wrestling was the perfect way for her to channel her strength, athleticism and longing to entertain. “I was very adept at learning the moves,” she says. “I had a goal when I walked into that school, and that goal was to be a star.”

Every student in Kowalski’s gym was required to listen to his endless sermons about the virtues of vegetarianism. He would ask students if they ate meat. If the answer was affirmative, he’d launch into a diatribe: “You stupid idiot. You plant a seed in the ground, it grows. You plant a carcass in the ground, it rots. You stupid idiot.” Once, a student played a practical joke on the eccentric instructor by insisting that meat was wonderful. Kowalski was so furious that he chased everyone out of the gym, shouting “Don’t come back!” as they left.

Yet, as trying as it was listening to Kowalski’s monologues, the actual training was far more gruelling. Kowalski had a hard boxing ring in his gym, as opposed to a wrestling ring, which has a spring in the mat to protect participants when they were slammed. “His ring was worse than a hardwood floor,” Joanie recalls, “because a hardwood floor has some groove in it. Walter started out with two-by-fours under his mat. When they broke, he put in steel beams that he wouldn’t have to replace again. Eventually, the entire ring was 14 steel beams and a metal rod in the middle.

Kowalski had been a headliner in a different era, when the athletes prided themselves on their knowledge of pure wrestling, and he expected the same of his students. “When Walter wrestled, they didn’t put a lot of emphasis on storylines and psychology like we do now, because fans thought everything was real,” Joanie says. “Walter taught me how to kill somebody in a fight. I’d clothesline guys until my arm was black and blue, and I thought my should was going to pop out of its socket.”

During training, Joanie broke her forearm and tailbone. But, she never contemplated quitting. When her internship was over, she printed up publicity photos and dubbed off tapes of her matches at the training school, then got to work in high school gym on wrestling’s independent circuit as she pursued a career in the World Wresting Federation.

On the road, Joanie befriended an aging wrestling groupie who’d been a mistress to many a superstar, and now occasionally accompanied a wrestler to the ring at an independent show. “Her dream would have been to be a wrestling manager”, Joanie says. “But she was in her 40s, overweight, and her time was long past. I kind of dug her as an older broad who was funny and cool.”

Joanie’s friends also know people who worked for the World Wrestling Federation, and told an official about the raven-haired, brawny specimen trained by Kowalski. Joanie made arrangements to meet the official at a World Wrestling Federation show in Springfield, Massachusetts. The ring-hopeful showed up at the event, picked up a complimentary ticket, and planted herself in a seat, waiting to be summoned to the dressing room for a conference. “I remember sitting there for hours”, she says. “I didn’t was to get up to go to the bathroom. I didn’t want to get up for cotton candy. God forbid someone would come to get me, and I wouldn’t be there.” But when the night ended, Joanie was still in her seat. Furious, she tracked the official down at his hotel, and demanded a meeting in the downstairs lounge.

The man was flipping through her portfolio, insisting that the World Wrestling Federation wasn’t interested in female athletes, when Triple H - then called hunter Hearst Helmsley - and Shawn Michaels strolled into the bar. The official introduced the two wrestlers to Joanie, then left, apparently relieved to dump her on somebody else. Interestingly, the pair immediately believed that there was a role for the young woman in the World Wrestling Federation. “She’d make a great heel, Hunter,” Michaels raved. “Look at the way she looks. She could be your bodyguard - a female bodyguard. It would be the coolest thing.”

As the three chatted, Joanie realized that she had a legitimate shot at making it in the big leagues. “They barley let me say a work,” she recalls. “They knew I wasn’t there to hit on them, but because I really wanted a job. They could tell I was sincere, and I could tell they were sincere.

“When I left the hotel, I drove past their car in the parking lot. They had the light on, and Shawn was still flipping through my portfolio. I said, “I got him.”

Soon, Hunter - the real-life Paul Levesque - and Joanie were working out together, and exchanging ideas about the wrestling business. “We dated,” she says, “without really dating at that time.” Joanie forgot about mobile communications sales, and began traveling to World Wrestling Federation shows, taking mental notes, while Triple H and Michaels tried to persuade officials to give her a shot.

But two months passed, and Joanie hadn’t been given an offer. When rival World Championship Wrestling (WCW) - which had heard about her talents via the wrestling underground - asked her to work for them, she was ready to agree. But, first, she wanted to stop at a World Wrestling Federation show in West Palm Beach, Florida, and discuss the decision with Hunter.

Shane McMahon remembers spotting Joanie outside the building, decked out in mirrored shades and black leather; “I said, “Wow, look at the size of that girl. She looks cool”.

When he discovered that this was the woman he’d heard about so often from Michaels and Triple H, he introduced himself. Despite her chiseled look, he found Joanie to be soft-spoken, intelligent and level-headed. “She was such a pleasant person to be around,” he says. “And, I admired here excitement about what she could do here.”

Joanie was also pleased with the exchange. She recalls Shane telling her that he needed time to talk his father, World Wrestling Federation head Vince McMahon, into the concept being advocated by Hunter and Shawn. But the younger McMahon appeared so interested that she opted not to take the job at WCW.

Once again, weeks passed. When the World Wrestling Federation returned to her area with a show in Lowell, Massachusetts, in February 1997 - four months after the conversation with Shane - Joanie didn’t even bother going to the arena. She’d feel more like a groupie than a wrestler, she concluded, and didn’t want to hand around backstage. Instead, she went to dinner with a friend, and tried putting the World Wrestling Federation out of her mind. But when she returned home, there was an urgent message on her answering machine. “Joanie, this is Hunter,” it began. “You need to come to the building right now. They are going to hire you.”

Shawn Michaels was relinquishing the World Wrestling Federation heavyweight championship, claiming that a knee inquiry made it impossible for him to continue. Since the title was not changing hands in a match, the Federation feared that fans would feel “ripped off”. In order to send them home happy, Hunter - the hated Intercontinental champion - was asked to drop his belt to popular Rocky Maivia (later known as The Rock) on the same card. Triple H’s career had yet to pick up the momentum he wanted, and the title loss would be setback. As a consolation, he was allowed to bring in Joanie as his manager.

“She’s your deal”, he was apparently told. “If she screws up, it’s on you.”

Joanie packed her bags and left for a World Wrestling Federation tour of Germany. While overseas, she and Hunter became romantically involved. But, her love life was a secondary concern for the rookie. Her primary goal was transforming herself into Chyna.

“I was given a list of names I could use,” she says, horrible names like Fallon and Venus and Sheera. I thought, ‘My God, you might as well call me Henna Helmsley, or something like that.’ It was so hokey. But, the name Chyna worked. You might think of someone feminine, but I could play with that concept -become the ‘bull in the china shop.’ It was exotic and intoxicating. There was a stripper, I once knew, named Chyna who didn’t have the best reputation, but I got over that. It was cool to have just one name - like Cher or Madonna.

“I knew that because of my size and the way I looked, the fans were going to hate me. That was important, since Hunter was a heel. I thought about all the people who teased me my whole life, and I put that into my character. Let them boo me. I’d stand there with this stern look on my face, never smiling, because I didn’t give a damn what they thought. They wanted to call me a freak? Now, I was taking it to the bank.”

In the dressing room, some of the wrestlers were as mystified by the new arrival as the spectators. “She was very unique,” says Bob “Hardcore” Holly, “but no one ever expected her to eventually wrestle against the guys. We just thought she’d be another female manager. Boy, were we wrong”.

Chyna did not get involved in physical confrontations right away. “You want to see a character develop,” she explains. “At first, I just stood around. It made people curious because I was interesting to look at. All I had to do was take one step (towards the ring action), and people would go “Oooooh.” Then, I stared getting physically involved. The people screamed, “Oh my God, look what she did!. She hit somebody! Then I started beating up on the guys without them hitting me back.”

Over time, Chyna got into wild brawls with such wrestlers as Jeff Jarrett, Road Dogg and Chris Jericho. But because of her slow transformation, fans had now been educated to accept the male-against-female confrontations as legitimate battles. “Where else do you see a 15-minute knock-down, drag-out fight between a man and woman, with the woman punching the man in the balls, they guy hitting the woman closed fisted, and the two flipping each other around?” she argues. “Whether it’s fake or not fake, people don’t look at this as male vs. female, but Chyna the athlete vs. Chris Jericho the athlete. And people are enthralled as they watch.”

And while evening-gown matches and other encounters centered around the World Wrestling Federation’s Women’s Championship are perceived as excuses for the participants to expose one another’s flesh, Chyna’s battles stand apart. She is regarded as a warrior as rugged as any male. Because of this, her October 17, 1999, Intercontinental title victory over Jarrett was viewed not as a fluke, but an achievement by a wrestler who earned her way to the top.

“She’s our most unique Superstar in a certain way,” says Shane. “She’s a girl who can do anything a guy can do. And we haven’t even seen all she can do yet. She hasn’t unleashed it.”

Finally, the star status Chyna idealized in Kowalski’s gym has been attained. But like in the spotlight isn’t always glamorous. She’s on the road about 50 percent of the year, and when she is home, she’s emphatic about keeping her address a secret. Even so, her house has been pelted with eggs, and her car vandalized. She and Hunter have also received numerous death threats.

In addition to taking security precautions, Chyna has made other alterations to her life - including changing her physical appearance. Unlike others who’ve undergone cosmetic surgery, she openly discusses her breast enhancement. “Big deal,” she offers. “I’m in show business. As a matter of fact, (after the operation) I went to TV to introduce my two newest acts. It was a lot of fun, I’m proud of these boobs.

Her decision to change her prominent jaw created more of a dilemma: “Here I am, telling women that you can be strong and powerful; without being a beauty queen, and then I changed my face. I felt like I was being hypocritical. But my jaw had created a lot of insecurity, made me look quite masculine, and even caused speech problems. I hated it every time I looked in the mirror. Then, my teeth stared to break from the extreme underbite, and a couple of dentists told me, “Have this procedure, or lose a mouth full of teeth.”

Chyna can now discuss the procedure openly, just as she has no qualms in talking about her bond with Hunter, along with their differences. “He wants kids,” she admits. “I don’t”. He comes from this family that’s been together his entire life. He talks to his mother every other day on the phone. And here I am, from this completely dysfunctional family. When people ask me if I want to bring more kids into the world - after what I’ve been through - it makes me want to throw up.”

But with wrestling taking precedence over family life, Triple H and Chyna have been able to maintain their romance. “I sometimes wonder, as much as we love each other, if we could get along if we were taken out of this environment”, she concedes. “I would like to say yes, but when I think about it, 99 percent of our conversations are about wrestling. We’ll be laying in bed, and he’ll roll over and say, “I just had an idea for a new angle”. And I’ll say, “That makes me horny. Let’s make love” That’s our relationship, and it’s scary to think what will happen - and where we’ll go - when it’s all gone.”