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TIMING, it seems, is everything in life. And death.

The legendary authors Aldous (Brave New World) Huxley and C.S. (Chronicles of Narnia) Lewis both died on November 22, 1963…and wound up relegated to the far back pages of the papers due to JFK’s assassination.

Similarly, wrestling immortal Joanie {Chyna} Laurer’s death was announced late last week on April 21st … hours before musical genius Prince was found similarly unresponsive—his passing pushing hers off the radar.

The self-described Ninth Wonder of the World—male wrestler André the Giant had claimed to be the Eighth earlier—it’s eerie that she called her new site A Living Wonder.com, above.

Chyna became a force when he realized: “I could go out and be this big, huge female and entertain people. That’d be my niche.” Later, she’d switch her niche to entertaining people horizontally…

“I knew I was ugly,” she once felt, “but inside I was a very feminine woman (above left). And even though she was taking medication for anxiety and sleep deprivation, Joanie can rest in peace knowing her final photo was this sexy selfie she tweeted just six days prior to her passing (above right).

“I was always a big-boned girl,” recalls the behemoth-to-be born Joan Marie Laurer on Dec. 27, 1969 in Rochester, NY. “Because of it, I was called every cruel name you can think of. They called me a lesbian, a misfit, even a man.” Clearly a girl growing up (above), she left home at 15 and “did things like singing telegrams on the side. I’ve done it all—I joined a belly dancing troupe. I just never fit in.”

“My life sucked,” she recalled…and after unsuccessful stints as a bartender in a strip club and 900 phone sex operator, Joanie decided that since she could bench press 350 pounds, she might as well try muscle competitions—Sleuth first spotted her placing 3rd at the NY Regionals of Fitness America in 9/96 (below).

That led her to a training school run by 1950s-70s wrestling icon Killer Kowalski—“I’d been rejected at everything,” she sighed—from which she landed her first match…against a male wrestler dressed as a woman! Sensing her potential, female legend The Fabulous Moolah took the fledgling under her wing…and got an eyeful: “I get changed in the same locker room as Chyna,” Moolah marveled, “and I’ve seen her naked. There ain’t nothing like it! She’s got muscles on top of muscles. And a mean streak too.”

To insure that no opponent could claim she was a guy, Moolah convinced Laurer to get a boob job in late 1996 (before and after above), which helped Joanie become “Chyna” in Feb. 1997—entering the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) as “bodyguard” to handsome Hunter Hearst Helmsley, known as Triple H. She guarded his bod so well they soon were living together … but hid their relationship at first because Chyna “felt that people might think I fucked my way to the top.”

The name “Chyna” was chosen as an intentionally ironic moniker: “Fine china is delicate and fragile, a sharp contrast to her character” in the ring. However the macho male wrestlers “were hesitant at first to let a female overpower them on-screen,” and controlling WWF owner Vince McMahon was equally resistant—not accepting that “the audience would find a woman beating up men believable.”

Until, that is, Chyna grabbed a chokehold on the male division—becoming, in the words of Complex magazine, “The first woman to enter the Royal Rumble bout. The first woman to enter the King of the Ring tournament. The first and only woman to hold the now WWE (renamed World Wrestling Entertainment, after the World Wildlife Fund threatened to sue} Intercontinental Championship” by defeating Jeff Jarrett in 1999”—with her trademark “low blow to the crotch” maneuver. “The nut shot is very popular,” she smiled.

Reportedly, “Jarrett demanded (and received) $300,000 from Vince McMahon in order to lose the title cleanly to a woman” {News Flash: pro wrestling is staged}, but no such incentive was needed for her to secure the Woman’s Championship in 2001—it was a slam dunk!

Now with twin titles under her belt {and over her shoulders, above}, Chyna was the undisputed Queen of the Ring…but no “girlie” grappler: “Women wrestlers don’t do what I do,” she announced. “I don’t roll around in my underwear. Women’s wrestling is basically tits and ass, and I don’t want to be involved in it”—she might be overqualified (below).

And doubly so when one of her first breast implants ruptured in the ring during a match, so she had to get them replaced at the Millennium. When she complained to her plastic surgeon that his largest size didn’t fit her frame, he custom designed the new implants to fit her body (at a cost of $6,000)…and the mound•breaking 40D-size “Chyna 2000s” have since become the standard for “large-boned women and female bodybuilders.”

“When Playboy offered me the chance to be in the magazine {as its Nov. 2000 cover girl, above), the woman side of me jumped at the chance,” Chyna confided. “I didn’t want to be known as ‘is she a man or is she a woman?’ I was becoming the Jolly Green Giant.”

“I had to make a choice,” Joanie finally revealed just 7 months before her death. “Vince {McMahon} told me that if I did Playboy, I could never be world champion {since he picked the winners}. I’m a woman, I like to feel pretty and liberated—and be able to kick some ass too—so I chose Playboy and was never World Champion. It changed everything for me.”

Especially when she learned lover Triple H {dual signed from the Sleuth Collection, above left} was sleeping with the boss’ daughter, Stephanie McMahon (above right): “I was up for contract renewal and after I found out that Triple H had cheated on me, I confronted him about it. I tried to remain professional about the whole thing but the WWE wanted to make it personal. After the affair happened between Hunter and Stephanie they dropped me and that was the end. They didn’t just let me go, they also took my name.”

Barred from using the WWE-trademarked ‘Chyna,’ Joanie retaliated: “I went to court and fought for it for seven years. I won my name back”—in Nov. 2007, even making it her legal name…as shown on her driver’s license obtained by Sleuth!

“Paul Levesque {Triple H’s real name} was my fiancé at the time,” Laurer lamented, “and when I found out he was screwing her, I complained to her father (above right) and lost my job. I confronted Vince and Stephanie {the foursome onstage, above left), but I’ve never said a word to Paul again.” She did, however, go off on “an epic Twitter rant” for hours against the trio on 2/1/12: “You bring it bitch! I’ll explain and we’ll let the judge decide. you F!!!,” Chyna told Stephanie long after the fallout (that’s Stef’s right one, below).

But she saved her biggest challenge for the senior McMahon: “I’m coming for you Vince…You won’t leave me alone, so let’s go. f u. Say my name asshole…say it!!! I want @Ok for all those that paid it and mine too. Shirts, dolls, freaky Chinese sex tapes.”

Indeed, freaky sex tapes would prove her ultimate revenge. First came a home-sex tape in Dec. 2004 with wrestler-lover Sean (X-Pac) Waltman: “The video was something that my boyfriend and I did for our own personal pleasure,” Joanie said at the time. “However, when it got into an outside party’s hands (she claimed by Sean’s hands), I said ‘I’ll make a preemptive strike and release the video myself.”

Cleverly called 1 Night in China—since distributor Red Light District couldn’t use Chyna and had just made millions off 1 Night in Paris (Hilton)—the homemade tape drew most of its attention from the size of Joanie’s lady bit: “We watch…repulsed and fascinated,” wrote Adult Video News, “at the sight of Chyna’s inches-long and thick-as-a-pinkie clitoris with a corona resembling the head of a penis.” Who knew the Tenth Wonder of the World would be discovered between the legs of the Ninth?!

Instantly dubbed ‘Va-Chyna,” Joanie told Howard Stern that even she “found the image to be shocking and almost cried the first time I saw it.”

“Chyna’s downward spiral seemed to coincide with the conclusion of her contract with the WWE,” concluded Complex magazine, and indeed her previous visit to the Stern Show had been the first sign—makeup smeared, slurring her words and taking off all her clothes in the studio (above). “Howard said that it would appear that Chyna Doll {the name she had to use since McMahon owned her ring moniker} is drinking a lot (below left) and likes to party,” read a show summary. “She told Howard that if he had a line of coke right there in front of her, she’d do it” (below right).

She’d also ‘do’ chicks…the next year Joanie began dating porn star Mary Carey, who lost to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the recall election for Governor of California in 2003—the same year Laurer barely lost the lead role opposite Arnold in Terminator 3 to Kristanna Loken! “I got called dyke millions of times” by the men in wrestling, Chyna claimed…then proved their point by making out with bisexual Carey “on their way out of Hollywood hot spot Shag. At one point,” TMZ reported, “Mary even grinds against Chyna, lifting the wrestler’s skirt to an even more inappropriate length (bottom right frame). The duo reunited in 2008 on Celebrity Rehab.

“When the mighty fall,” wrote Ringside News, “they generally tend to fall mightily and that was the case with the Ninth Wonder of the World, Chyna. She once told the male wrestlers that America was tired of seeing the boys moon everyone, before mooning everyone herself.”

Absolute bottom, so to speak, was her 2011 rear entry, Backdoor to Chyna. “I took one for the team,” she tweeted afterwards. “Yes, but…I really loved the anal scene the best! That’s how it’s done guys! Lube helps too!!” And she even sat down and signed it for Sleuth…

“I get kicked in the ass wrestling, so why not?” she explained her decision to Howard Stern in 11/11. “It fit in my butt but it was pretty big—I had some trouble there. It was such an experience that I was like, ‘Oh…My god!’ I hadn’t been screwed by anything like that before—the guy was so big.”

They didn’t come much bigger than Hulk Hogan—who just won $140 million from Gawker over an unauthorized sex tape—yet Chyna and Vivid Video parodied the performer the next year in Queen of the Ring (below right iwith a 'Ric Flair' dopple-banger)!

“Such a beautiful soul and so kind to my children, RIP Joanie love u,” Hogan tweeted after her death. {Why don't these wealthy Twits actually help before it's too late?}

Her low point must have been a brief period escorting in late 2011: When news of her stint at the notorious Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Mound House, Nevada (above) leaked out, she told Stern that she “will wrestle a guy there, but not fuck him. But if the money was right, why not?”

Apparently it was…since the next month she was advertising her services with the My Porn Star Provider agency for an undisclosed Out-Call fee. And dressed the part waiting for In-Call customers via Client Vibe.

“I haven’t had sex since my last abusive relationship,” Chyna explained at the time. “So I looked at making porn as therapy in a way. It got me back into having a sexual life and not be scared of it.

“What else could they do to me?” Joanie Laurer lamented after the WWE had driven her to such depths. “I was almost 10 feet under, I really was.” Now that she’s six feet under—likely from an accidental overdose of medications—she waves goodbye with the hope that her brain will likely be donated to science, as part of the research conducted by Dr. Bennet Omalu—the Nigerian CTE specialist played by Will Smith in the film Concussion.

“I just think winning the wrestling titles was the most amazing experience,” she summed up near the end of her life—visiting a friend’s grave just 4 days before dying. “And sometimes I get really mad, because I feel like that was taken away from me. I’ll be damned if I was going to crawl into a corner and die after that. But ultimately, I am so glad that I am Chyna and I will just cry because it was so amazing.” As was she.

The END