WWE: Chyna Was A One-Woman Revolution And Timeless Icon

Credit: WWE.com

A Lasting Impact

Today’s female WWE Superstars have been winning the fight to be included in the company’s biggest matches, such as Hell in a Cell and Money in the Bank, but Chyna was mixing it up with men on the regular. It wasn’t a big deal to see an intergender match during the Attitude era and that’s almost entirely because Chyna was accepted as a contender for any and all championships, regardless of her gender.

With all of the various ways Chyna repeatedly reinvented herself and considering how big an impact she had on the entire pro wrestling industry, it’s beyond difficult to believe that her WWE career lasted only a short four years. With all due respect to Steve Austin, Triple H and The Rock, none of them can lay claim to having revolutionized so many aspects of WWE and the wrestling world at large in such a short amount of time.

No, there has never been another Chyna and there never will be. That’s because even if WWE one day pits women and men against one another at center stage again the discussion will be completely different. No one will wonder what it would be like to see a woman and a man wrestle one another competitively and no one will have a reasonable (sexist) worry that it could harm the careers of the men involved, because some of the men Chyna “womanhandled” went on to become the biggest stars in the industry.

The women’s revolution going on now in WWE is groundbreaking and long overdue, but we can never forget that it got its start with just one woman almost two decades ago. That woman was Chyna, and she was a one-woman revolution.