WWE Must Induct Chyna Into The Hall Of Fame On Her Own Merit

Last week it was announced that women’s wrestling pioneer and WWE legend Chyna is finally to be posthumously inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. There’s a catch, though: she’s being inducted as part of D-Generation X.

On the surface, it seems reasonable. Chyna joins former colleagues Triple H, Billy Gunn, X-Pac, Shawn Michaels and Road Dogg. Each one was instrumental to DX’s enormous popularity during the Attitude Era, and so it makes sense for them to be inducted as a faction. But scratch the surface and it’s not difficult to understand why, for some fans, the decision to induct Chyna as part of a wider group feels deeply inadequate at best, and downright insulting at worst.

As with everything, context is key, and the bigger picture does not make for pleasant viewing. WWE’s previous refusal to induct Chyna into the Hall of Fame was built on a raft of flimsy excuses. In 2015 Triple H addressed the matter on Stone Cold Steve Austin’s podcast: “I’ve got an 8-year-old kid and my 8-year-old kid sees Hall of Fame, and my 8-year-old kid goes on the Internet to look at Chyna. What comes up?”

BREAKING: As first reported by @espn, D-Generation X are the first inductees in the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2019. https://t.co/rIPCM14ewY
— WWE (@WWE) February 18, 2019

The hypocrisy here is stunning on several levels. First of all, it is equally easy to Google X-Pac and discover his own role in the sex tape which Chyna credits as launching her adult film career (“I decided to make lemonade out of lemons,” she said, and notes that the release and subsequent sale of the tape – without her consent – was a “violation”.) Yet X-Pac hasn’t been held at arm’s length the way Chyna has. Far from it: he has made multiple WWE appearances since leaving the company in 2002.

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And what of Sunny, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2011? As of 2016, she too has starred in an adult film, yet she remains in the Hall of Fame, and her profile is still viewable on WWE.com. Neither she nor X-Pac have been punished as Chyna has for pursuing an entirely legal career in pornography. Clearly, the issue here cannot be as simple as preventing hypothetical 8-year-olds from viewing adult content.

In any case, WWE seems to have no issue with adult content when they mandate it. Cheerfully affiliating with Playboy for many years, it became almost standard practice for WWE ‘Divas’ to pose for the adult magazine, with several wrestlers appearing fully nude. And yet Torrie Wilson was (rightfully) welcomed back at the first women’s Royal Rumble; Maryse and Maria Kanellis regularly grace our screens to this day.

There’s something uncomfortably selective about WWE’s puritan attitude towards Chyna’s post-wrestling career when considered in the context of the company’s own past: a cavalcade of match types designed to titillate, from the notorious ‘bra and panties’ match to the absolute nadir of humiliation that was the ‘paddle on a pole’ match. Lita and Edge’s ‘live sex celebration’ aired on national television. All of this can be easily viewed on WWE’s own network.

And if we’re talking about sweeping supposedly shameful pasts under the carpet, what makes Chyna’s sex work so much worse than, say, Hulk Hogan’s racism? WWE repeatedly bend over backwards to rehabilitate Hogan’s career, reinstating him to the Hall of Fame just a few years after removing him in spite of the discomfort this caused to Black superstars, who considered Hogan’s ‘apology’ inadequate.

What of WWE’s lionisation of The Fabulous Moolah, who is alleged to have exploited and trafficked women, and who was nonetheless honoured by WWE in the form of The Fabulous Moolah Battle Royal – at least before public outcry forced them to rename the match. What of Mike Tyson, convicted of rape in 1992 and inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012? When viewed in this context, it’s astonishing that Chyna’s choice to pursue a legal, legitimate career in the sex industry is considered a transgression worthy of her erasure.

Perhaps the worst part of it all is that Chyna’s later career was informed largely by her ostracisation from WWE. By her own admission she was “just trying to get a job.” Ciara Reid speaks passionately about how Chyna lost everything when she was fired from WWE: “She was trying to salvage herself, and trying to still present this ‘Ninth Wonder of the World’, but she couldn’t because she was hurting so bad. And no-one cared.”

Her subsequent demonisation eventually led her to Japan, where she taught English in a bid to distance herself completely from her past. And it’s true that Chyna’s post-WWE life was chaos, for the most part; she struggled with addiction and mental illness, found herself in trouble with the police several times. Her appearances on reality TV painted a picture of a deeply troubled woman barely in control of her own life. It’s incredibly difficult to watch in hindsight.

But in this, she is no different to a great many other WWE stars, past and present: Jeff Hardy has publicly struggled with addiction. Scott Hall has had several high-profile brushes with the law. And those are only two examples – I could conceivably be here all day listing the various misdemeanours, personal problems and drug issues of WWE personnel.

The point is, though: none of this matters, at least not as far as their wrestling careers are concerned. Jeff Hardy recently held the United States Championship; Scott Hall remains a Hall of Fame stalwart. Rarely do we judge wrestlers as closely and as harshly as we judge Chyna. And rarely have WWE ever thrown one of their own to the wolves as readily and as thoroughly as they did to her. In a 2016 interview, Chyna’s sister Kathy said “The WWE was the only place where she was ever accepted. Once she lost that, she fell into a hole. And she never could climb out of it.”

What should matter is this. Chyna’s contribution to revolutionising women’s wrestling is invaluable. Chyna broke down barriers that had previously seemed insurmountable. From the way she looked to the roles she took, the matches she participated in, Chyna set the bar for what women could conceivably achieve in pro-wrestling at a time when her contemporaries were presented as little more than eye candy. She was breathtaking: physically imposing, unapologetically strong, a woman who could stand alongside her male colleagues and be considered their equal. As a young female wrestling fan, Chyna was an absolute revelation.

She racked up a string of significant ‘firsts’: the first woman to enter the Royal Rumble, opening the door for Beth Phoenix and Nia Jax. The first woman to qualify for King of the Ring. The first woman to become Number One Contender for the WWF Championship (however briefly). The first – and still only – woman to win the Intercontinental Championship.

Her intergender matches against the likes of Jeff Jarrett and Chris Jericho presented her as a legitimate challenge. Chyna blazed trails that present-day WWE are yet to revisit. That her achievements may still be considered exceptional speaks of just how remarkable Chyna’s contributions to women’s wrestling truly were.

It is impossible to talk of a women’s revolution without looking to Chyna as one of its most prominent figureheads. And yet in their persistent refusal to honour Chyna, WWE are effectively thumbing their collective nose at a legacy they are all too happy to claim as their own doing. By lumping Chyna in with D-Generation X, they still fail to recognise that her most important contributions to WWE history were on her own merit. Her greatest achievements came largely after she split from the group and struck out on her own – not as part of a stable, not riffing off her teammates, but as Chyna, the Ninth Wonder of the World.

There’s a reasonable argument to be made that WWE are testing the waters with their group induction. Perhaps, the argument goes, this is a means of appeasing those who still judge Chyna on her porn career, or who revile the publicness of her breakdowns in her later years. And perhaps, in years to come, WWE will take the opportunity to honour her properly; after all, once she’s in the Hall of Fame, her detractors have no argument left to make.

Some certainly consider her induction as part of DX a win. X-Pac has said that he believes Chyna would be happy: “I hope that the people who think this about her are still grateful that she’s going in, because this is a win and sometimes we should take the win.”

But there’s also an argument to be made that this is WWE’s way of smoothing over the Chyna issue, with little intention of revisiting her Hall of Fame induction in the future. It could very well be read as a form of appeasement; a means of washing their hands once and for all of Chyna and her ‘troublesome’ legacy. It’s not unthinkable that WWE might take the line that those who have campaigned for her inclusion should be satisfied that Chyna has finally been honoured.

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But for Chyna, who in life so dearly wished to be in the Hall of Fame, it seems too small a gesture, made far too late. All those years in which WWE willfully established distance between the company and its former superstar cannot be undone by making Chyna an afterthought.

Since WWE are all too happy to claim responsibility for the ‘women’s revolution’ – despite their active role in holding back women’s wrestling for more than a decade – it is only just that they should credit one of the revolution’s most significant and instrumental figures. Not as one of a group, not as the token girl in a stable of dudes, but on her own merit.

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