Chyna Says Doing ‘Playboy’ Cost Her A Run With The WWE Championship

Back in November of 2000, before the porn and the erratic behavior and the cornering people at funerals, Chyna was a former Intercontinental Champion — the first and, to-date, only female IC Champion in WWE history — and a Playboy magazine covergirl.

According to an interview with Bell 2 Bell Radio, that pictorial is what prevented The Ninth Wonder Of The World from achieving another milestone: being the first female WWE Champion.

From the interview, which you can listen to in full here:

“Yes, there certainly was, it was actually in the pipeline and ready to happen, but when Playboy came along and wanted me to pose for them, I had to make a choice. Vince told me that if I did Playboy, I could never be world champion. 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’s important to note that while Chyna’s story may have absolutely been true, a number of other factors contributed to her never being champion. Around the time of her Playboy shoot on through the end of her WWE career (from April 2000 until December 2001), the only wrestlers to hold the WWE Championship were The Rock, Kurt Angle and Stone Cold Steve Austin. There’s rarely been a time in Chyna’s era when the WWE Championship had less of a strangehold on it, and it’s safe to say that had she chosen wrestling over the pictorial she still wouldn’t have been penciled in for run on top.

Still, that totally sounds like something they’d tell you before your Playboy shoot just to twist the knife, doesn’t it?

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