Right on the heels of Tito Ortiz and Jenna Jameson making nice, TMZ is reporting that Joanie "Chyna" Laurer has been accused by long-time friend Gabriela Targos of viciously assaulting her this past Saturday. According to Targos, Chyna asked her to vist her at her motel room, only to be attacked as soon as she arrived. She claims that Laurer "punched her in the face, dragged her by the hair, beat her with a wire hanger and threatened to kill her" before she escaped, ran down the street, and found police officers who took a report. She says that she also had another meeting with police yesterday. No charges have been filed yet and Laurer has not commented.
This is the latest in a long line of strange behavior by Laurer since late in her WWE tenure. When long-time boyfriend Triple H (Paul Levesque) cheated on her with on-screen wife (and now real wife) Stephanie McMahon, Laurer was seemingly the last person in the world to find out after she found written correspondence between the two. It had become an open secret in the locker room. Some fans noticed that Levesque and McMahon started being more physically affectionate on TV and then jumped to the (correct) conclusion that they were having an affair. Hell, I found out before those rumors based on the fluke of talking to one of McMahon's neighbors, who had seen Levesque in their apartment building regularly. When Laurer found out, she called her boss and Stephanie's father, Vince McMahon, and a strange conversation ensued where Vince finished with "I hope you don't get fired for this" and hung up on her. She spiraled into a drug problem, made odd demands, and left the company.
After losing to Joey Buttafuoco on one of Fox's Celebrity Boxing specials, she settled into a gig with New Japan Pro Wrestling and trained at their newly launched Los Angeles dojo. Around this time, she started dating Sean Waltman, who also did some training at the dojo. She wasn't a great fit for New Japan, but she did improve as a wrestler. After leaving New Japan, she started to badly deteriorate, with many strange public episodes where she appeared to be intoxicated, including stripping naked in Howard Stern's studio and telling him that she had fought lions and tigers in Japan. She ended up in the cast of "The Surreal Life" on VH1, where she had a meltdown when Waltman showed up (there have been conflicting reports over how staged the incident was) and fellow cast member Christopher Knight told the celebrity roommates to "hide her pills."
The desperation got to the point that the volatile couple made a sex tape, claimed it was stolen for a little while, and sold it to a porn DVD company that dubbed it "One Night In China," with Waltman doing interstitial segments shot in China (the country) so they could use the name without inviting a lawsuit from WWE. Following in the footsteps of her success as a celebrity Playboy model, Adult Video News gave the DVD their award for best selling title of the year. The video became more well known for shots of Laurer's clitoris, which had become so swollen that it resembled a small penis. This is a side effect of steroid use, though she still maintains she never used the stuff.
She resurfaced in the first season of VH1's "Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew." While she admitted to regular binge drinking, she would constantly deny that she was an addict, as well as denying ever using steroids when Dr. Drew directly asked her (while noting that it was "the elephant in the room" and mentioning that they were drugs of abuse that one could not use and be considered sober). She came off as lonely and isolated (not asking anyone to visit on family day), and during some of the televised therapy sessions, she told harrowing stories of abuse that she suffered as a child. When the patients' graduation came about, she was willing to admit that she "might be an addict." On the reunion show shot several months later (though aired right after the finale), she talked about the work she was doing with her new therapist, who explained that she needed to deal with her underlying emotional issues before she was was ready to admit that she was an addict.
She continued to battle alcoholism and was hospitalized in December 2008 after she drank heavily while taking prescription medication that shouldn't be mixed with alcohol.