WWE Monday Night RAW 25th anniversary: Ranking the 25 biggest stars

20. Chyna

While Trish Stratus and Lita certainly broke their fair share of barriers in WWE, there has yet to be a more dominant woman in the history of Monday Night RAW than Chyna. Sure, some may have won more titles or been in more main events, but there had never been anyone like Chyna when she came along.

Outside of pulling on a foot or throwing in a slap every now and again, no woman had ever really mixed it up with the men until Joanie Laurer. After training at the Killer Kowalski school in Minnesota, The Fabulous Moolah set up some matches for her and she was soon discovered by Shawn Michaels and Triple H, who brought her into WWE as an enforcer for their duo, which would eventually turn into a little something called D-Generation X.

She first showed up at an In Your House pay-per-view event in early 1997 to help Triple H in his feud with Goldust, and things just took off from there. DX was soon one of the most popular attractions on Monday Night RAW and Chyna was a huge part of that. She never said much in her early days as she let her amazing physique and willingness to get in there with the boys do the talking. She eventually went out on her own in 1999, but not before becoming the first woman to ever compete in the Royal Rumble match, shocking the WWE Universe as the 30th entrant. She didn’t last long but was in there just long enough to deliver some of those great forearms to Mark Henry before being eliminated herself by Stone Cold Steve Austin.

The next night on RAW, she turned on Triple H and joined up with Kane and Vince McMahon, even teaming with Kane to defeat Triple H and X-Pac. She reunited with Triple H at WrestleMania XV and would be with him for a while longer in 1999 but found plenty of success as a competitor. She became the first woman to qualify for the King of the Ring tournament, the first female to be the number one contender for the WWE Championship and shocked the world by becoming the first-ever woman to win the WWE Intercontinental Championship when she defeated Jeff Jarrett, who was out the door to WCW, at No Mercy.

She got into a really entertaining feud with Chris Jericho for the title, and at one point, both were considered the Intercontinental Champion, even though WWE doesn’t really recognize that anymore. She actually won the title a second time during her fun run with Eddie Guerrero as part of an intergender match but lost the belt to him a few weeks later.

Oddly enough, she has more Intercontinental Championship reigns than Women’s Championship reigns. She won the women’s title only once when she defeated Ivory at WrestleMania X-Seven, which was tied into her first appearance in Playboy, which became one of the best-selling issues in the magazine’s long history. She also wrote a best-selling autobiography before leaving WWE in 2001. Her four-year run was truly remarkable, and while things took a bad turn for her later in an all-too-short life, her time in WWE and on Monday Night RAW will never be forgotten.