Here’s Why Chyna Turned Down a Fight With Boxer Laila Ali

Apparently at one point in Joanie “Chyna” Laurer’s career, there was the potential for an interesting crossover match. We’ve seen some of these before, and since the potential was once addressed in Rocky III–where Sylvester Stallone squared off against a then unknown Hulk Hogan–the idea is always thrown around.

Chyna was pretty close to a match against women’s boxing champion Laila Ali, the daughter of the great Muhammad Ali. All told, it never came to pass, and we will never know what might have actually happened with the match. However, Sean Waltman, formerly known as X-Pac in the WWE, was on The Tomorrow Show at least to shed light on why the match never came to fruition, with it ultimately breaking down to Chyna thinking it was a bad idea.

“When Chyna was working for New Japan, [Antonio] Inoki was trying to set up a fight between her and Laila Ali, she [Chyna] was his protege. She was Inoki’s protege… she had some grappling skills, but not like that. She knew that it wasn’t a good idea.”

 

Boxers vs. wrestlers are a completely different beast than one would imagine. While the stunts wrestlers are pulling off are real, the perceived damage they incur in the ring is typically staged. Boxers are known and trained to not pull punches, and this is why Waltman calls the idea preposterous. “Someone’s fighting all their life and then someone picks it up, with a year’s training, it’s just different, man. Before the MMA days, if you want to know what happens, look at Gene LeBell vs. Milo Savage. That was probably, that was the first. Gene beat him, handily.”