Trish Stratus says there was no women’s division in WWE at the point she won her first championship, because the previous champion had left the company with the belt.
Chyna held the WWF Women’s Championship when her contract expired in late 2001 and departed. Stratus explained at a live Insight with Chris Van Vliet event in Toronto what that left behind.
“Chyna had left with the championship. She was the champion, so there was no real women’s division. There was nothing for us to be really competing for. We’re going out there and putting on our little matches, but there’s no women’s division per se.”
WWE restarted it with a six-pack challenge, which Stratus won at Survivor Series in November 2001 to become champion for the first time.
“Then they decided to bring the women’s championship and women’s division back, and we’ve got six of the best women on the roster in the company at the time. We were bringing in Jazz, which was like, surprise, this is hardcore from ECW. It was big buzz behind it. We have Molly Holly. We got the debut of Jazz. We got Ivory. We got Jackie. Lita.”
She found out on the night.
“I just, I’m like, oh, this is amazing that I’m in this epic match. We’re talking about it, and Fit Finlay is like, and you’re winning the title tonight. I’m like, I’m gonna do what now? And I think that’s what the crowd did as well when I won. Like, what now? Complete underdog story, unexpected moment.”
She had debuted eighteen months earlier and had been a manager rather than a wrestler for most of it.
“It was a moment of, we’re about to have a women’s division that they’re going to focus on. They’re putting the title on me, huge responsibility, and I was like, I’m up for the challenge. Give me the ball, and I’m gonna run with it.”
Stratus credits Finlay with the decision going her way.
“I had Fit in my corner, and he was the one actually. I don’t know what the original plans were, or if that was original plans, but I do know that he spoke up for me. I don’t know if they were jockeying the idea, like who should we put it on, but he definitely was like, she’s been working her a** off. He said she should be the one, and it was a great way to usher back in the women’s division.”
The finish was the running bulldog, which she used for the first time that night. She was given it because it was hard to get wrong.
“I was doing the running bulldog because I was green. So we’re like, let’s give her an easy move that looks devastating. Bulldog, it’s very simple. You can’t really mess it up. I might have messed it up one time, but anyway.”
Chyna held the Women’s Championship once, having won it from Ivory at WrestleMania X-Seven in April 2001. She had previously become the first woman to hold the Intercontinental Championship and the first to enter the Royal Rumble. She left WWE in November 2001 and never returned. She died in 2016 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame with D-Generation X in 2019.
The wrestler brought in for that six-pack challenge is the one Stratus now says people should go back and watch. Asked at the same event whether she has a match that deserves more attention, she named Jazz.
“I would say me and Jazz. She’s so good. She’s so good.”
She found out how much people had forgotten when she posted footage of one of their matches during a WrestleMania weekend event she curated in Las Vegas.
“When I put the video out of me and Jazz, people were like, damn, that was. People forget what it was. It was so intense, and it was the right point in women’s wrestling where it needed that. It needed to be up a little notch, where she was so intense and so fierce, and I was the perfect underdog for her. And we had some crazy matches.”
The specific match she wants people to find is from 2002.
“I think Insurrextion is a match that we had that was, I remember when they made the DVD, the Trish Stratus DVD, we did a top ten list and I wanted it on there, because I don’t know if many people remember. Go back and watch it, guys. It’s really good.”
Jazz took the title from her at the 2002 Royal Rumble and held it for 154 days across two reigns that year, working a considerably more physical style than the division had been built around. Stratus was the smaller, faster opponent throughout.
The Las Vegas event she mentioned was a version of her Crush weekend format, produced during WrestleMania weekend. She came up with the programming, brought in wrestlers from the era, ran a question-and-answer session with them, and did a one-on-one interview with Lillian Garcia.
“It was really cool to do that and bring back the girls and give them their flowers.”
Jazz retired from full-time competition years ago and has worked sporadically since, principally on the independent circuit. She held the ECW Women’s Championship as well as her WWE reigns.
Stratus went on to hold the Women’s Championship seven times. She retired in 2006 and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.
