5 WWE women you may not know were beauty queens

#3. Former WWE Women's Champion Debra

Debra kicked off her wrestling career in the mid-1990s. A few years earlier, she won the 1987 Mrs. Illinois America pageant.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, the former Women's Champion revealed that her ex-husband Steve McMichael was the one who urged her to participate in beauty pageants.

"I never did anything like that before. I always figured when you do something like enter a pageant, people think you're stuck on yourself. (...) a pageant's something different. 'It's something you dream about as a girl, something you all dream about when you're younger, but it's something I was never comfortable with for me. But being a Mrs. instead of a Miss is different, because it means you aren't traveling around as much, it isn't as hectic," she said.

Later in 1987, Debra competed in the Mrs. America pageant. Five years later, she won the Mrs. Texas beauty contest to compete in the Mrs. America national event for the second time.

The former beauty queen joined Vince McMahon's company in 1998 after spending a few years in WCW. She competed for nearly four years in WWE, during which she won the Women's Championship once, before leaving in 2002.