The female professional wrestler known as Trish Stratus was born Patricia Anne Stratigias on December 18, 1975 in Ontario, Canada to Johan and Alice Stratigias. She is of Greek descent grew up in Richmond hills, where she was born, and attended Bayview Secondary School there.
For her tertiary education, she enrolled at York University in Toronto, where she studied kinesiology and biology, as well as playing soccer and field hockey. The faculty and staff at York ended up going on strike while she was there, so she had to find other options in the meanwhile. She ended up working as a receptionist at a local gym, where other gym members encouraged her to go into fitness modelling, due to her sexy 36-24-36 figure.
The publisher of MuscleMag International then approached her to do a test shoot for the magazine, and she ended up as the cover for the May 1998 issue. For the next six months, she worked out constantly and appeared on numerous magazine covers. Her work caught the attention of the World Wrestling Federation and in November of 1999, they signed her to a multi-year contract. Patricia was then sent to Sully’s Gym for training.
Trish Stratus made her debut on the March 19, 2000 episode of “Sunday Night Heat” as a scout looking over the talent, and on “Raw” the next night she performed her first role for the company, as manager of the new tag team of Test and Albert, which would be known as T&A (a play on the shortened term for Tits & Ass).
Memorable storylines for her during that year included feuds with the Dudley Boyz and the Hardy Boyz, as well as her first attempt at winning the WWF Women’s Championship. T&A disbanded at the end of the year, so she started the 2001 season in a storyline where she gets involved with WWF owner Vince McMahon. She got involved in a match with McMahon’s daughter Stephanie on the pay-per-view special “No Way Out” because of this. She was betrayed by Vince on the next episode of raw after this though, and her character turned “face”, or became a fan favourite, when she slapped McMahon at WrestleMania X-Seven after weeks of enduring humiliations like being forced to strip down to her lingerie and bark like a dog.
Trish then began wrestling full-time after this, and she won her first WWF Women’s Championship title in autumn of 2001, after returning from a three-month lay-off because of an ankle injury. She continued working in various matches for the rest of the year and the next, winning and losing titles like the Hardcore Championship and the Women’s title as well as posing in sexy outfits for the company’s magazines as one of their “WWE Divas”. She was named Diva of the Decade on Raw’s Tenth Anniversary special in 2003.
In 2004, she was involved in a storyline with Chris Jericho and Christian, which continued well into 2005, where her character turned “heel”, or became a villain again, after she betrayed Chris Jericho to side with Christian. She won the WWE Women’s Championship for the fifth time at the “Bad Blood” pay-per-view in June, then suffered a broken hand in July, causing her to be out of action for a month. She defended the title until December of that year, where she lost it to Lita, one of her constant sparring partners in past storylines.
In fact, her final match as a WWE Superstar was with Lita, at the September 2007 pay-per-view event “Unforgiven”, where she defeated her Lita with a Sharpshooter submission move, winning her record-making 7th Women’s Championship title and then retiring as champion. She made a special appearance on Raw’s 15th Anniversary Special, along with Lita, where they interrupted and attacked another female sports entertainer’s “concert”.
Trish retired from professional wrestling at the top — when the WWE Fan Nation members were asked to vote for their favorite Diva, Trish took top honors in the voting with 20.8 percent of the vote, and the fame from her WWE career has helped her cross over into other non-wrestling roles.
In 2006 she hosted Canada’s Walk of Fame induction ceremony, and she also performed at the event, doing a song-and-dance inspired by the film “Chicago”. It was also in 2006 that she appeared in the short-lived reality show “Armed & Famous” on the CBS network. That was also the year that she got married to her high school sweetheart, and her bridal gown was featured on the cover of Today’s Bride magazine.
She is also involved in several charities, lending her WWE celebrity status to organizations and events such as Easter Seals, The Special Olympics, The Ronald McDonald House and other child-centric charities.