Candice

Candice Michelle has a wicked little fantasy. Wearing a lace-up bustier, tight shorts and thigh-high leather boots, she enters a dark room full of strangers. Another woman approaches. Candice pounces, wrapping her thighs around the woman's neck, gripping her tight. There are variations. Sometimes they struggle, sometimes they scream, but it always ends the same: Candice walks away with the woman's belt and, lo and behold, the championship title in World Wrestling Entertainment's women's division.

Candice may just win that title on April 2, when she enters the ring in a live pay-per-view extravaganza in Chicago. She's not lacking in confidence: "When I take something on, I don't hold back," she says. "Women's wrestling needs more sex appeal, and becoming champion is the fastest way I know to make that happen."

You have to love a woman who has her goals all mapped out. And Candice certainly has a knack for turning her dreams into reality. She was only 19 when she told her mother she was leaving her small town in Wisconsin to become a big star. "I packed up the blue Mustang and drove crosscountry to Los Angeles," she says while reclining at a waterside cafe in Marina del Rey, California, near her home. "I just kept thinking, Life is too short to be ordinary."

Not that Candice could ever be considered ordinary. Look at her: At the age of 27 she's arguably the foxiest Diva the WWE has ever seen, and with that trademark neck lock of hers--better known as Candylicious--she is tough to contend with in the ring or anywhere else.

Whether Candice becomes the champ or not, she's already won our approval. Perhaps you recall a certain television commercial that aired during last year's Super Bowl and another that was broadcast during this season's NFL playoffs. Let us refresh your memory: Candice is dressed in a dangerously skimpy top emblazoned with the GoDaddy.com logo. The commercial does have a plot, but who cares? The only thing anybody noticed was how adept Candice was at keeping those pesky spaghetti straps from popping off under all that pressure.

Apparently the spaghetti straps couldn't take it anymore. "Another one of my dreams has always been to pose for Playboy," Candice says. It's hard for the busboys not to marvel at her credentials. Why else would they be elbowing past each other to keep her iced-tea glass filled? "I started reading Playboy when I was 17 or 18, and I thought, This is the epitome of a certain kind of beauty and class. It's the beauty of being a woman and of being truly free-spirited."

Candice's journey from Wisconsin girl to Playboy model wasn't always easy. "My first year in L.A., I cried myself to sleep every night," she remembers. "I couldn't find a job, I didn't have any friends, and I hated the freeways." So she did what every starving young fame seeker does at moments like those--she started waitressing. "This wasn't just any restaurant gig, though," she insists. "It was this place called Dublin's on the Sunset Strip, and they make you submit a head shot with your résumé."

The skills that scored her huge tips from customers are the same ones that make her so successful in the ring and in such movies as Dodgeball, in which she played a cheerleader. "I'm a tough, flirty kind of girl. That's just who I am," Candice says with a glint in her eye. "I use that flirty energy to help me (text concluded on page 136) Candice(continued from page 113) perform, to light up a room. Some people might think it's over-the-top, but it's what comes naturally to me."

In her silk teddy and tight weathered blue jeans, Candice--who's part German and part Costa Rican--is softer around the edges in person than her WWE persona might suggest. She laughs easily, often at her own expense. Talking about her first big night out in the City of Angels, she blushes at how naive she was.

"A girlfriend of mine from Wisconsin and I went to this place called the Key Club, and our jaws dropped to the floor the minute we stepped inside," she says. "The first thing we saw was a dominatrix in a cage in the middle of the dance floor. I thought, This stuff doesn't happen in Wisconsin!"

Since then she has become a dominating force herself. Candice came to the WWE in 2004 as a contestant in the RAW Diva Search. Though she lost to Christy Hemme (Playboy's April 2005 cover girl), she was soon holding her own in pillow fights and bikini contests against some tough competition--Stacy Keibler, Hemme and others. It wasn't long before she was battling bustier a bustier with women's champ Trish Stratus.

Behind the scenes the Divas are more cordial, but the physical aspect of wrestling is serious and unforgiving. "We're on tour four days a week, and we work out five days," says Candice, who joined the WWE crew this past December for a holiday showdown for the troops in Afghanistan. She has also performed for the troops in Iraq. "The pounding on my body is for real," she says. "I get whiplash. I get slammed. I get sore all over the place. Whoever thinks this sport is fake should get in the ring with me."

Ultimately Candice, who's married to a Los Angeles chiropractor and is the "proud mom" of a Maltese named Bam Bam and a little Yorkie named Betty Boop, says she'd like to star in a feature film. We have no doubt we'll be seeing her name in lights someday soon. But for now, when she's not skate dancing on the Venice boardwalk, she's putting everything she's got into the ring.

"I don't do anything half-assed," she says, finally waving off a busboy, "whether it's in wrestling, in my relationship or in bed. I don't want to rub anything in anybody's face, but I know I have certain talents, and when I want something, whatever it is, I know I'm going to get it."