ECW Original and former WWE Diva Dawn Marie did not hold back about Francine in a new interview with SoCal Val on The Velvet Ropes, a WrestlingNews.co exclusive.
Asked what the locker room was like when she arrived in WWE, Dawn Marie said she had no issues there before bringing up her ECW rival.
“It was just very professional. Like I truly had no problems [in] WWE,” Dawn Marie said. “And you know, listen, there’s no secret, like, I hate Franny, you know? I would piss on her if she was on fire.”
‘She Did Not Want Me There’
Dawn Marie said her problems with Francine started in ECW.
“I’m very honest. I’m very open about it. When I was at ECW, it was a very, very, very hostile environment ’cause she did not want me there, you know?” she said. “There’s two kinds of people. There’s people who love what they do, and there’s people who love who they are when they’re doing it, you know? That’s the perfect example of me and her.”
She added: “These are my opinions and what I lived through.”
SoCal Val said she has had good experiences with Francine herself. Dawn Marie responded: “You have good experiences with her because, A, you have a platform for her to benefit from, and two, you’re never working with her like that.”
Tammy Sytch And ‘Can You Tell It’
Dawn Marie said the two were opposites in how they spent their energy.
“When I was working hard to hone my craft, to elevate myself, she would spend that same energy in trying to get rid of people, you know?” she said.
She said Francine was focused on Tammy Sytch when Dawn Marie first arrived, which kept the attention off her.
“When I came in, Tammy was on top. She did not want that. So she did everything humanly possible to expose Tammy, to make people think bad,” Dawn Marie said. “I mean, Tammy helped her a lot with that, you know? We all know that. She gave her a lot of fuel. So she didn’t really pay attention to me coming up.”
“By the time Tammy screwed up and was gone, I already had established myself, right? So I wasn’t going anywhere. So now she’s gonna try to make it where it was so uncomfortable and miserable that I would leave or that I would do something politically incorrect so that I would get thrown out.”
Dawn Marie said Francine would refuse to speak to her directly when they discussed matches with Lance Storm and Shane Douglas.
“She would look at Lance and go, ‘Lance, can you tell it that blah, blah, blah,'” Dawn Marie said. “She wouldn’t even address me. She would talk to Lance standing next to me and say, ‘Can you tell it,’ blah, blah, blah, whatever it is.”
Why WWE Was Different
Dawn Marie said she stepped in when she saw the same treatment aimed at other women coming through ECW, which is how she built some of her closest friendships in wrestling.
“That’s how I became such amazing friends with so many of the girls as they came through ECW, because I would block it,” she said. “‘No, no, you’re not gonna treat her the way you’ve been treating me.'”
She said that history, and the people she already knew from ECW, is why her time in WWE went smoothly.
“I’ve always been a very upfront, like, ‘This is right, this is wrong.’ I’m very old school,” she said. “No, I had no problems at WWE. My problem, locker room problems were in ECW.”
The two have clashed in public before. PWInsider reported in June 2005 that Dawn Marie and Francine had a backstage incident at ECW One Night Stand, with each side saying the other insulted them. Francine denied disrespecting anyone at the time.
What Else Dawn Marie Talked About
Francine was only one part of the 82-minute conversation. Dawn Marie also spoke with SoCal Val about:
- Her ECW debut, which came on three hours’ notice against Tammy Sytch
- Leaving a job as a real estate director in Manhattan after managing Jimmy Snuka at her first show
- What Jimmy Snuka and photographer George Napolitano did for her career
- The advice Buddy Landel gave her: “Learn the art of I don’t know”
- Mentoring Paige Collett, the Black Dahlia, whom she calls her “wrestling daughter”
- Why she defends the Divas era, and the advice she gave April Hunter
- Creating her own content at 55, her work as a nurse, and her crystal energy healing practice
Fans can follow Dawn Marie on Instagram at @ecwdawnmariewwe and on X at @WWEDawnMarieECW, and subscribe to her OnlyFans.
The full interview is available on the WrestlingNewsCo YouTube channel.
