Dawn Marie didn’t exactly have weeks to prepare for her shot in ECW. She was still working as a stripper, got hit with a last-minute phone call telling her to get to Philadelphia within three hours, and ended up digging through her strip-club bag just to find something she could wear for one of the biggest breaks of her career.
Speaking on Velvet Ropes., Dawn explained that ECW suddenly needed somebody to work opposite Tammy Sytch after plans involving Terri Runnels changed. Bubba Ray Dudley remembered Dawn from Jersey All Pro Wrestling and decided to make the call. Dawn was interested. Then she found out just how little time she had.
“So they called me. Well, he called me and he’s like, ‘You know, can you — are you interested in coming down?’ Blah blah blah blah. And I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure. When?’ He’s like, ‘You need to be here in three hours.’”
That would have been chaotic enough on its own, but then came the next little detail: she was being thrown in with Tammy Sytch.
“Oh, and by the way, you’re going to be going up against Tammy Sytch.”
Dawn said she barely had time to process any of it. She lived roughly 90 minutes away from the building, so once the drive was factored in, her actual preparation window was tiny.
“Yeah, it was scary. It was scary because I had no time to think about it. It was like, go tanning, get something, get down there in three hours. I was an hour and a half away. I had an hour and a half to prepare. Get down there.”
That’s when Dawn dropped another part of the story that many fans probably never knew. Before ECW became her world, she was making money working in strip clubs.
“But a lot of people don’t realize, like, I was a stripper back then in the ’80s when it wasn’t, like, cool. Like, not like now when everyone’s like, everyone’s a stripper, whatever, no big deal.”
Dawn said she had been around that world since she was 17, and stressed that being a stripper carried a much bigger stigma in wrestling during that era than it might today.
“But, like, I’ve been in the sex business since I’m 17 years old. Yeah. I’ve been in strip joints since I’m 17. So, um, and back then if you were a stripper, you got chastised. You were thrown out of the business. It wasn’t like, okay.”
With ECW expecting her in Philadelphia and the clock running, Dawn didn’t exactly have custom wrestling gear sitting around waiting for her. She used what she had.
“So anyway, I went into my little strip joint, my little strip bag, and I pulled out an outfit, went to the salon, threw my curling iron and my Aquanet in a bag and ran down there.”
That strip-club outfit ended up becoming part of the scramble that launched Dawn Marie into ECW. She said the situation was scary as hell at the time, but once she actually got there, the experience turned into something much bigger.
“And, uh, it was great, you know. It was an amazing experience. Um, but it was definitely scary. But isn’t everything new scary?”
That frantic ECW call helped open the door to the career wrestling fans eventually came to know, including Dawn’s later run in WWE. Ringside News has also covered Dawn Marie discussing her life after wrestling and the possibility of ever getting back in the ring, with the former WWE star long since moving into a different stage of her life.
It is hard to script a crazier wrestling origin story. Dawn Marie went from working in strip clubs to ripping an outfit out of her bag, racing to Philadelphia and walking into ECW with Tammy Sytch waiting on the other side — all with basically no time to think about what she was getting herself into.
What do you make of Dawn Marie getting thrown into ECW with only three hours’ notice? Could you imagine taking that kind of career opportunity with almost no preparation at all? Let us know your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
