Dawn Marie still has zero love for Francine, and she isn’t watering it down just because their ECW days are long gone. The former ECW and WWE star unloaded on her old rival, saying Francine made life backstage miserable for her and flat-out admitting that the bad blood between them is still very much alive.
Speaking on Velvet Ropes, Dawn was asked about the difference between the ECW and WWE locker rooms. She said WWE was never the problem for her. The real drama, according to Dawn, went down in ECW. That is when Francine’s name came up, and Dawn didn’t even try to soften the blow.
“Like I truly had no problems in WWE and, and, and, you know, listen, there’s no secret, like I hate Franny, you know. Wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.”
Dawn made it clear she wasn’t looking to clean up that statement afterward. She said those feelings come directly from how she remembers being treated behind the scenes in ECW.
“No, I don’t care. I’m very honest. I’m very open about it. Um, when I was at ECW, it was a very, very, very hostile environment ’cause she did not want me there.”
Dawn said she believes the two women were complete opposites when it came to how they approached the wrestling business. In her view, she was focused on improving while Francine was focused on protecting her position.
“You know, like I was explaining before, 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.”
SoCal Val pointed out that she had personally gotten along with Francine, but Dawn immediately explained why she didn’t believe that was the same situation.
“You don’t have good experiences with her because, A, you have a platform for her to benefit from, and two, you were never working with her like that.”
Dawn then got even more specific. She claimed that while she was trying to improve her craft and build herself up in ECW, Francine was putting energy into trying to push other women out.
“Okay, so my issues with her, or why her and I were so opposite, was because, like, 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.”
According to Dawn, Tammy Sytch was Francine’s primary focus when Dawn first arrived in ECW. Dawn claimed that gave her enough time to establish herself before the heat eventually shifted her way.
“So that’s where some of my greatest friendships came from, was from ECW, because 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. 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. She was so focused on Tammy.”
Dawn said that once Sytch was gone, she felt like she became the next target. By that point, however, Dawn believed she was already too established in ECW to simply be pushed aside.
“By the time Tammy screwed up and was gone, I already had established myself, right? So I wasn’t going anywhere. So now she then tried 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 as a response, you know?”
Dawn even claimed things got so petty that Francine sometimes wouldn’t speak directly to her during discussions. Instead, she says Francine would talk through someone like Lance Storm while Dawn was standing right there.
“She wouldn’t even address me. She would talk to Lance standing next to me. Oh no. And say, ‘Can you tell it, it blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,’ whatever it is she was, ‘I’m going to come in and do this.’”
That experience, according to Dawn, eventually made her protective of other women who came through ECW. If she saw somebody else getting similar treatment, she said she would step in.
“So that’s how I became such amazing friends with so many of the girls as they came through ECW, because I would block it. Yeah, yeah. Like, no, no, you’re not going to treat her the way you’ve been treating me. You know what I’m saying?”
Years later, both women crossed paths again under the WWE umbrella when the company brought ECW names back for its 2024 NXT show at Philadelphia’s old ECW Arena. Ringside News covered Dawn Marie serving as the special referee for Lola Vice vs. Jaida Parker, while Francine also appeared during the broadcast.
Dawn Marie is clearly not interested in rewriting history just to make everything sound nice decades later. As far as she’s concerned, WWE treated her professionally, while her ECW experience with Francine was a completely different story — and she still remembers exactly how ugly it got.
What do you make of Dawn Marie going this hard on Francine after all these years? Do you think Francine should respond with her side of what happened in ECW? Let us know your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
