I perked up during the beginning of this interview because it featured Francine talking about her Legends of the Arena ECW tribute show in June 2009, which I worked at behind-the-scenes. Either because she’s so nice or because she doesn’t remember their names, Francine never mentions Roger Artigiani (the ECW Arena manager) or Smart Mark Video (which filmed the show, but which was disallowed from selling the DVD) by name, even though they are clearly the parties being referred to if you know the history of the issues with the show like I do. Working for Roger at the time, I was actually in his ECW Arena office with him, his friend, Francine, and Francine’s husband the night of the Legends of the Arena show and everything seemed to be fine with everyone the night of the event, but then weeks later, the problems started. So, it was interesting to hear her perspective of something I was remotely a part of. Francine came across to me here as fairly naive about the promoting process, but nonetheless well-intentioned and very accommodating to the wrestlers on her show.
After drifting away from Raven and Legends of the Arena, Francine addresses early deaths of ECW wrestlers and what she attributes those tragedies to. She even tells a few crazy stories that she witnessed involving drugs and rats during her ECW days. The theme of this interview is largely Francine entering the wrestling business without any knowledge of how it worked and gradually becoming accustomed to the strange intricacies of the profession, and then trying to get away from wrestling when raising her family. The end of the interview has some quality Iron Sheik stories, which start with Francine talking about his Twitter statuses and Sean piggybacking off of that with some stories about the man himself, as he has had first-hand experiences with the WWE legend.
Overall, I question whether Francine was the right guest for this show, which hypes wrestling personalities with out-of-the ring lives that are as captivating as their in-ring activities. I’m not sure whether she met that criterion, or at least if this show captured it as adequately as I wish it had. Some of this material you’ve heard before if you’ve seen Francine’s recent interviews on Highspots’ Legends of Extreme series.
I was excited to hear extensively about the controversy of the Legends of the Arena show, as being a female promoter is one thing that was largely unique about her perspective to the business, but like I said, that is only covered at the very beginning. Even though the idea for this interview to take place was inspired by comments Raven made about a supposedly unfair payday for the show that he made on one of his Kayfabe Commentaries show appearances, I fear that this inspiration may have been largely spontaneous. That talk only takes up the first 20 minutes and the rest of the interview is not about subjects that only she can relate to. This is to say that besides her family history (cancer’s effect and getting out of the business and having kids away from the spotlight), Francine does not have too much unique about her that is covered in-depth in this interview.
That being said, however, there is some interesting chatter where she talks about how she consciously tries to distance herself from her scantily clad wrestling heyday during her current life and live her “wife and mom” role separate from her wrestling career. Interviewer Sean Oliver is great in his role, as usual, as this is very much a back-and-forth, give-and-take conversation. Francine is a decently compelling guest, but this episode is nothing to really go way out of your way to see unless you’re a big Francine fan.
GRADE: B
PURCHASE:
DVD: http://kayfabecommentaries.com/DVD_BK_Francine.html
DIGITAL: https://wwnlive.com/product/kayfabe-commentaries-breaking-kayfabe-francine-fournier-demand/, http://www.diywrestling.com/dywvideodetail.php?video_id=1108
Index of topics discussed:
- the effects of cancer on her family (specifically, her sister and her father)
- how Legends of the Arena came about
- problems with the ECW Arena manager over tickets and which company was to film the show vs. which company was to sell the DVD
- Raven’s comments in his KC interview about his payday for the show
- what she told Raven after she saw his comments
- ECW wrestlers who died young
- drug use in the ECW locker room
- a rat story from ECW
- what her recreational (alcohol, drugs, and smoking) habits are
- growing up in Philadelphia
- coming across a TV commercial of ECW
- meeting Tod Gordn for the first time
- an interesting story about meeting Lex Luger before breaking into wrestling
- being trained by JT Smith
- getting chokeslammed by 911 a few times early in her career
- learning wrestling etiquette
- pressure for women in wrestling to look good
- coming to terms with having to look scantily clad due to her career choice
- wanting to be respected for her ability to bump and wrestle
- her fear of being Googled by parents of her kids’ friends
- working with Missy Hyatt for a web site
- the most bizarre fan request she ever got (and it’s very weird)
- her decision to get married
- raising her kids away from wrestling
- stories about Sandman
- her friends in ECW
- dating pro wrestlers
- her gambling hobby
- her favorite TV shows
- her foods of choice
- gifts from fans
- her favorite music
- their best Iron Sheik stories
- wrap-up questions
RUN TIME: 1 hr. 35 min.
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