Francine Talks Working Shows with Shane Douglas Again, Odd Requests from Fans, more

Shelly Martinez dives deep into the life of ECW Original Francine.

On the latest edition of Shelly Live on VOC Nation, Shelly Martinez talked to former ECW star Francine about her new podcast, weird requests by male fans, working conventions, and making appearances with Shane Douglas again. Here are some highlights:

Francine on her Eyes Up podcast for Vince Russo’s Brand: “Things have been taking off. Not for nothing, but I’m 48 years old. I never thought I’d be this involved with, not just wrestling, just with social media and all this crazy stuff. So I have the podcast, and it’s doing really well. Vince Russo bought it from me, so now I’m part of the Russo family, part of the (Russo) Brand. So we do the podcast for him, but I also have the Patreon; the Patreon is an extension of the podcast. For the Patreon, we do funny little things like we watched Porn Parish. We watched them and we gave our take and we gave them (star ratings), who we liked, who we disliked… I just (also) did a think where I read my DMs (on the air), and I didn’t know I even had DMs because I don’t know how to use Instagram…so I went and I read my DMs and boy were they dirty. It made good content and it was funny.”

Francine on her Cameo requests: “A lot of men want me to cut promos on them and heel them. I never wanted to do Cameo…I’m thinking that people want me to say Happy Birthday and things like that, but no; they want me to call them filth and disgusting and heel them. It’s been so fun, I feel like I’m on television again.”

Francine on keeping conventions to a minimum: “I turn down a lot of work. It has to be worth it for me in order to leave my kids and my husband. If I do 8 to 10 appearances a year, then that’s enough for me. I’m not looking to sign with anyone, I’m not looking to work every weekend. Just the bigger conventions, I’m happy with those. I have one or two guys that take care of me; I trust them with my life, and that’s who I’ll work for.”

Shelly Martinez on the convention circuit: “It took me a while to find my place with all of that because I had just been screwed over so much with the convention life. I was like, oh my gosh, these guys are like the indy promoters that screw the talent over. Like vendor people bringing me in; this is supposed to be the easy gig. When that started getting shady and everybody and their mom started becoming a ‘vendor’ and someone that has a table…that’s when like it was really bad…Being around -no offense – some of these weirdos that have sick agendas and me and a lot of other girls have a lot of stories about being afraid for our lives in a lot of situations.”

Francine on doing nostalgia shows with Shane Douglas: “I think last year was my first time being back at ringside. I kept telling Shane (Douglas) I don’t want to do it, I’m too old, this is ridiculous…I really can’t work… But people want to see nostalgia, and they just wanted to see us together again. And once I went through the curtain with him (for the first time in years), it was like 1996 all over again… He’s probably the only guy that I’ll go to the ring with, just because I trust him with everything. He knows about my health, he’s not going to put me in any compromising position.”

They also went into Francine’s family life, how to be a heel when you are a nice person in real life, and much more.

Here is a link to the interview:

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/vocnation/episodes/2020-06-09T18_47_09-07_00

Shelly LIVE airs every Tuesday at 6pm ET / 3pm PT on the VOC Nation Radio Network. Shelly shares stories of her past and present, and takes listeners calls and tweets.

VOC Nation provides daily, interactive talk radio, geared toward the professional wrestling community.
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