Francine reflects on being a part of the famous '90s wrestling documentary, "Beyond The Mat."
Barry Blaustein's "Beyond The Mat" provided a rare look behind the scenes at the 90s independent circuit as well as a look at the WWE's growth in the Attitude Era and insight into ECW's road to one of its most pivotal moments, its inaugural pay-per-view, ECW Barely Legal 1997.
During a recent interview with Sean Ross Sapp, ECW's "Queen of Extreme" Francine reflected on her experience being a part of the documentary and remarked that Barry Blaustein told her she was one of the nicer people he'd met while filming the documentary during a recent appearance on Francine's podcast.
"They were around a lot. I had Barry Blaustein on my show and I interviewed him," she said. "He was like, ‘You were one of the only people that was nice to me.’ Cause you got to remember, Sean, back then, ‘We're trying to keep kayfabe alive.’ So you didn't see what you see today. You didn't see the camaraderie between the boys. Heels were heels and babyfaces were babyfaces. We didn't have social media. So you didn't see a lot of what went on behind the scenes and stuff.
"So when you have those cameras back there and they're following you around and it's a pay-per-view and you're trying to go over your match and then you feel this and the boys were like, ‘Just get the fuck out of here’ constantly," she continued. "I felt bad for Barry because I knew he was just trying to get his doc done, but like people would be screaming at him like, ‘Get away from us.’ Like we're going over stuff because we were trying to keep. I think that's the difference between our footage and like the WWF footage at the time. The WWF, and Barry even said this, they were way more friendly because we were trying to keep things kayfabe. They were there a lot and they had come to a couple shows. I mean, they got their footage. It was an excellent documentary, but I can understand both sides. I understand what Barry was trying to do and I also understand what the boys were trying to do."
Elsewhere in the interview, Francine reflected on appearing in the "Forever Hardcore" documentary in 2005. Read her comments here.
Keep up with Francine's podcast via her YouTube channel.
Check out the full interview with Francine in the video embedded at the top of this page.
