Major Backstage Story On Francine's WWE Firing

As reported earlier, the inevitable finally occured on October 12, 2006 when WWE released Francine Fournier, 34, from her contract. Internally, the move had been largely expected since the day she was first hired back in May.

Vince McMahon actually planned on letting her go as early as June after he saw her in person for the first time backstage. He wanted to let her go because he didn't like her look and he didn't believe that she was of "WWE Diva" caliber. However, people convinced McMahon to keep her on the payroll because they needed someone to lose to Kelly Kelly in the bikini contests held at ECW house shows, not to mention to make the 19-year-old blonde model look good in comparison. Perhaps her saving grace for a short while was that Trinity was on the injured list throughout the entire summer and they didn't have anyone else to use. WWE seemed to building for her to have a permanent spot on the roster by linking her with Balls Mahoney in a feud with Kevin Thorn and Ariel, but her participation in the angle was dropped after two weeks.

After Francine was let go, the story on her backstage was that she had a bad attitude and carried herself like Sunny or Sable did back in the day. Also, she would call the office with weird demands such as wanting to be reimbursed for her tanning sessions. Whatever the case may be, the people in charge didn't like her look, and as noted before, she was doomed from the start.