From Flashing the Crowd to Life After WWE: Where Is Dawn Marie Now?

Remember Dawn Marie? The Ruthless Aggression-era agent of chaos who once stunned a live SmackDown crowd by flashing them mid-segment. Quick 2025 check-in: she left wrestling behind, pivoted careers, and is now working as a nurse in New Jersey. And yes, the way she exited WWE was messy.

Where she is now (and how she got there)

Per Wrestling Inc, Dawn Marie stepped away from wrestling and built a new life in healthcare in New Jersey. The road out of WWE was not clean: she took maternity leave after being told her job was secure, then got released anyway. She sued the company for wrongful termination. That case never went to trial; both sides settled it in late 2007.

The infamous flash, in her own words

That live-TV moment in 2003? Production cut around it so nothing explicit aired, but the building definitely got the uncut version. On the Ring the Belle podcast, she looked back on it with a very Dawn Marie answer.

"They just wanted me to do it, and I was like, 'Okay... what do you want me to do? I don't care.' Just pay me."

"That was art. My whole career was walking that line, putting my foot on it, crossing it. So it was perfect."

It was a very different era for WWE, where women were routinely booked as shock value. Since the company shifted to PG, the women’s division has been overhauled into an actual showcase, and plenty of those matches now hang with or outshine the men.

The Al Wilson saga: the most bonkers soap opera SmackDown ever ran

If you remember Dawn Marie, you probably remember this storyline. It was peak early-2000s WWE: wild, uncomfortable, and impossible to stop watching. Here’s the clean version of a very messy angle:

• 2002: Dawn starts antagonizing Torrie Wilson by flirting with Torrie’s real-life dad, Al Wilson, on SmackDown.
• Mixed tag fallout: Dawn teams with Matt Hardy against Torrie and Rikishi. The guys are there, but the heat is all on the women.
• Flirtation turns into an on-screen engagement and then a wedding. Yes, Dawn marries Torrie’s dad on TV.
• The twist: before the wedding, Dawn offers Torrie a deal — spend a night with her and she will call the whole thing off. Torrie agrees. Dawn marries Al anyway and declares herself Torrie’s stepmom on screen.
• It gets darker: the angle kills off Al Wilson via a storyline heart attack, supposedly from overexertion on the wedding night. Yes, that was the actual explanation on TV.
• The matches: the feud hits No Mercy 2002 and wraps with Torrie beating Dawn Marie at the 2003 Royal Rumble.

Why this still sticks

Between the live arena flashing and the Al Wilson arc, Dawn Marie became one of SmackDown’s most controversial MVPs of that era. Inside baseball note: being told your job is safe during maternity leave and then getting cut — and having to sue over it — is exactly the kind of behind-the-curtain drama that defined WWE’s 2000s as much as anything on TV. Dawn walked the line because that was the assignment, and the show leaned into it as hard as possible.