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The Clown Prince: The Rise and Fall of Doink the Clown

Posted: Sep 16th 2024 By: Brian Damage - RingTheDamnBell.Wordpress.com

Throughout the history of the WWF/WWE, there have been a plethora of goofy, cartoonish gimmicks and characters that flooded our airwaves. There has been a plumber, a garbage man, an IRS agent, a Repo man, a hockey goon and countless others that had jobs other than pro wrestlers. You could say that the WWF at times was like a three ring circus. So if that was the case, why not add a clown to the mix. The things was, this wasn’t any ordinary clown….this was Doink and he was one of the WWF’s greatest creations.

Doink the Clown was portrayed by a second generation wrestler named Matt Osborne or Matt Borne as he was known on several other promotions. He was the man responsible for making what seemed like just another crappy, over the top gimmick and giving it life. Not only did Matt Borne become Doink, he got it over big in the brief time he had the gimmick. This is the story of a clown that took the WWF by storm and still exists to this day.

It all started when Borne was wrestling for WCW, who by that time was trying to mimic the WWF’s success or lack there of with over the top gimmicks. Borne portrayed a wrestling lumberjack by the name of ‘Big Josh.’ After a match, Borne sat in the locker room all sweaty and disheveled smoking a cigarette. Road Warrior Hawk looked at Borne all sweaty with a cigarette hanging from his lips and a pot belly and called him ‘Krusty the Clown.’ Krusty is a beloved cartoon character from the show The Simpsons.

The name stuck with Borne the rest of his stay with WCW. When Matt was let go by the company…Borne looked to go back to the WWF. (He had been with the WWF previously, but his drug issues got him fired.) Vince McMahon had no real interest in bringing Matt back to his company. Desperate and determined to get a job with McMahon, Borne reached out to his friend Jerry Jarrett (who had a friendship and working relationship) with Vince. Jarrett was able to convince McMahon to give him a shot.

Matt Borne wrestled a couple of dark matches with the WWF and Vince was impressed with him enough to offer him a two year deal. Since this was the WWF in the early 90’s, he was asked to come up with a gimmick. Matt Borne couldn’t come up with anything significant that impressed Vince enough to use. Then the joke that Road Warrior Hawk called Borne came up and Vince was confused. He never watched the Simpsons and had no idea what or who Krusty the Clown was. So he was sent tapes of the show and apparently McMahon loved the idea.

Matt Borne was going to be a wrestling clown. While many of his friends and family told him that wrestling as a clown would kill his career, Borne believed he could make it work. He started watching hours and hours of Cesar Romero as the Joker in the old Batman television series. He read several comic books about the Joker. Matt would stand in front of a mirror and practice different facial expressions. He also helped in some of the designing of his outfit and look.

Matt became completely entrenched into the clown gimmick and knew it would get over big. Vince sent Borne down to the USWA to start tweaking the way the clown moved, spoke and wrestled. After tightening up the character…Doink the Clown was ready for the bright lights of the WWF. Doink came in as a heel and played horrible pranks on his opponents and fans. He played Doink as a psychopath who could also be extremely technical and methodical in the ring. The gimmick slowly, but surely became cool and popular with WWF fans.

The more cheers Doink received, the more Vince McMahon saw dollar signs. I mean, the only “logical” thing to do was turn Doink into a babyface clown. Matt Borne was totally against the idea, because he knew that it wouldn’t work and fought hard against it. According to Borne, he was caught smoking a joint outside a Boston hotel with allegedly Mike McGuirk and Luna Vachon by Bam Bam Bigelow and claims that Bigelow told management about it. Borne then was administered a drug test and failed it.

Borne, who had a long troubled history with drugs was let go by the WWF and was replaced by the likes of Steve Lombardi, Dusty Wolfe and Ray Apollo. Vince went ahead and turned the Doink character babyface and not so suprisingly flopped big time. Instead of cheers, fans would chant “Kill the Clown” instead. Eventually, Doink would be scrapped, but would periodically return through the years. It never regained the momentum it once had.