419 Live

Since everyone else is doing it, we here at Exploder are doing an article on a devious clown. Well kinda…at first. Let me explain. While everyone else is talking about Joaquin Phoenix playing a psychotic clown, I’m talking about the other psychotic clown who inspired countless copycats in the real world. That’s right, I’m talking about Doink.

So who exactly was/is Doink? Well, that’s where it gets complicated. The original wrestler behind Doink was Mid South veteran and second generation wrestler Matt Borne. The story goes that he was actually the inspiration for the gimmick as Road Warrior Hawk saw him sitting around backstage at a WWF show and remarked that he looked like Krusty the Clown (of The Simpsons fame). From there was born a new character, a wrestling clown named Doink.

But instead of being just another goofy gimmick, Doink the Clown was, get this, and evil clown. While his outward appearance was that of a jovial clown that was undoubtedly color blind, Doink actually used his clowning abilities for evil. And, as odd as it sounds, it kinda worked. Borne, as Doink, wore a bodysuit that was ridiculous even by early 90s WWF standards, complete with green wig. He would go around wrestling, but would also play pranks on babyface wrestlers, from dumping confetti, to using joybuzzers. Yup…he was an evil clown alright.

And this evil clowning would even afford Borne his second WrestleMania match at WrestleMania IX against Crush (he wrestled as under his real name at the inaugural WrestleMania, losing to Ric Steamboat). During the match, a second Doink (Steve Keirn) would come out to reek havoc and attack Crush, allowing the original Doink to bash Crush over the head with a loaded prosthetic arm (don’t ask).

Doink would later turn babyface and become a good clown, but Matt Borne himself would find himself fired from the WWF by the end of 1993, presumably with a whoopie cushion sound when he landed. I can only hope. He was fired for drug use. This will come up again later, I promise. But the firing of Borne wasn’t the end of Doink as the character was given to Ray Apollo, who did what he could with it, though many argue that he wasn’t as good as Borne. Which is something, I guess. Anyway, Apollo would continue on as Doink, the goofy clown babyface while Borne…did something different.

Remember when I started this post alluding to the new Joker movie, where a grown man puts on clown makeup as he slowly goes mad? Well, I think DC owes Matt Borne’s estate some money. Because after being fired from the WWF and forced to turn in his giant shoes and seltzer bottle, Matt Borne went to the little bingo hall that could, ECW. And he went there as Doink…kind of. Matt Borne showed up in ECW wearing the Doink bodysuit, or an approximation of it, with only half his face painted, and would often put the trademark wig on his opponent after his matches. He called himself Borne Again, and the gimmick was nothing short of seeing a guy’s life unravel in and out of the ring. It really was interesting stuff and I suggest you go find some of it online or on the WWE Network. Borne would get fired from ECW for, you guessed it, drugs, then move on with his life, leaving the Borne Again character a footnote in history.

But what of the Doink character? Well, Ray Apollo continued to do his best with the gimmick and was eventually given his own Mini-Me years before that was even a pop culture reference. Tiger Jackson was a renown “midget wrestler” (don’t get mad at me, that was the term) who the WWF hired, put in a matching bodysuit and wig, and called him Dink. Because he’s small. Doink and Dink became a popular babyface team that, somehow, got over even more. They would face Bam Bam Bigelow and Luna Vachon in a very mixed tag team match at WrestleMania X, which was a comedy match between two clowns, a woman with a mowhawk, and a guy with flames tattooed on his head. The 90s were weird.

Doink and Dink would later go on to be joined by two other clowns (Wink and Pink) to form Clowns R’ Us and go against Jerry “the King” Lawler and his own little cohorts Sleazy, Cheezy, and Queazy at Survivor Series 1994 in what will inevitable be remembered in history as The Dark Ages. The match was…long. A lot of comedy spots, a lot of tripping, and it ended with Lawler’s team pulling a clean sweep. Then Lawler turned on his own mini-Kings and was chased to the back by the miniature kings AND the miniature clowns. I didn’t write this, I am only repeating it. It was handily voted the “Worst Worked Match” of 1994 by the Pro Wrestling Observer Newsletter, something I can’t really disagree with. Doink would appear in WrestleMania the Arcade Game at a time where there were more people commentating RAW than there were on the roster of a wrestling video game. Sure he shocked people with joy buzzers and hit them with a comically large mallet, but it’s an accomplishment, damnit!

Doink would stick around until late 1995 as a jobber until being phased out altogether. He made a one-off appearance at the 1997 Slammy Awards where he was attacked by Stone Cold Steve Austin while the crowd chanted “kill the clown”. The times, they were a-chaning.

But the story of Doink doesn’t end there, as the character would continue to live on in one form or another, be it random appearances by wrestlers dressed as Doink (Chris Jericho or Eugene, for example) or the incredible realization that, 6 years after the death of Borne, sleazy independent promotions across the country are still promoting matches featuring “Doink”, which is usually some random asshole in a knockoff of an outfit that was terrible to begin with. For whatever reason, fake Doinks are like herpes on the indy scene: too many people have them and the one’s that are proud of it shouldn’t be.

Over the years, Doink was portrayed, legitimately or not, by a multitude of people, from Steve Lombardi to Ace Darling to Steve Keirn at house shows, but his legacy lives beyond the face paint and chin-strapped wig, which is something very few gimmicks can claim. Say what you want about the idea of a wrestling clown, and believe me, I will, but the face that a gimmick that only existed for a few years, that was played by a handful of people, is still something that people see the need to (badly) copy even today is something wholly unique about Doink the Clown.