10 Greatest WWE TV Matches Ever
1. Doink The Clown Vs. Marty Jannetty - 2 Out Of 3 Falls, RAW (June 21, 1993)
Matt Borne's original, heel Doink The Clown character might be the most under-appreciated gimmick in WWF/E history.
Vaunted wrestling psychologist Jake Roberts once stated that those who grasped the concept best started their matches the second they emerged through the curtain. The criminally underrated Borne made his entrance cackling on a unicycle here, but the second he alighted he turned to a ringside camera and leered at it with a sickly, dead-eyed grimace. It cut through the surface layer of farce in less than a second.
The opening exchanges saw Doink ground Jannetty with his similarly undervalued submission offence with subtle, blood-curdling, omniscient glances to the hard camera before pressing into Jannetty's psyche by running the ropes in a delirious criss-cross fashion. Doink then reclined in the corner, summoning Jannetty towards him with a creepy come hither gesture - but his heel work was so chilling that Jannetty, rattled, couldn’t even engage Doink at his most vulnerable.
Jannetty enraged Doink by beating him at his own game, baffling Doink with a criss-cross of his own. This compelled Doink to brutalise Jannetty and score the first fall, orchestrating the searing drama, which in turn allowed Jannetty to break the psychological hex and wrestle Doink in a more traditional match, which he went on to win via reverse decision following doppelgänger antics far less silly than they had any right to be.
Jannetty was a perfect foil: a relatable audience surrogate to this unsettling, other presence with crowd-popping, athletic counters - but this was Doink's match, and it holds up as the very best of a tragically mishandled creation.