10 Most Epic Wrestling Entrance Themes You May Not Have Heard

2. Doink The Clown - Nightmare Clown

For whatever reason - maybe the revisionist shorthand of New Generation = Tripe Gimmicks, maybe the fact that the Doink gimmick was tripe for far longer than it was awesome - many fans simply refuse to believe that it was, for a few incredible months in 1993 at least, something quietly special. Several times this Author page has recommended matches performed by Matt Borne's evil heel; several times has this been met with a punctuation mark-as-epithet:

Doink?

Yes, Doink. Borne's Doink was a genuinely eerie heel character in an otherwise foreign menace-filled age, leering to the hard camera from an ironically comfortable distance as if penetrating your nightmares from an unreachable, immovable peripheral. His taunts, best deployed in a forgotten classic opposite Marty Jannetty, were similarly unsettling.

So too was his original WWF theme, Nightmare Clown - a bastardised version of 'Thunder and Blazes' which plummets into a hell-circus the nanosecond after the slide whistle blows and the car horn beeps. Doomy, ominous synths give way to maniacal laughter and even more ominous spectral synths.

The shift from fun to fear is so sudden, it feels as if a trapdoor opens beneath your feet - an apt means of conveying Borne's criminally underrated in-ring psychology.

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Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!