10 Shining Lights In WWE’s Darkest Hours
3. Doink (1993)
Long misunderstood as the literal representation of the circus WWE had become in the post-boom early-1990s, Doink's original heel run had the all hallmarks of a perfectly pitched Vince McMahon pet project.
Expertly portrayed with unhinged aplomb by second generation journeyman Matt Borne, Doink The Clown wasn't a clown, and therein lay the genius of the gimmick. Doink was a psychopath - a man willing to dress and act like one-note-joke just to make sure he could ruin the punchline. Introduced as a source of minor misery to most fans, his assault on Crush with a lead-filled fake arm shortly before 1993's Royal Rumble was the first point at which his viciousness crossed boundaries from irritating to intense.
Snapping his neck with a jagged stare down the lens as he entered, Doink's real motivations behind the make-up revealed levels of violence hitherto abandoned since Jake Roberts had left the company a year earlier. A babyface turn pitching him as an actual f*cking clown destroyed the act with depressing immediacy - him literally performing the occupation of 'clown' may as well have been him as a bin-man, dentist or ex-hockey player.