10 Wrestler Deaths WWE Ignored

6. Doink

Okay, so there have been many Doinks in WWE history, but the first one was the best and his passing was criminally overlooked on TV.

Matt Osborne was the man who made the evil clown famous, and perhaps it was the role he was born to play. He didn’t get over that much as Big Josh, a man who had a dancing bear in WCW. That was a ridiculous gimmick. But slap some makeup and a green wig on him and he was dynamite!

Doink was a fixture of WWE’s awkward phase of the mid-’90s. While there were a lot of silly gimmicks at the time, his was one of the few that actually worked in an effective way. He had some relatively big feuds with Crush and Jerry Lawler, as well as facing off against the likes of Bret Hart and Tatanka. Due to drug issues he was fired from the company, and Ray Apollo was gifted the role of evil clown. Those floppy shoes were just too big to fill and he could never pull it off like the first Doink.

Osborne made a couple more appearances as the character over the years in WWE before passing away in 2013 due to an accidental overdose and a history of heart disease. He was not mentioned on TV. Was that some sort of cruel joke, like a pie to the face? Sure, he hadn’t been a full time act in nearly two decades, but for longtime fans Doink remains one of the most memorable and fun characters of his era.