10 Wrestlers Scarier Than The Fiend
9. Doink The Clown
Doink The Clown is, and this is upsetting, perceived by the ignorant as the poster boy for a New Generation they only told you wasn't any good because it reinforces the narrative of WWE's great Attitude Era comeback story.
The New Generation's best was all-time elite-tier Fed stuff, and for a few, brilliant months, the original Doink character represented that. Played by Matt Borne, whom Road Warrior Hawk described as Krusty The Clown, he was perfect for the role: a genuinely skeezy presence with an idiosyncratic, glum menace to him, he first appeared in the RAW crowd as a playfully evil presence.
He was more mischievous than sinister, until he made his entrance proper; then, backed with the sound of a carnival scene entering dusk in an instant, he let out that menace in short, unsettling bursts, his face, etched in disgust, suddenly swinging on a hinge to the ringside camera. He had an uncanny and unsettling knack of locating the hard cam when applying a rest hold, getting himself over as an entity awful in its omnipresence much like the opening scene of Stephen King's IT.
A drunken slob/Pennywise hybrid, the original Doink was overfamiliar in places he had no right to be - a tremendous harmony of performer and persona scuppered by the very real demons that made it so effective.