It can't be denied that the WWF ruined the Doink The Clown character by attempting to turn the persona into a child-friendly babyface in 1993. A year or so earlier, Doink debuted on the roster and immediately stood out as something completely different. Many people across the world have an irrational fear of clowns, and Matt Osborne was the perfect man to frighten audience members young and old. In early 1993, Doink was in the middle of a feud with Crush. After The Undertaker had defeated Damien Demento, Vince McMahon hosted an interview segment with both men. The purpose of this was to build towards a match at WrestleMania IX between the pair, and Osborne really hammed it up as the evil clown. Personal demons would rear their ugly head for the man later that year, and he left the WWF. Several others were tasked with playing the role of Doink, but none did so as brilliantly as Osborne. He continued working on the independent circuit right up until his death from a drug overdose in 2013. An earlier run as 'Borne Again' in ECW is interesting, because it shows where the guy could have taken the character had the WWF not wished to turn it babyface.
