10 Wrestlers You Never Knew Were Dead 5

5. Doink The Clown

Doink The Clown was a character created by professional wrestler Matt Osborne, and is somewhat unfairly remembered as the bottom of the gimmick barrel. A clown character requires a suspension of disbelief at best, at worst it’s the kind of thing we wrestling fans spend our adult lives having to defend. But Doink had his moments, coming closer to Stephen King’s IT than Ronald McDonald. He competed for WWF in the early ’90s as a heel against the likes of Crush and Mr Perfect, playing pranks on his opponents and the audience alike. He did turn face in late ’93, but Matt Osborne was released shortly afterwards due to his drug problems, and Ray Liachelli would portray Doink in WWF from then on.
Following his release, Matt competed for a short while in ECW, initially as Doink. He then began to appear as himself as part of an anti-WWF gimmick instigated by Shane Douglas. This phase in his career was known as Borne Again. Later on when he appeared in the indies, he would take inspiration from Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker and reinvent Doink into something darker and grittier. Sadly, mainstream audiences would never this incarnation, because although the traditional Doink character appeared sporadically in WWE over the years, Matt Osborne would never again compete for the company. He died in June of 2013 in Plano, Texas of a drugs overdose.