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Sunday, December 19, 2010

Six Crazy Clowns

Doink!
On the sixth day of Wrestling Christmas my true fans brought to me... six crazy clowns.  All named Doink, but played by six different men.

Okay, I struggled with this one.  I'm not even sure we'll make it to day 12, but I'm still working on that.

Doink the Clown was brought in to the WWF back in 1992.  When you hear wrestling clown, you probably assume a good guy brought in to bring cheer to young fans.  But that was not the case at all.

You see, Doink was an evil clown.  His music was even scary when he came to the ring.  He played pranks on fans, and not nice ones.  He was played by former WWF jobber Matt Bourne, who had been successful in Portland and World Class.  Bourne had come to New York after a stint as lumberjack Big Josh in WCW.

Doink's most notable feud was his first big program in the WWF against Crush.  The big Hawaiian himself had just gone through a gimmick change after Demolition disbanded.  He kept the name, but changed his look, still sporting the mullet, but lost the make up and black leather.  Instead he wore an orange singlet, looking like a can of Orange Crush.  It all made sense.

I think most people expected Crush to, pardon the pun, crush Doink when the two met at Wrestlemania 9.  But of course, the clown had a plan.  When the ref went down, a second Doink appeared.  This one was former Fabulous One Steve Keirn (who was also Skinner).  He named Crush with a fake arm and the "real" Doink got the pin.  The clown told fans it was all an illusion.

Bourne eventually left the WWF, but the clown stayed behind.  This time, former WCCW wrestler Ray Apollo filled those giant floppy shoes.  But this time, Doink was a good clown.  Big mistake in my opinion.  I wasn't a big fan of his face turn, and then when he adopted his little sidekick Dink, the gimmick was pretty much dead to me.

During that time, the Doink gimmick spread to Men on a Mission and the Bushwhackers at the 1993 Survivor Series and again at the 1994 event when Doink was joined by three little clowns in two of the worst matches in the history of the pay per view.

Steve Lombardi who wrestled as the Brooklyn Brawler, also donned the makeup and bright colored costume.  Other jobbers Dusty Wolfe and John Maloof played the character too.  Those are the six guys who remained unnamed as Doink.  Other superstars like Jeff Jarrett and Chris Jericho did the gimmick, but it was obvious who was under the green wig.


Doink is still on the indy scene as well as "Son of Doink".  A gimmick that started nearly 20 years ago, still having some popularity out there.  Again, the original gimmick was one of my favorites from back then.


So here's the Wrestling Christmas count:
A Red Rooster in a wrestling ring
2 Turtle jobbers
3 French Canadians
4 Wooing Horsemen
5 Brass knuckles
6 Crazy clowns


Stay tuned for tomorrow.  We'll come up with something.  

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