The Doink wrestling persona is that of a circus clown. He wrestles in a clown costume, complete with
face paint, makeup, and bright green hair. His diminutive sidekick,
Dink the Clown (who was approximately four feet tall) wore a similar
clown suit. The Doink character debuted in the WWF in 1992, and he wrestled as both a heel and a face. As a heel,
Doink played cruel jokes on both fans and face wrestlers in order to amuse himself and put them off guard. Some of his heelish
pranks included tripping The Big Boss Man with a trip wire and attacking
Crush with a prosthetic arm. As a heel, some of his most notable clashes
were with Crush at WrestleMania IX, with Randy Savage on an early edition
of Monday Night Raw and with Bret Hart after substituting for an "injured"
Jerry Lawler at SummerSlam 1993.
Lawler would turn on Doink and effectively turn Doink face
as a result. Matt Borne, the original man behind Doink, was fired for
re-occurring drug abuses, eventually leaving the gimmick (after bouncing through a few others) to Ray
Apollo. Now as a face and with a new midget sidekick Dink, Doink encountered Lawler again the following year in a match at Survivor Series
1994. In this match, Doink and Dink teamed with Wink and Pink to meet Lawler's midget team of 'little
kings' Queazy, Cheezy, and Sleazy. As a face, Doink was more of a comic relief
character, but continued to play jokes on other wrestlers, mostly heels.
Examples include Jerry Lawler and Bobby
Heenan. These jokes were considerably less cruel while Doink was a face, however. Doink and Dink
would also battle with Bam Bam Bigelow and his 'main squeeze' Luna Vachon in a feud that would culminate at WrestleMania X. Some
wrestling purists criticized the WWF for creating the Doink character, claiming that it pandered to what they saw as the "one-ring
circus" atmosphere the WWF was promoting at the time; others thought that Doink was appropriate given professional wrestling's
carny origins. Others preferred the heel version, saying that Matt Borne
made the gimmick work, but once he was turned face, his character was neutered.
One of Doink's final appearances in his original run was
at the Slammy Awards when he was attacked by Stone
Cold Steve Austin amidst chants of 'kill the clown'. Doink then showed
up in the A.P.A. Bar Room Brawl on the Smackdown! Vengeance 2003 pay-per-vew. Doink returned then
at Saturday Night's Main Event on June 2, 2007 when he teamed up with Eugene and Kane to defeat Umaga, Viscera and Kevin Thorn.
