Dark Side of the Ring – What Happened To Doink the Clown?

Dark Side of the Ring is back, but it seems like they’ve been holding the better episodes back, so I’ve been looking forward to this one in the same way I was looking forward to the Dino Bravo one, with a man lost to the nineties, but with an enduring legacy.

Episode begins with Matt Borne turning up at an independent show in 2012 in Arkansas with mixed feelings about still wrestling as Doink, wearing his WrestleMania IX outfit and applying the makeup for a small crowd. For contrast, he was on the undercard of the first WrestleMania in front of a packed MSG. His daughter Teagan in the present speaks for how good her dad was as a wrestler, joined shortly after by her mom, Borne’s wife from 1993 to 2004, Michelle, who met him after his WWF run had ended and didn’t know anything about wrestling before but learned how good he was. She points out that he was 37 and she was 21 when they met and even though their marriage ended they remained friends to the end as he was the father of her daughter and son.

On the wrestling side, we have Mick Foley and Tom Prichard to speak up for him as a wrestler. Michelle points out that Matt was brought up by his dad, Tony Borne, because when his parents split up his mom said “Take him, because I don’t want that little bastard”. Tony had a big name, but Matt more than lived up to his name. Matt was tough and powerful and realistic as a wrestler and anything from confrontational to crazy as a man.

After starting in Portland, he travelled across the country and worked and got over all over, including Mid South. There, he was part of the Rat Pack with Ted Dibiase and Jim Duggan, who turns up to speak about his history with him. He never liked him and they never got along. Nor did Brian Blair, who had Borne haranguing him in a bar about “messing with his girl” and attacked him from behind. Borne tried to rip his ears off and bite his nose off, so Blair bit his lip off in return. The fight kept going on/off because Borne was like a zombie, never stopping. Ivan Koloff wouldn’t stop the fight, but did kick Borne’s hand off when he went for Blair’s eye. He can’t imagine what drugs he was on.

The Rat Pack run ended when Duggan and Borne were on the way back from the ring and Duggan got punched by a fan. Duggan hit him back and dropped him, but Borne kicked him in the face so hard “his eyeball fell out”, as Michelle recalls him boasting. Although Bill Watts was for toughness and winning fights, it led to all sorts of lawsuits, so Borne was fired and made an example of.

To the WWF, where a year later he was fired for drug use. Borne would start the day on weed and wrestle high on coke. Pain pills, steroids and booze too. Later (several years later), he became Big Josh and was married to a lady called Maria at the time. She had a daughter with him. Borne almost missed her being born due to being out the night before and being wasted. She was also with him during the period where he went to the WWF, with Hawk suggesting the gimmick and Vince and Matt working it out together. The idea of a wrestling clown should’ve been terrible, but because he was an evil clown, “a skungy son of a bitch” by his own words (“I’ve known enough of them in the wrestling business!” [and he was one himself]). They show some stuff that’s Heath Ledger Joker-esque, with Vince fully behind it. Matt didn’t like Steve Keirn being the second Doink, though, because it hinted at him being replaced.

Even though it was a massively successful run, he was still doing loads of drugs and got fired for it. Maria says he tried to blame everyone but himself for that. She says his story was that he left her when he lost his job, but she says she left because he was physically abusive to her and their daughter. He’d flick lit cigarettes at her and wrench her off the settee with the baby in her arms, so at that point she knew it was time to move.

I haven’t talked much about the visual side, like the reproductions of scenes, such as the guy with the eyeball falling out in gory detail, but there’s a brilliant bit back lit in purple and front lit in green where they talk about Borne having a million dollar home built with a golden bathtub engraved with the name Doink in it and we get to see his lookalike reclining in a bath like that smoking a cigarette.

Michelle adds that after his firing he did coke for eight days straight, staying awake all the time through it and hallucinating. The bath tub scene flash-cuts to Doink in the tub, now full of balloons that are raining down.

Foley talks about how you normally can’t replace someone, but with Doink you could, but it was never as good with him being a good guy and having Dink. Matt went from a millionaire to weekly cheques at a telemarketing company with Michelle, who he insisted on staying at home and not working while she was looking after their kids. “He knew what he was doing.”

Still on drugs, they went to a bar one night and Michelle’s ex came in and spat on her. She told him, “Dude, you better run!”. Too late, Matt picked him up by his ears, screamed in his face… When he ran, Borne picked up the back of his car to stop him. The police had to mace him and hit him with the taser. She told them, “You may as well shoot him in the leg, he’s not going to stop.”. In jail, he was challenging the officers to legit fights and ripped up the cell.

Back in wrestling, nobody wanted Maniac Matt Borne or Big Josh, so he was booked more as Doink, including in ECW, where it became a bizarre and compelling psychotherapy session as Borne Again. Vince McMahon found out he was wrestling as Doink against copyright. Vince had not paid him for residuals, so in the process of counter-suing Borne couldn’t wrestle as Doink any more but got those.

Borne, who was on second chance with Michelle and beginning to age by the look of him in family photos, was good as a dad to Teagan and Matthew when straight, but he couldn’t get the monkey off his back. He’d get clean, then fall back in. At his worst, he was paranoid and violent, thinking Michelle was screwing around when she was upstairs with the kids. One day he came back from a three hour session at the gym in a psychotic episode and beat her up so badly she was hospitalised with bruised eyes and a broken nose and couldn’t see for two weeks. Why did she stay? The day after he didn’t even realise he’d done it and apologised.

It got to the point that she was so scared that she took the kids with nothing else and expected him to kill her. Instead, he said he understood why and let them go.

Still an addict in 2010, old Doink and old Hacksaw were booked against each other at a show in front of 100 people. Borne wanted him and Duggan to bash each other with chairs and boards, but Jim just wanted to do a walk and talk. In the ring, Borne tried legit hitting him in the balls and wanted to hurt him. It turned into a shoot, so Duggan said to throw the match out and they’d finish it backstage. Doink split out the fire exit with all his stuff already in the car, so Jim thinks it was a pre-planned sneak attack.

Foley thinks Borne’s behaviour here was stupid: “You have to make a REAL attempt at disliking Hacksaw Jim Duggan! He’s not a divisive person in our business! EVERYBODY loves him!”

2013: Borne is in Plano, Texas, with girlfriend Connie Cook, who he’d met years before (she’d been Mean Nurse Cratchit in the USWA). “He was crazy, I was crazy, we hit it off.” It was very up and down.

Connie had a sick mom who Borne helped look after. This becomes important momentarily after Borne dies in 2013 aged 55. Michelle and Teagan found out from TMZ first and Connie second when she answered Matt’s phone. Teagan hates Connie, because she thinks she killed him.

Connie said Borne stole all of her mom’s drugs. Borne had called Michelle the night before and said he was leaving Connie and that if anything happened to him to not let it go.

Connie says the night before, he was moaning and groaning and possibly having a heart attack. She noticed some of her mom’s pills were amiss and said “We’ll get into a lot of trouble for that!”, so Matt said he guessed he’d go to jail, then. Later, Matt was stumbling around outside and the neighbours scooped him up and brought him in to sit down. He was, in what became more obvious later, overdosing. Michelle accuses Connie of massive neglect for doing nothing. “When you’re puking in your mouth and gagging on it, wouldn’t you do something?”. Connie put it down to snoring.

Connie awoke to Matt gurgling at half six in the morning. She called a friend for advice, who said it was a death rattle. However, Connie is said to have not called emergency services for another two hours, which she denies. Cause of death: overdose of morphine and hydrocodone, as well as enlarged heart. Apparently Matt had heart problems even back in the WWF, exacerbated by drug use and stress. I’d say!

Teagan’s theory: Connie made him a drink with liquid morphine mixed in, then when he took unwell she left him on the recliner all night to die. Connie is shocked by this, but seems incredibly sketchy. The criminal investigation finds no evidence of her being involved.

At the funeral, seeing Matt in the casket was very hard for his kids. Michelle felt bad that she couldn’t help her kids. Teagan struggled with depression and the loss of her friends during it made her realise how her dad must’ve felt when he lost his friends, but she didn’t go to drugs.

The epilogue: Mick says Matt lived fast and hard, so wasn’t shocked he died of drug abuse. He gave more to wrestling than it gave him back. Michelle and Teagan are thankful for their memories and relics they have of him. Michelle never gave up on him and saw the good in him and resents the online chatter her kids have to see that he was a drug addict and washed up wrestler because he was a great guy at times. Teagan has done incredibly well despite her hardships and is a CPA, but wishes he was still around.

Turning the light back on: Best episode of the season so far, with the back and forth of Matt the flawed person and Doink the incredible wrestler, plus a lot of lesser known revelations. Worth a watch.