Steve Brooklyn Brawler Lombardi Recalls Taking Over Doink The Clown Gimmick In WWE

Steve Lombardi is usually known as "The Brooklyn Brawler," but for a brief period in the '90s, Lombardi took on the persona of Doink The Clown. In an interview with "Insight," Lombardi said Vince McMahon asked him to wrestle then-WWE Champion Bret Hart in Calgary, which Brawler was open to do.

"I love Bret, I'd do it any day of the week. [Vince] goes 'The only thing is I want you to do it as Doink,'" Brawler recalled. According to Lombardi, he wasn't worried about wrestling Hart but just figuring out the paint job. "I'd never painted in my life ... The regular Doink [Matt Borne] was suspended."

McMahon had a convoluted plan, which saw Lombardi fly to Cleveland, where he met Matt Borne's wife to pick up the outfit, then turn around and fly back to Calgary to learn the makeup from the WWE's makeup artist, Jill. "I did all this in two days," Lombardi said. "And I did it." 

According to Lombardi, he did his best to make his version of Doink as contemptible as possible. He recalled how no one in the promotion knew that it was him behind the paint. "Not one person [knew it was me]," Lombardi said, who then traveled the world as Doink. "I had my best matches with X-Pac ... and he was making me look great. I was using old baseball moves."

Many wrestlers ended up taking over the Doink The Clown persona over the years, but the originator of the role was Matt Borne, whose family sued WWE in 2015. Borne was recently a subject of the series "Dark Side of The Ring."