Original subtitles

I might have a little surprise for you tonight.

Matt Bourne was a terrifying clown.

Vince McMahon got this gimmick, doink, and he's like, oh, I know the perfect

person to do this. And he told Matt, you're going to make this character work

for me. And I mean, look what he did.

Why make children cry?

What does that get you?

Matt was a maniac.

Maniac Matt was a very fitting name.

Maniac Matt Bourne. Matt.

Matt. Matt Bourne in charge right now.

He fired up, brother.

But he was solid.

Before putting on the clown suit, Matt Bourne was a second -generation wrestler

with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove.

Yes, baby.

That's right.

But despite his success as one of the WWF's most iconic stars, Matt's bad

decisions and bad habits would continue to haunt him.

Everybody has problems out there in the real world. It's no different in the

world of professional wrestling.

I could just see him in the back having a cigarette like Krusty. Oh, yeah.

I whooped his ass, didn't I?

No silver lining here.

The demons get the best of them, and it was just all downhill.

When he did drugs, he was a completely different human being.

He liked oxys. He liked steroids. He liked cocaine, yes.

And I didn't even know he was on crack.

A clown in the ring whose violent tendencies ran deeper than the grease

When you see a headline about Doink the Clown being on drugs, fighting, you just

think he's a terrible person. I tried to make him realize that you don't have to

do drugs. You don't have to get violent. We all know you're tough. Just be you.

Because I did so.

And in the end, his tragic death would leave some still looking for answers.

Nobody wants to believe that it was an accident.

I don't believe it. There was 110 % foul play.

God, every time I put this on, I just, it's weird. I get mixed feelings about

it, you know, and I love it. You know, I mean, at one time I thought I had the

best job in the world.

The bad thing about it was I was pretty ignorant. I thought, man, this is the

way it's going to be. You know, I've done this and nothing's forever.

Definitely not this character, right?

I mean, this is the biggest crowd in history, 1 .2 million. Nobody wants to

in front of that many people.

Absolutely. Let's go up to Howard. At the very first WrestleMania, do you know

who fought Ricky Steamboat? It was my dad, wasn't it? Yeah, I watched it. It

phenomenal. From Portland, Oregon, Matt Bourne.

Matt Bourne looks in good shape himself. You know, he's a second -generation

wrestler. He just, no offense to Steamboat, like, he was obviously good,

My dad just killed it. Like, the way he hit the ropes, the way he hit the floor.

Like, I actually believe that they beat each other up.

Matt Bourne is not done yet.

My dad loved his job.

He didn't just do it to be famous. He actually loved what he did, and he was

freaking good at it. My name's Tegan Osbourne, and I'm the daughter of Matt

Osbourne. Doink the clown.

I actually met Matt in 93 in Elwood City. He had just gotten fired

from WWE.

He definitely looked rough.

Looked like he partied a lot, put it that way. And when I first met him, he's

like, I'm Doink the Clown. I'm like, what are you, go to kids' birthday

And he's like, I'm pro wrestler.

And I'm like, yeah, that shit's all fake.

But Matt just... made it look so real to me.

My name is Michelle James, and I was married to Matt Osborne until, well,

his death. We weren't together, but we were friends.

And we had two kids.

You know, the other women that married him married him obviously for the money.

I didn't. Like, I loved this man. I really did.

He was 37.

I was 21.

So my first impressions were, wow, this guy's old.

but he was still good at it.

Matt was hugely influential, not just to me, but by extension anyone

who ever saw my work and liked it is in a way admiring the work of Matt Bourne.

My name is Mick Foley.

I'm a three -time WWE champion known as the Hardcore Legend, and Matt Bourne was

a colleague and friend of mine. I saw in him what I hope to one day be.

play a character, you inhabit the character.

You had to believe it yourself.

He was a second generation wrestler. That respect had been instilled in him

his dad, Tough Tony Bourne.

Tony was quite content with being a Portland wrestler and he was proud of

Until this day, if you say Tough Tony Bourne, everybody in Oregon knows who he

is. Matt grew up with his dad, actually, because his mom and dad divorced when

he was 10.

He remembers the day they split up. His mom said, you go with your dad because I

don't want that little bastard.

And that stayed in Matt's head probably till the day he died.

He had so much anger in him and passion in him. I would consider him similar to

the Incredible Hulk, yes. Like, that was just my dad.

He was 6 '6", 1". He was just thick.

His hands were thick. His neck was thick. Everything about my dad was just

bigger. I don't know whether his dad's legacy helped or hindered Matt, but it

was a pretty big name to live up to. It's difficult being the child of a

wrestler. I'll be honest with you, it hasn't been easy being your son, being

son of Tough Tony Bourne.

Okay, we got dad and his dad. Tough Tony Bourne and Matt Bourne. Two legends

that are no longer here.

This is one of my favorite pictures because he just looks happy.

Matt was solid. He was of an era where you laid it in and you made people

believe.

Matt made you work in the ring. The term that's come to my mind is whirling

dervish. He sold pain differently, and he was in constant motion.

Well, I certainly think Matt's father had an influence on making Matt tough.

My name is Dr. Tom Pritchard, and I first met Matt Bourne in the early

Tommy Pritchard!

Matt could be abrasive. He could be confrontation.

He could be out of his mind.

We were both young in the business back then, but Matt had grown up in it. He

learned a lot of it through his father, but his father came up through the ranks

where these guys were even more insane.

So Matt...

learning from his dad how to handle conflict, and not everybody would

that. Well, I don't think any father could be any part of a son, and I am of

mine. After establishing himself in Portland, Matt begins a tour of the

territories that make up the wrestling world, building a name and reputation

across the country.

Matt Bourne did the regional territories.

Introducing Matt Bourne. And he got over everywhere he did. He got over in

Portland. Tony Bourne and Matt Bourne. He got over in Texas.

Texas heavyweight champion, Matt Bourne.

He got over in Carolinas.

Well, first off, I got to say, Matt Bourne and I, from the time I met him,

not get along.

He was a bully, in my opinion.

Ho!

Hey, folks. I'm WWE Hall of Famer, Hexaw Jim Duggan, from the golden age of

wrestling. Hexaw!

Mid -South at that time was a snake pit of tough guys. And back then, six -man

tags were pretty big. The Freebirds were really, really hot. Of course, the Von

Eriks were hot. So Bill Watts decided to put together a six -man tag.

And, of course, he had two second -generation guys who met born in

he obviously saw something in me and put me with those guys who were already

pretty established.

and formed the Rat Pack.

One for all, all for one. We're the Rat Pack, man. Every night, you're throwing

punches, you're blocking punches, you're getting potatoed. We weren't the baby

face heels or the crybaby heels. We were the kick butt heels.

It's busted loose again.

All three were incredible performers, incredible workers.

They didn't have a chance against us.

Matt seemed to have a lot going for him, but he was always...

fighting those demons.

This Bourne is a very aggressive wrestler. Oh, beautiful suplex!

I only knew Matt Bourne through reputation.

Hi, this would be Brian Blair, retired professional wrestler.

I heard that Matt was a product of the Portland Territory. That's about all I

knew about Matt until we had met in this bar.

The place was packed.

full of the boys and matt comes up to me that born now he's new in the territory

and he comes up to me and he says hey why are you messing with my girl i

at matt and i said i'm not messing with your girl matt i don't i don't have a

girlfriend here i i don't know what you're talking about and he seemed like

was a little you know jacked up you know just very big eyes and i kind of think

that matt wanted to establish himself as a tough guy and he thought that i was

going to be the guy that he was going to

establish himself on.

So all of a sudden I turn around and boom, Matt hits me from behind and he

to suplex me. And when he did, I turned in midair and landed on top of him. And

when I was on top of Matt, he grabbed my ears and he's pulling my head down.

He's got his teeth wide open. I can still see his teeth.

getting ready to bite my nose.

And as he goes to bite my nose, I saw his lip sticking out, so I went down and

bit his bottom lip right off and spit his lip off. And so...

I'm on top of him and, you know, I punch him and he's like a zombie. And I

thought it was over a few minutes later.

He comes back, jumps on me again.

I wind up beating him up really good this time. I mean, I hammered this guy.

he ever got up, I don't know. He was live. I mean, all the way live. This was

unhuman. And a little while goes by now and people are buying me drinks and

they're laughing. And all of a sudden, I can't believe it.

Freaking Matt jumps on me again. He's all bandaged up. This time, as I'm

to drag him towards the door, he hooked my right leg somehow, and I fell

forward. And as I fell forward, I felt him on my back, and then I felt a

hand, like, reaching for my eyeball.

And there's Ivan Koloff right at the doorway. And Ivan kicked Matt's hand and

said, no eyes, which I'm very grateful for because Matt could have pulled my

eyeball out. I mean, he was like electricity.

He was bleeding all over the place from his eyes, from his nose, from his mouth.

I guess if you have the right drugs in you, they can obviously make you

superhuman because that was not a human.

Matt's violent behavior outside the ring is already causing problems with his co

-workers, but an incident at ringside will bring his time in the Rat Pack to

end. Matt Vaughn would rather get in there and kick somebody in the teeth as

man who has been well -schooled.

That was Monroe, Louisiana, coming out of the ring. And again, I'm 280 pounds.

I'm jacked up. I'm pushing 505 on the bench. I'm blowing up. I'm blowing snot

and steam and sweat.

I'm coming out of the ring. I just got done kicking butt.

I'm going through the crowd.

Boom, I get popped.

We were bad guys. People didn't like us back then, brother.

They hated us, you know. And boom, I popped a guy right back. He went down. I

kept on going.

But when he went down, Matt put a boot to him.

Broke his right front orbital lobe.

I kicked him so hard his eyeball fell out.

Following a match in Monroe, Louisiana, Matt Bourne takes an altercation with a

fan in the crowd too far.

So the guy, he sued me, he sued Matt, and he sued the company.

And I asked him, I said, did you go to jail?

He was like, no, I didn't get in trouble at all.

Matt got fired, Duggan was kept, and I think that's where the hard feelings

might have come out on Matt's side.

Bill Watts used me as an example. This is how you take care of the business,

know. And I was gone, you know.

All of a sudden, I was a bad guy.

Though Matt leaves Mid -South under a cloud, his talent and connections land

a job with the World Wrestling Federation.

But less than a year into his contract, he's fired once again, this time for

drug use.

I don't think Matt ever wrestled sober.

He was always snorting coke.

I mean, he'd have to start his day smoking weed.

Maybe sometimes pain pills if he had them.

I think it's the lifestyle.

You know, they would go out and drink.

Well, that would lead to this. Well, let's try that.

In spite of the setback, Matt lands on his feet again as he's hired by Ted

Turner's World Championship Wrestling and given a gimmick inspired by his

Northwest roots.

Big Josh was a lumberjack. That was his character. He was kind of a bad guy, but

yet in a sweet way.

My name is Maria, and I am Matt Bourne's ex -wife from way back when.

I was with a friend of mine, and we were at a match, and Matt evidently sent one

of the security guys out to get me. He said he wanted to meet me. So I went

back, and he introduced himself and invited my girlfriend and I out for a

He seemed nice. He was very cordial. It was pretty fast. It was probably within

about three months that he asked me to move down.

So I quit my job and I moved.

You know, I want the whole thing. I want the wife.

the kids, things like that.

What was Matt's emotional state when, like, his first daughter was born? Well,

was to be induced in the hospital, so I had an appointment to go in at 10 .30 in

the morning.

Matt went out the night before and never came home. He showed up just before my

daughter was born.

Hi. A little drunk, but he showed up.

When he was with WCW, he had an offer from Vince McMahon, so he took that job.

With a second chance at the WWF, Matt lands yet another opportunity to

himself. From what I understand, they created Doink together.

Doink was a clown.

Doink was a crazy -looking clown with green hair.

When I first heard of how Doink the Clown came about...

I thought it made perfect sense because Hawk from the Road Warriors was looking

at Matt because Matt, you know, smoking a cigarette after his match, boot half

unlaced, his hair all a mess, and he's sweating. And it's like, we've got our

own Krusty over there.

Krusty the Clown.

I could pull a better cartoon out of my head.

Hey, whoa!

It's not what I would think of an ideal character for a wrestler, but it seemed

to take off pretty good.

As far as technical...

Rustling is concerned, knowing holds, knowing counters and what have you.

is right up there with the best of them. Doink the clown, concerned as one of

the greats. But why dress up in this ridiculous looking outfit?

What does that get you? I think the little ones were scared, like this evil

happy clown.

Demended clown, I mean, a demented clown ought to be kind of a gungy son of a

bitch, you know what I mean? I've been around enough guys in the wrestling

business that I know how to portray that.

I can't criticize anybody with a two by four and a hold.

Whatever works.

I mean, and Doink got over pretty good.

As soon as I heard that Matt Bourne was going to WWE, not as a clown, but as an

evil clown, I thought, he's going to sink his teeth into this.

Doink the Clown having fun.

If they don't have a sense of humor, that's their problem. If I laugh, that's

all that matters.

It was the best character he ever did. Doink was his favorite.

My dad was just goofy.

He looked scary, but he was like a big, goofy teddy bear.

So that also probably helped him do doink, because I see some of that when

wrestles, and I'm like, damn, I don't think that's doink, I think that's my

He would just look in the mirror and kind of practice saying this and saying

that. I am no more than an instrument of nature, a product of my environment.

It was a gimmick, but Matt breathed life into this gimmick.

I did not like a lot of what WWE was doing at that time, but I did like Doink

the Clown.

Well, by God, I may be a clown, but I'm going to rub your face in the mat, I'm

going to beat you up, and it's going to be funny to me.

WrestleMania 9, it was freaking phenomenal.

Doink is wrestling.

Doink the clown!

He's losing, he keeps trying to go underneath the stage, and all of a

this other Doink the clown pops up.

They beat the shit out of Crush at the end, and I'm like, holy shit, that came

out of nowhere, and then they did the mirror.

He felt like, you don't know why Vince did that.

He felt like he was being set up for failure.

I mean, he was right, though.

He called it.

As Doink the Clown rules the WrestleMania ring, the inner struggles

Bourne will soon bring his turn in the spotlight to an end, even as Doink lives

on.

As Matt Bourne enjoys the highest levels of wrestling fame, his demons threaten

to destroy everything he's worked to create.

There were times when he would take off, go somewhere, didn't see him for three

or four days.

It happened a lot.

He was fired for drug abuse. He tested dirty, and Vince let him go. Matt tried

to blame everyone else except himself for that, but I wasn't surprised.

We're staying in Boston and smoking some weed in the hotel. And I was fired,

period. Why was I doing the drugs?

That's what I did.

That's what addicts do.

As he would tell it, he lost his job and I left him because he no longer had his

job. But that wasn't the case.

He started to get really angry and drank a lot more, think he'd be going out a

lot more. And I did know he was doing drugs. doing a lot of coke.

Became very physically abusive to me and my daughter.

He was sitting on the couch. He was a smoker and he was just complaining and

bitching and, you know, about this and that. And then he would just take

cigarettes and he was throwing these cigarettes, lit cigarettes at me, you

And he came over and he grabbed me and pulled me off the chair with my daughter

in my arms. She was only a couple months old.

She went flying and that's when I knew I can't do this and I can't do this to

her. And I packed her up.

Clothes on our back, one bag, and drove off.

I tell people the story, and they're like, what? Really?

You were what? You were married to who?

A lot of people, when you tell them that, they're impressed.

And it's like, you know, don't be impressed.

Not a good story. Not a good story at all.

I mean, he literally had a million -dollar home being built.

They had just moved into it. He had his bathtub engraved with 18 -karat gold

doink. He was still proud of doink, but he really struggled.

At the end of the day, I know deep down it killed him because he knew he was

good and it got stopped over drugs.

The day he went home, as he got fired, he said he stayed up for eight days

straight and did nonstop coke and started hallucinating because he

couldn't believe he lost everything he just gained.

Though Matt Bourne has been fired, the character of Doink the Clown makes his

return at the very next show.

Only this time, there's another wrestler under the grease paint.

A character cannot usually be readily replaced.

But in this case, I think the sentiment was he's a clown. We'll put someone else

in the exact same makeup.

And it was successful, as portrayed by Steve Kern and later by Ray Apollo.

But it was never as good as it was when Matt wore the paint.

They figured since Steve did this with Matt, that maybe he could pull it off.

Then they brought Dink, because they were trying to keep it alive.

I mean, Doink the Clown and Dink, they were mainstays. You can stick anybody in

a Doink suit, and it's a great character that way. So Matt came and gone, and a

lot of folks don't even realize he came and gone.

That's when he went way down.

How he came to Elwood City, I don't know, because it's such a small town,

was meant to be.

That's where he met my mom. He worked for a telemarketing company right around

the corner.

He went from a millionaire to us, you know, like just making a weekly check,

it didn't work with him up there.

He had some issues, you know, with his alcohol and his drug addiction, which he

didn't do in front of me, but I still knew there was something weird about

right? You know, he paid the rent, he paid the bills. He didn't want me

He didn't want me...

socializing. Not too many men talk to me, put it that way. And that's the way

Matt wanted it. He knew what he was doing.

One night we were at a bar and my ex -boyfriend ended up walking in and came

and spit on me for some reason.

And I saw Matt coming at him and I'm like, dude, you need to run.

Well, Matt picked him up by his earlobes, legit earlobes off the ground

screaming in his face, spitting all over him because he didn't have his two

teeth here.

The guy went out, got in his car. Matt had the back of his car lifted up.

The two wheels off the ground, spinning like crazy.

And he's holding the car there.

And the cops came. They maced him, tased him. I'm like, might want to shoot him

in the leg. He's not going to stop.

So then they put him in jail, and he kept telling them, take your badge and

guns off, fight me like a man.

And that's when he ripped the sink out. And the jail cell, like, literally

ripped it out of its plumbing.

Stripped of the beloved character he'd brought to life, Matt returns to the

wrestling business.

But the business has changed.

Nobody wanted Maniac Matt Bourne. Nobody wanted Big Josh the Lumberjack. They

all wanted Doink.

I mean, he still had the costume.

He knew how to put the makeup on. He could do it himself.

Matt even takes the Doink character to the last place anyone would expect a

clown, the violent renegade company known as Extreme Championship Wrestling.

I was in ECW when Matt Bourne came in, and it was effective because on the

surface, ECW fans hated it because it was going to clown.

But underneath that hatred, there was that level of respect because he was

Bourne.

I think the born -again gimmick was half clown, half Matt Bourne.

Vince McMahon found out he was on all these independent promoters' cards

it was his copyright.

It was. So Vince McMahon sent legal papers.

When we created that thing, I had to sign the copyrights over to Vince. Now,

was kind of bitter about it. They had never sent me any residual money for all

my dolls and videos and stuff, which I was supposed to get a piece of.

So I had countersued him for my residuals. Midwest Tournament Wrestling!

It's the best!

So Vince was like, all right, that's fair. You can't use Doink, and you get

residuals every month.

As Matt struggles to rebuild his career, his home life is upended by the arrival

of two more children.

I can remember when Tegan was born, he looked at her, and he looked at me, and

he said, she's going to be something.

And he had... adored her and of course his boy my son Matthew um he adored him

too because that was his second chance he had two other kids he didn't get to

see them he didn't get to raise them but me and him when we ended up having two

kids they were his life I just try to remember the good times And when he was

clean, he was a completely different human being. I mean, he was so put

together, has nothing negative to say.

I mean, he was my dad. I think he thought, I got to bring myself back

I'm not myself anymore. Like, I'm a wrestler. That's what I do.

Though striving to reclaim his glory in the wrestling industry,

Matt's battles with addiction continue to threaten his aspirations.

Though Matt struggles to be a good father and family man, his ongoing

with drugs and alcohol make him unpredictable and dangerous.

He went and got clean a few times, and I stood by his side the whole time

because everybody else just washed him away like he was nothing.

If he was on too much drugs or too much alcohol, he would just get very violent,

mean, and crazy.

I could be upstairs sleeping with my son. He'd be like, why were you out

tonight? With so -and -so, I'm like, what?

I thought, this guy needs help. Like, I just can't turn my back on him. He got

me one time, super good.

He went to the gym. He would go to the gym for like two, three hours a day. So

was just reading a newspaper on our couch. He walked up the steps, accused

cheating on him. The next I know, I'm in the hospital.

He beat me up real good. I couldn't see for two weeks. My eyeballs were shut. He

broke my nose.

And yes, you're probably going to say, why did you go back with him? Down in my

heart, like the next day, he saw me after he got out of jail. He was like,

happened to your face? Did I do that? He literally don't remember any of it.

He said, I am truly, truly sorry.

And I forgave him.

As Matt's drug use becomes even more extreme, his downward spiral

My mom thought, you know, he loved to drink.

And when he drank, he said some really effed up shit.

Finally, one day, I don't know what it was.

I grabbed both their hands. I said, Matt, I can't do this anymore.

I have been here through thick and thin with you.

I said, I'm not taking anything with me. I am done.

She hurried up, packed the bag. She was scared. I remember her being so scared.

And I walked out the door and he didn't come after me because I thought he was

going to. I thought, Jesus, if this is going to be the day, he's going to kill

me. And he went.

I understand.

And he let me go.

It takes a lot of balls to leave somebody like that when they don't have

ability to get clean or get better.

Strung out and landing at rock bottom, Matt's behavior in the ring becomes as

unpredictable as his behavior at home.

When Matt didn't like you, it was a wrap.

And he's not going to let it go. He's that type of person to not let anything

go.

We're up in White Plains, New York, and look on the board, I'm working with

Matt. Oh, cool. Hey, Matt, how's it going? He goes, well, how about I come

I hit you with a chair.

You hit me with a two -by -four.

I'm like, Matt, there's 100 people out there, brother. I'll come out, I'll

USA. We'll have a nice walk and talk.

Jim had something he did that was and still is effective, and Matt wanted

It so happens.

That my opponent tonight, we go way, way, way, way back.

Long story short, we're in the ring, and he gave me a nut shot.

All right, gentlemen. He tried to hurt me. Pass on, go into work. Did you

So I rolled up, I pushed him in the corner, and I'm asking him, do you want

work or do you want to shoot, brother?

Let's go.

You want to work? You want to fight? You want to work? Go.

He rolls out of the ring and grabs a chair. Well, I got my two -by -four.

So I tell the referee, I said, you know, tell him we'll finish it in the

dressing room like you're supposed to do.

So I wait and I wait and I wait. Well, Matt came out of the ring, went right

the fire exit, got in his car and left.

It was pre -planned attack.

You have to make a real attempt at not liking Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

He's not a divisive personality in our business like everybody looks.

You know,

for him to make the move 30 years after the incident,

that's carrying a grudge.

By 2013, Matt has moved to Plano, Texas, where he lives with a new girlfriend.

I met Matt in 1988, 89, and I was actually mean Nurse Cratchit. Here

comes Nurse Cratchit.

So I would just, you know, bang him with my bedpan, knock him out.

Hi, my name is Connie Cook, and I was Matt Bourne's girlfriend.

He was crazy, I was crazy, and we just hit it off.

2011,

he found me on Facebook, then he just never left my side.

I loved him, and I wanted to make it work. That's why I moved to Texas.

Some days it was good, some days it wasn't.

After I moved to Texas, I was stressing about my mom. She was very sick, and he

took care of my mom.

He cooked for her. He gave her her medicine. I knew he had my back, and I

definitely had his.

It was June of 2013, and I was getting up for softball practice. My mom texted

me and said, I think your dad's dead, because we saw it on TMZ.

My mom said she called my dad's cell phone, and Connie answered the phone.

She was, like, crying hysterically. My mom said, what the f*** happened,

I said, Connie, do not tell me he's dead.

I know Connie killed my dad. I will never not think that she did.

She took him away from me, and I hate her for it.

At home in Elwood, Michelle and Tegan are shocked to learn that Matt has

Tragic news confirmed by a phone call.

with Matt's girlfriend, Connie Cook.

I said, okay, so, like, what happened? She goes, well, he stole all my mom's

drugs. And she said, yeah, he's dead.

And I'm thinking, oh, my God, this wasn't in the cards. How am I supposed

take care of these kids, right?

They were 12 and 15.

Are you getting emotional?

But it changed everything in our lives. Everything.

The night before my dad died, my mom was on the phone with him and he said,

Michelle, I called you because I'm leaving Connie.

He went, I told the crazy bitch I'm leaving her. I said, oh, Jesus Christ.

We giggled and then he went, well, you know what?

If anything does happen to me, Michelle, don't let it go.

I said, Matt, what are you talking about? Why would you say that?

He went, seriously, just don't let it go.

The day that all this happened,

He was moaning in the kitchen.

And I was like, what is wrong with you?

Nothing. So then he does it again, moans again.

And so he turns around and falls to his knee, and he grabbed my hand and goes,

marry me. I said, oh, my God, you're really on my nerve right now.

I think he may have been having a heart attack, and he just wouldn't tell me.

And he wore glasses.

And so he was like, Connie, I can't find my glasses.

He said, I go read Tracy Stapp's kitchen, my mom's bedroom.

Well, I noticed that one of the bottles was moved.

I was like, Matt, that medicine is from hospice. I was like, we're going to be

in trouble if you don't tell me where those are. And he said to me, well, I

guess I'll just go to jail.

And I was like, that's just crazy.

So I go to bed, and later on, I don't even know what time it was, I hear

somebody beating on the door.

And there's a girl at the door.

She was like, my brothers found your husband laying on the ground outside.

think he's dead.

It was like a gated community kind of place where everybody could see

that's going on in your life.

And there was witnesses.

They saw him. He was stumbling, falling over air conditioners. He was bruised.

So I heard sirens, and I was like, Matt, you need to get up, because I think

someone's called the police on you for being drunk out here because they said

you were on the ground.

So we get him to his feet, we set him down in the recliner by the door. That

time I didn't know he was ODing.

Well, I went in and got in the bed, and I could hear him snoring. So I didn't

think anything was wrong with him because he snored.

You were watching him overdose, and you did nothing.

If you saw someone puking in their mouth and gagging on it, wouldn't you think

there was something wrong?

According to Plano Police reports, on the morning Matt died, Connie awoke at 6

.30 a .m.

and saw Matt gurgling and foaming at the mouth. After calling her friend, Connie

went back to bed.

At 9 a .m., two and a half hours after she first woke up, Connie called 911.

We're going to address really specifically some of these allegations.

Okay. That once Matt was already in the house and you put him down in the

recliner that you heard gurgling. What did you do next?

That was like early in the morning. My alarm usually went off 6 o 'clock, 6

I heard him all night snoring. But when I came out of the bedroom, there's

something coming out of his nose. And so I grabbed the rag, and I was like, hey,

you need to get up. That's nasty.

And he was making a different noise.

So I called my friend in Tennessee, and I leaned over the counter and was trying

to let her listen to it. And I said, do you hear that? She said, Connie, that's

a death rattle.

She was like, hang up right now and call 911.

It's not like I just left him sitting there. I mean, it might have been five

minutes until I called my friend. I didn't go back to bed.

Because it wasn't until 9 that you called 911. No, they have that wrong. I

didn't go back to bed. As soon as I hung up talking to her, I called 911.

And they snatched him up and put him on the gurney trying to get the thing down

his throat. And they were like, we got to go now.

I mean, dude was on top of him, pounding on him. I'm just like, now I'm really

freaking out.

And then the detective came in and I told her what I knew. We went in the

She found the bottle. I think there was maybe 30 missing out of the bottle. So I

don't know how many he actually had taken. And so I left and went to the

hospital and went and saw him.

I'm screaming at Matt to get up. And then they were trying to make me leave.

I literally wouldn't leave the room because they were trying to put him in

dark. And Matt hated the dark.

What was the official cause of Matt's death?

Overdose of hydrocodone and morphine and an enlarged heart.

Connie believes Matt's heart issues were a secret he had kept for a very long

time. When he was in WWF, he went to the hospital because he was having, I

guess, chest pains. And so they hooked him up to an EKG machine.

I think they wanted to do something, but Matt never did.

And then when he passed away, I called the coroner's office to find out

you know, what they found out.

His heart was six times the normal size.

And I was like, what does that mean? They were like, substance abuse, stress.

I think he worried about it, but he just didn't tell nobody about it.

I called the ambulance when I realized that there was something wrong with him.

I did everything to help him.

With his backstory, and he has a track record for being on drugs, on his death

certificate, it was accidental overdose. Of course, it's easy to put that down

because of who he was, but no.

When I hung up with him, she was about to bring him out a drink.

He probably got a thing of Crown. She mixed some liquid morphine in there, and

he's probably got that out of his mind. And he sat on the recliner. He laid

there and died all night. He was foaming out the mouth. I'm confused.

Why'd you wait all night to call 911?

There was foul play.

I'm just, I'm just.

Father said that someone would even think that of me. I feel horrible. I'm

horrified that that child would think that. The allegations are crazy. They're

not true.

I did not kill him. I did not put anything in his drink.

I love him. I still love him to this day and still wish that he was here. Why

would I want to kill him?

And if it meant me dying and leaving here for him to be alive, I would be

and he would be here.

An investigation by the Plano Police Department found no evidence of any

criminal conduct, no evidence that Matt Bourne was deliberately drugged with

liquid morphine by Connie Cook, and no evidence of negligence in her response

Matt Bourne's overdose.

On June 28, 2013, Matt Bourne, known to wrestling fans as Doink the Clown, died.

According to the autopsy, it was from an overdose of opiates.

I remember that day very vividly, going into that funeral home, and my brother,

like, that was his first funeral ever. He was like, why is he so cold?

And I lost it. I mean, that was really tough. The worst thing of all this was

watching them two look over their dad in that casket.

And there was nothing I could do, a hug, a kiss, nothing that I could take away

their pain.

You know, I'm not going to lie to you. It's been terrible.

I mean, I struggled with depression for a little bit. I lost a lot of friends.

And I kind of felt like my dad in that moment, now that I look back at it, he

lost so many people because of his actions.

And it was like, damn, now I know how this dude felt. No wonder why he did

drugs. Because he felt like shit all the time.

I've heard comments that people have made about me.

The reason I got doinked over is because I'm a sick mother.

I need some serious help.

There's times I think that too, you know, but who isn't? You know, I mean,

on. They're not getting into the ring with some jabroni that puts on some

outfit and calls himself Doink. It's Matt Bourne.

Matt lived fast and hard, and so it did not come as a shock when I learned that

Matt had passed.

He seemed to have a lot going for him.

Come on, I'm dying.

But ultimately, Matt's biggest adversary was not a wrestler, but his demons

from a substance standpoint. And the temperament issue he struggled with.

His legacy is of a guy who willingly gave more to the wrestling business than

it gave back.

And a guy whose weaknesses were exploited by the nature of the beast.

Constant travel, the strain on relationships, the pain involved that

door to medication.

Matt Bourne meant a lot to wrestling and to anyone who saw Matt at his best,

which was not in the national spotlight, but in those regional territories.

And Bourne rolls him back.

He connected and he made a difference.

This picture is actually two weeks before Matt passed with his son Matthew

at the airport leaving.

Yeah, Matthew was always sad when Dad left. Yeah, it tore him up. This picture

is one of my favorites because it's one of the last I got with him.

But this picture, he was like, come on, T, we've got to get one picture.

Before I leave, and I'm like, all right, this is one of my favorites. And his

big hands back there, too. It looks like a spider, but he has huge -ass hands.

Sad to see him go. This is all we have left of him.

We all have these troubled souls.

We're all troubled souls if we look at it honestly.

But Matt had talent.

Matt had a legacy. He made Doink the Clown bigger than it ever should have

in my opinion.

And that gets covered up by some of his transgressions outside the ring. From

time to time, when Matt had a few drinks, he would open up about the

pain of being an absentee dad.

And I really think that bothered Matt.

He had a lot of regret about marriages, about his kids.

And I've seen that firsthand.

I never gave up on him through all that bad stuff we did go through. I knew he

was a good person.

The horrible things that my kids read about their dad, oh, just doink was a

addict, he was a piece of shit, washed up wrestler, that he was not that. Yes,

he did do his share of drugs, and he did make mistakes, just like every other

human being. But I just want people to know that that's not what he was.

I want him to be remembered as a great father.

He wanted to raise those two kids.

I miss them. Not going to lie.

But they miss them way more.

One thing my mom always told me, she's like, well, Keegan, when you were born,

your dad said she's going to be something someday.

And every time my mom says that, it makes me feel like he's still here a

bit. And I'm like, I mean, I'm not no doink the clown.

I'm not no famous wrestler. But when I graduated college, I graduated with

almost a 4 .0.

I graduated magna cum laude, took these CPA exams that were so hard, got a job

right out of college.

I'm a certified public accountant.

And then you just get the little negative part where I'm like, damn,

should be here. We had our little rough patches. We butted heads, and now that

I'm getting older, I realize we butted heads so much because we were so much

alike. And now I wish I could just say, you know what, Dad, I'm sorry.

Wasn't perfect, but he was my dad, so.