Three deaths in wrestling this week - A tribute

Unfortunately, there’s thrice the bad news to report this week, as the wrestling world has lost not one, not two, but three important figures in the business.

The first is one that many have not heard of, but she was still a valuable talent during her days. Lynne Braxton has left us at the age of 61, after a long bout with cancer.

Lynne Braxton (Big Bad Mama)

Braxton, better known as “Big Bad Mama” in the GLOW promotion several years ago, was a mainstay in GLOW (a popular all-women’s promotion) for several years, and even got a guest spot on the sitcom Married…With Children, playing the Mama character in a challenge match against Al Bundy where he’d win $10,000 if he could last three minutes.

The second sad death to report is that of Jackie Fargo. Fargo was a star during the period of the 1950s through the late 1970s, retiring from active competition in 1980. During his career, Fargo competed against nearly all of the top stars in every territory, and is considered by many the man responsible for making brawls and street fight-type matches popular.

Jackie Fargo

He is also the originator of the “Fargo Strut”, which many fans will recognize as the same strut that both Ric Flair and Jeff Jarrett have used throughout their respective careers. He also had a hand in training Hall of Famer Jerry “The King” Lawler, and had countless matches with Lawler in the process. He netted nearly sixty championships during his career, with many of them being in tag team wrestling.

Fargo (real name: Jack Faggert) was hospitalized with pneumonia in January this year, and was found unconscious the week before he died, and was in critical condition. On June 24th, he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Cause of death is unknown at this time.

Lastly, we found out a few days ago that Matt Borne has also died. Borne (real name: Matthew Osborne) was best known for not only being the original Doink the Clown in WWF, but also had the longest overall run with the character. He spent a year in WCW before that as “Big Josh”, and after being fired by the WWF in 1993 due to drug problems, he spent a brief period in ECW as “Borne Again”, a twisted version of the Doink character.

Matt Borne

His last appearance on a major promotion was at the RAW 15th Anniversary show, where he reprised the Doink character and competed in the legends battle royal. Since then, Borne was semi-retired, taking limited independent bookings around the country. On June 28th, he was found dead by his girlfriend. Although the police did not initially suspect foul play (no weapons were found), they are now conducting a homicide investigation with the girlfriend as suspect #1.

My thoughts go out to the families of Braxton, Faggert and Osborne, especially the latter. I always found Borne to be a very underrated talent, and if he could have “battled his demons”, I think he would have been a major player in wrestling. Regardless, this has been a very sad week for wrestling, and all three incredible talents will be missed.