Baby Doll: Wrestling’s Perfect 10
She had a crush on Gino Hernandez. A couple of phone calls, some persistence, and that’s how we ended up with Baby Doll.
“It was just at the point of getting to be huge. WrestleManias had just started. Starrcades were huge. We were going global with TBS,” remembers Nickla Roberts, Baby Doll, who rose to fame in the wrestling world first as the valet for Gino Hernandez in World Class, then as Tully Blanchard’s second in Mid-Atlantic.
The first part of her career was a flash – and part two, which got going five years ago with bookings with AWE founder Marvin Ward, has actually lasted longer than those glory days.
“It does my heart so good to hear the fans come out that remember us, and they actually tear up because they remember sitting on the floor of the living room on Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon watching TBS or Mid-Atlantic or the World Wide shows, and getting so enthralled in that show,” said Roberts, who has signed with Awesome Wrestling Entertainment and is prepping for a series of shows with the company this year.
Roberts grew up in the business. Her mother, Lorraine Johnson, was a top tag-team wrestler in the 1950s and 1960s, and her father, Nick Roberts, wrestled into the 1970s and also promoted weekly shows in Lubbock, Texas.
“That’s how I grew up. Wrestling was the family business,” said Roberts, who remembers matches in Lubbock being run weekly, “and everybody came through Lubbock, because Texas was a really, really hot territory.”
The Funks, the Harts, the Von Erichs came through regularly, and once a year there was a visit from the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, who would wrestle the top local babyface, said Roberts, who jumpstarted her own big break by calling David Manning, the booker for World Class. As it turned out, Hernandez, a top WCCW star, was in need of a valet because his regular valet, Sunshine, was going on a sabbatical.
The gig only lasted a couple of months, but Roberts was established in the business. She happened to run into Dusty Rhodes and Tully Blanchard at a show not long after her run with Hernandez had come to an end, and pitched herself as being available to work in Mid-Atlantic.
It happened that they were looking for a valet to pair with Blanchard, who was just getting hot as a singles wrestler and was on his way to superstardom with the famed Four Horsemen.
“Within a couple of weeks, I was working with Tully, and we were working sold-out houses, and the rest is history,” said Roberts, whose five-year run as Baby Doll had her paired with Blanchard, Rhodes and Larry Zybysko, among others.
Fast forward from the 1980s to the 2000s, when Roberts got a call from a promoter and was asked to take part in a fanfest event in Maryland. The event went well, and she got the bug again – so much so that she went back home after the show and decided that she wanted to get back into the business. She packed up and moved her family from Joplin, Mo., to North Carolina, in the heart of the Mid-Atlantic territory that she had blazed a trail through back in the ’80s.
Roberts worked with Ward on a series of shows in 2007 and 2008, and she’s hooked back up with Ward under the AWE umbrella because she wants to be a part of the AWE mix of newcomers and legends working together to take professional wrestling back to its roots.
“It may not be like what we had in the mid ’80s, the late ’80s, that magical time, but let’s take that concept and that idea, and just make it better. I think Marvin has the tools to do it. There’s a lot of talent out there, and I think that with AWE, I expect a lot of big things from you guys,” Roberts said.
Video: Interview with Baby Doll
