Baby Doll still the "Perfect 10"

Professional wrestling was in Nickla Roberts’ blood.

The daughter of women’s wrestling star Lorraine Johnson and veteran grappler and promoter Nick Roberts, Nickla grew up around the business, selling programs and doing whatever it took to make things run smoothly at her dad’s weekly shows in Lubbock, Texas.

But never could she have imagined the level of notoriety she would achieve years later as one of the most famous valets in pro wrestling history.

As the leather-clad Baby Doll, aka the “Perfect 10,” Roberts carved out one of the territory’s most memorable characters during the Mid-Atlantic glory days of the mid-1980s when she joined forces with the likes of Tully Blanchard, Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair. And although she spent less than four active years in the business, her popularity has never waned.

Following a self-imposed hiatus of more than two decades, Roberts now finds herself in demand at independent wrestling shows and fan conventions throughout the country. And she’s loving every minute of it.

Her comeback, she jokes, has been longer than her actual career.

“It’s amazing. It really is. What’s so cool now is that people know who I am from 20 years ago,” says Roberts, who will make a special appearance as part of Family Fun Day 6:30-8:30 p.m. Aug. 15 at Miles Road Baptist Church in Summerville.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will feature three old-school wrestling matches. Also included will be jump castles, games, food courts, car shows and assorted exhibits.

Roberts, as Baby Doll, will manage The Barbarian against George South in an Exodus Wrestling Alliance title match. Also on the bill will be “Ragin’ Bull” Manny Fernandez and Doink The Clown.

Like her famous alter ego, Roberts, now 47, prides herself on being an independent woman. Since leaving the wrestling business, she has worked at a number of jobs, including handling baggage on a US Air tarmac and climbing poles to install cable television lines. She currently works overnight security at a Wal-Mart in Fayetteville, N.C.

And everyone still calls her Baby Doll.

Born for the biz

There was never any question about Roberts’ love affair with the wrestling business.

“It was pretty awesome to have such a beautiful mom like I did. She used to win Marilyn Monroe look-alike contests. And knowing that my dad could beat up anyone else out there and back it up ... that was cool,” says Roberts, who lived the life of a wrestling daughter traveling up and down the circuit.

“My dad had two wrestling rings and chairs. My brother would set up concessions, I would do programs, my mom would sell tickets. It was just a family business. I knew it was pretty cool back then, but now looking back at it years later, I think it’s even more cool.”

Her dad, she says, promoted every single week for more than two decades.

“It was a staple. That’s just what we did. When we were really young, we only got to go to the matches a couple times a year, and then we sat on the very back row at ringside. Occasionally we got to go back and meet a couple of the guys. It was a big deal to go.”

As years went by, however, Roberts wanted to play a bigger part of the show. One of the reasons, she laughs, is because she had a huge crush on Texas wrestling heartthrob Gino Hernandez.

“I just thought he was dreamy,” says Roberts. “I had heard my parents talking about looking for a girl (valet) for him. I thought to myself that it could be me. I got my dad’s black book and got the number for the Dallas office. I snuck down to a boyfriend’s house and used his home phone and called the office. (Booker) David Manning answered. I explained to him that I had heard my parents talking and that they maybe were looking for a girl for Gino. I told them that I was smart and knew what was going on and that maybe I could help.”

The only female valet in the area at the time was Sunshine (Stella French).

Roberts’ timing was perfect, Manning told her, but first he had to discuss the idea with booker Fritz Von Erich. Fifteen minutes later Manning called back with good news.

“He told me that everybody loved the idea, but there were two questions that had to be answered, says Roberts.

“When can you start, and who’s going to tell your dad?”

Roberts had a boyfriend at the time, and the two had planned to go on a school-related ski trip to Colorado.

“We had been on several trips, and I wanted to go to Colorado and be a ski patrol. At the time I was in EMT class. I had nearly 160 college credit hours and there were only a couple weeks left in the class. There were 11 of us, and I was near the top of the class.”

She made her decision. Roberts, 22 at the time, quit school and headed for San Antonio for her first show.

It was a sellout, and more than 10,000 fans packed the Freeman Coliseum, she says.

“While I was in my dressing room, Ken Mantel, David Manning, David Von Erich, Gino Hernandez, and myself and Stella went over the key points of the match.”

That’s when Roberts says she realized just how much planning went into the booking of a bout.

Amazed at the complexity, her main mandate was “to stand tall and look tough.” A strong and hefty girl at nearly six feet tall with an athletic build, she could do that easily. But her first match as a participant, albeit outside the ring, was a revelation.

“Oh, my God, that’s how they do it,” she recalls saying. “I had 20 minutes to smarten up.”

Even today she is amazed.

“I trained up at Nelson Royal’s for a whole summer. There’s a reason why I was outside the ring clapping, because I don’t think I could have done it. I really don’t. I was just very, very lucky.”

Over the years, though, she has appreciated the business she knew more and more.

“It’s a dance. I love MMA guys, but they don’t have the theatrics of professional wrestlers. I love it. I used to write papers about wrestling in school. My parents were just so dismayed.”

Baby Doll arrives

Roberts’ career in the ring only lasted a few years. But she made quite an impression.

She had started out in Texas on Labor Day 1984 and worked until Christmas, with only a couple of shots outside the state — in Miami and Tampa where Michael Hayes, one of the legendary Freebirds, was booking. She was hoping that Hayes, who had enjoyed phenomenal success in Texas during the early ‘80s, would help her find employment.

“I stopped at the first liquor store I could find and bought the biggest bottle of Jack Daniels (for Hayes),” she jokes.

Hayes told her that the Florida promotion was shutting down until March, but that Dusty Rhodes, who just happened to be backstage at the show that evening, “was getting ready to blow up North Carolina.”

Hayes asked Roberts if she knew the charismatic performer known as the “American Dream.”

“I knew him from a long time ago when he used to work for my dad,” she told Hayes.

She jokes that she considered asking Hayes for that bottle of Jack Daniels back since he apparently wasn’t going to be able to push her in Florida. Hayes, a noted imbiber, ended up keeping the bottle.

Roberts approached Rhodes, politely told him her name and reminded him that he used to work for her father during the early days of his career. She didn’t have any more dates after that night’s show, and asked if he could possibly use her.

San Antonio native Tully Blanchard, who also was at the show that night, told Roberts that the Charlotte-based Crockett Promotions was in the midst of holding a storyline contest for “The Perfect 10.” The character would serve as a valet for Blanchard who, at the time, was one of the territory’s top heels.

“I went out for my match with Stella,” Roberts recalls. “While I was going to the ring, I looked out and saw Dusty at the entrance of one dressing room and Tully at the entrance of the other dressing room. When I finished my match with Stella, I could see that Dusty and Tully were both still standing there. I was really excited.”

They told Roberts that she was exactly what they were looking for, and asked her if she could start up in North Carolina in February.

The first order of business was christening her with a name that would become her trademark – Baby Doll.

“Baby Doll was the name of Tully’s favorite strip club in San Antonio,” Roberts reveals. “Because my first name is Nickla, a lot of people just don’t get that right. A lot of the guys were calling me Baby Doll anyway, so it just kind of fit.”

Roberts, who held school records at her high school for shotput, loves the name to this day.

“It’s so cool because I meet people who tell me I really am a baby doll. That’s such a nice compliment. Who wouldn’t want to be called Baby Doll? It’s great. Especially when (Ric) Flair yells down the hallway: ‘Ba-by Doll!’ How can you not love that? As far as the ‘Perfect 10,’ I’m a big girl. I’m nowhere near what most would consider a perfect 10, but it does get some good heat.”

The name also was much sexier than her previous moniker — Andrea The Lady Giant.

“I hated that because Andre and I were really, really good friends. I felt that it was a dis on Andre. I really didn’t like it. Andrea The Lady Giant wasn’t very feminine or girly,” says Roberts, who wore her hair in a punk rock style, along with leather pants and jacket, metal-studded belts, and spiked dog collar and wristbands.

Roberts and Blanchard, at the time one of the cockiest young heels in the business, were a hit throughout 1985 in the Mid-Atlantic area. She became invaluable to Blanchard as he engaged in classic feuds with Magnum T.A. over the U.S. title and Dusty Rhodes over the NWA television title.

In a surprising storyline twist, though, the duo split the following year after Baby Doll had a falling out with Blanchard and became an ally to fan favorite Rhodes. Later turning heel again, she turned on Rhodes, and eventually rejoined Blanchard and The Horsemen.

On the road

Nickla Roberts loved the wrestling business, but the schedule was grueling. She had only 15 days off the entire first year she worked with Blanchard.

Constantly on the road, with no real boyfriends or girlfriends, the inevitable was bound to happen. The fact that it happened with a mid-carder on the Crockett roster by the name of Sam Houston (Michael Smith) would only spell trouble for Roberts.

Houston was a rising young performer who hadn’t yet merited a higher spot on the card. The son of Grizzly Smith (Aurelian Smith), one of wrestling’s top stars of the ‘60s, and brother of Jake “The Snake” Roberts (Aurelian Smith Jr.) and Rockin’ Robin (Robin Smith), the second-generation wrestler had the pedigree, but still wasn’t at the level of his girlfriend. It also didn’t help matters that Houston was a babyface and Baby Doll was a heat-seeking heel. The possibility of the two being seen together, or worse, would have been a definite no-no for business.

“I was like one of the boys, but I didn’t really have any friends or boyfriends, and I was on the road so much. We did the 30-day deal with Dusty whenever he wanted me on the Great American Bash. Dusty had a two-seater car, and Magnum had a two-seater car. I needed a ride to the shows, so they put me with Sam.”

The result marked the beginning of the end for Baby Doll’s active wrestling career.

“They got mad because we fell in love,” says Roberts. “Dusty even called Griz and wanted him to discourage us from getting married. But we were going to show them. We were going to show them that we were perfect and we could do it. We ended up losing our jobs, so we really showed them, didn’t we?”

The two married in July 1986 and were “shipped off” to the Kansas City territory. “That was about it,” laments Roberts.

In hindsight, she says, she understands the reasoning behind the demotion and eventual firing.

“I understand now where they were coming from. They wanted to have the single, Marilyn Monroe type, and Sam was a babyface. Sam was undercard, so how could Baby Doll be attracted to Sam? But he was really starting to get pushed.”

“We hardly ever worked (in Kansas City),” she says. “It was awful. And I only had a couple of weeks with Zbyzsko. We ended up moving to Dallas, and Sam got the job with WWE. And he worked with them for quite awhile.”

A newcomer billed as Dark Journey, meanwhile, was put in as Blanchard’s valet for a very brief period in 1987.

“It broke my heart,” says Roberts. “Of all the people ... I had worked with her a little bit in UWF (Universal Wrestling Federation) with Bill Watts. God bless her ... but she was just dumb. You could just see that look in her face that she just didn’t get it at all. She was like the start of girls who should not be in the business.”

Roberts left the NWA in 1987 and joined the Oklahoma-based UWF alongside her husband. Upon leaving the UWF, she began appearing on the independent circuit with Houston.

Roberts returned to Crockett Promotions in 1988 to manage Zbyszko during his feud with Barry Windham over the NWA Western States Heritage Championship. Her tenure, though, was short-lived, as by then her husband was working for the rival World Wrestling Federation in what amounted to a conflict of interest.

One of Baby Doll’s most famous angles was one that went unresolved due to her firing. A sealed envelope allegedly contained incriminating photographs of Rhodes. Baby Doll and Zbyszko were going to “blackmail” Rhodes over its contents. But the angle was dropped soon thereafter.

Roberts recently came across the original envelope during a move from Missouri to North Carolina.

“I still have the envelope,” says Roberts, who adds that she might use it for a photo-op with Rhodes at future shows.

With her wrestling career at a standstill, Roberts made the decision to move on with her life.

“It’s a hard pill to swallow once you’re out of the business. But then life goes on.”

Rocky relationship

Houston asked Roberts to marry him on Halloween night 1985. The two, she says, were married one year to the day they first kissed — July 30, 1986.

The marriage lasted only four years.

“Once I got pregnant with our oldest daughter, Sam just changed,” says Roberts. “He did a complete 180 and started drinking a lot, and he became very irresponsible.”

She says she found out about an affair her husband was having in California when their daughter was only 5 months old.

“I just left. I went back to Texas and felt sorry for myself for about six months,” she says.

But when Houston was involved in a bad car accident in California, she decided to give the marriage another chance.

“He called me and said all the things that I wanted to hear,” says Roberts. “I moved down to Louisiana with him. I stayed there for nearly two months and got pregnant with our second daughter.”

Even then, she says, she had a gnawing feeling that something just wasn’t right. Her hunch, unfortunately, turned out to be correct.

“It was really weird because my mother had taken a trip to Costa Rice with one of her friends. I had to go back to Texas to take care of the house. I just had a feeling that something wasn’t right. I headed back to Baton Rouge, and Sam said, ‘Nick, I want to talk to you.’ He said he didn’t want to be married anymore. He said this wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to be the life of the party. So with a 1-year-old on my hip and pregnant, that’s when I pretty much found out that Sam had spent all my money. I had nothing. Whatever I could take back to Lubbock on the plane, that’s all that I had. That was it.”

Roberts says she then had the unenviable task of confronting her parents and breaking the news to them.

“You go home. You’re beat down and bruised. You have a kid and no money. I didn’t tell my parents I was pregnant for a couple of months. My mother was pretty upset because she’s rather high-strung. But my dad, God bless him, just said that if there was anything they could do, just let him know, and he stood by my side.

“He was like my kids’ daddy up until 2002 when he passed away. That was one of the main reasons I left Lubbock. It was just so sad to be there. He was so good to us.”

Houston, a hardcore partier and an admitted alcoholic, was sentenced to jail for repeated DUI arrests in 2005.

“He paid maybe five months for child support. Whenever I divorced him, I couldn’t prove how much money he was making, so it was like 174 dollars a month was all that I could get out the court to get for me. He paid five or six months.”

The end of their marriage, she says, was the best for all involved.

“I wondered how I was going to do this when I left him, but it was actually a blessing in disguise because the girls didn’t need to see that. I never spoke badly about him in front of the girls, because he’s part of them and they’re part of him. I love Sam with all my heart, but he’s just got way too many demons and stuff going on.”

Roberts says she feels sorry for the dysfunctional family and the tragedy they have endured in their lives. The three lost their homes and most of their possessions during Hurricane Katrina.

“That’s the whole thing about Sam, Jake and even Robin. They’ve got so much stuff going on. They’re doing everything they can to numb those voices and just feel normal.”

Roberts saw her ex-husband for the first time in 11 years at last year’s Fanfest in Charlotte.

“I saw him again in Edison, N.J., in May, and he had just gotten out of rehab again. I wish him nothing but the best, but he just loves Crown Royal more than he loves anything else.”

Mid-Atlantic heyday

Roberts says as big as Mid-Atlantic wrestling was, it could have been bigger. But everyone knew the business was changing.

“I don’t think that any of us really knew the extent of it. We knew something in the business was happening because Wrestlemania had just started. We were going head-to-head with Vince, and a lot of towns were outdrawing him. We had two or three towns running every single night. It was so cool. I was the only girl for a really long time.”

“The only thing that really killed us was the merchandising,” says Roberts. “Once Vince found out that he could sell that little wrestling ring for a hundred bucks and those little figures, that’s when he far surpassed us. We just couldn’t keep up. The people in the Crockett office didn’t realize what merchandising could do. Vince was such a genius at merchandising everything. We didn’t have a clue with that. We didn’t have that big vision.”

Roberts also thinks that Magnum T.A. (Terry Allen) could have been a bigger star than Hulk Hogan had it not been for his career-ending car accident in 1986 in Charlotte.

“I still to this day think had Magnum not been in that wreck, he would have been bigger than Hogan. That charisma and the look. With the right marketing and the right push, he could have far surpassed anything that Vince could have come up with.”

Horsemen days

Roberts says she’ll never forget the rare privilege of being part of something so special.

And she’s sure she’ll never witness anything like The Four Horsemen again.

“Whatever you think it was like ... whatever you can possibly imagine ... it was more. There’s no other way to put it,” she says.

“And Flair ... I swear ... at 5 o’clock in the morning, he’d be down at the hotel lobby with a tuna fish sandwich in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He’s dancing with everybody. He knows the name of the hotel clerk, all the maid staff, he knows the name of the guy who’s getting us a cab, he knows the name of the cabbie. When we pull up to the airport, he knows the skycap, he knows the ticket agent, he knows the pilot of the plane, he knows the three flight attendants by name, hasn’t seen them for probably a year and still knows who they are. That, to me, is like amazing.”

Being privy to what went on behind the scenes, however, could also be a liability.

“I was around the guys more than their families were. I saw a lot. And it was weird because some guys would fool around with really ugly girls to compensate somehow like it didn’t count because she was ugly. Or there was the 50-mile rule. Anything beyond 50 miles of your house really didn’t count. It was these crazy, wild rules that they came up with. Fortunately I wasn’t asked ... but I guess I would have had to say I hadn’t seen anything because I was busy doing other stuff. But I did see a lot.”

Mid-Atlantic rebirth

Roberts has been back in the Mid-Atlantic area for several years now, and she thinks the area is ripe for a Crockett-like organization to come in and do well.

“There’s some awesome talent around here. It’s ready to go.”

Roberts says she still watches wrestling with innocent eyes, and believes that all fans should suspend their disbelief to truly appreciate the product.

“Everybody can put down Vince all they want, but look at what Vince has done for the business. It may not be what we all envisioned, but everybody knows about wrestling now. It may not be what we want. The sad thing is that people try to smarten the fans up every chance they get, but they don’t want to be smart. I don’t want to be smart. I want to be able to go the match and look at the person next to me and say, ‘Wow ... did you just see what I just saw?’ They truly don’t want that.”

She laments the fact that many wrestlers coming up today don’t truly appreciate the history of the sport.

“There are so many girls now. And there are so many girls who are really not smart to the whole history of the business. They’re really, really pretty, and they’re really good athletes, but they don’t get it like I get it. They’re cookie-cutter. It’s hard for them being on the road and having to deal with Vince’s policies and knowing that their career is maybe a year or two and they’re done.”

She also offers a piece of advice to aspiring wrestlers.

“There are a lot of guys who would like to be professional wrestlers and would like to have the fame and glory. My advice would be if you’re going to lay out good money and be trained, at least be trained by somebody with access to people who can book you like Terry Taylor or Johnny Ace or Dusty Rhodes. There are a lot of guys out there training who don’t know what they’re talking about and can’t get you booked. I guess it’s cool to work in front of 50 people, but 20,000 is so much cooler. There’s a lot of really, really good talent out there who deserve to be seen by a lot more people.”

Baby Doll forever

Roberts, who moved from Missouri to Fayetteville, N.C., several years ago, has worked a number of odd jobs over the years, and she’s done them well. But she says she always wants to learn more.

“I’m one of those people who want to learn a lot about a lot. I’ve had a lot of different jobs. I kind of get bored pretty easy. I really should go back to school and get my degree.”

“I used to drive the little tractors on the tarmac for US Air,” she says. “I also delivered the mail, and that was fun. I was working for AT&T with their customer care when cell phones first came out. I would reprogram phones.”

The 5-11 Roberts also installed cable television lines at one time.

“I actually worked for Cox Cable. I did the install for then. I was so afraid of heights, but I climbed the poles. I had my own truck and would fix things. I would be last person folks would figure show up. Here’s this girl almost six feet tall with big blonde hair. I did a good job because I did really, really pretty work. It was such a cool job.”

Roberts even had a clothing business where she would do many of the ring jackets and attire for wrestlers.

“I did Flair’s Black Scorpion, I did a bunch of the outfits for The Rockers (Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty). I had nearly 200 guys I was actually sewing for at one time.”

She has worked for Wal-Mart for nearly six years.

“It’s a steady paycheck,” she says.

She also has an incredible amount of energy.

“I ride my bike to work. I haven’t had a car in four years ... not because I don’t want to or I can’t. I’d rather have a bike. I have a driver’s license. I rent cars on weekends if I have to do a show. I was green before anyone else was green. I was doing the recycling and the whole thing years ago. It saves me about 200 bucks a month.”

And she’ll never tire of folks calling her “Baby Doll.” Roberts, who jokingly refers to herself as “the queen of the cougars,” has never remarried.

“A couple of boyfriends, but that’s about it. I just took care of my girls,” she says. “Once my daddy died, if I couldn’t fix it, I had to find out because nobody else was going to help me.”

Her oldest daughter, Mikka Tyler Smith, was partially named after Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, one of her favorite bands. The 18-year-old plans to enroll in January at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin.

Her youngest daughter, Mikala Joy Smith, contains the initials of ex-husband Sam’s mother, Marsha Jean Smith. The 16-year-old is an honors student in high school and is already taking bumps.

“She’s been in training for a few weeks learning how to fall and protect herself. She’s my legacy, and it’s going to be so cool to see if she actually is able to do something.”

Professional wrestling, she says, has been a wonderful ride. Roberts says having fans come over and tell her things such as, “You don’t know what memories you bring back,” are very special to her.

“It’s magical. How can you explain making 12,000 people gasp because you put Flair’s foot on the rope and you do the ultimate screw against Dusty? How can you explain going through a Kroger’s supermarket at 2 o’clock in the morning and have someone recognize you as Baby Doll? Or racing down the road at 70 miles an hour with Tully and having people passing and pointing, and Tully going, ‘This is going to be big ... this is going to be so big.’”

The wrestling business, she says, has always been something special.

“It couldn’t have been more perfect than it is right now. I was just a very fortunate girl to be at the right place at the right time ... to be working with the best talent ever. It’s one thing to have a dream. It’s another thing to actually live the dream. And I’m living my dream.”

Reach Mike Mooneyham at (843) 937-5517 or [email protected]. For wrestling updates during the week, call The Post and Courier Info Line at (843) 937-6000, ext. 3090.