 |
| WrestleZone.com |
Fans of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling were introduced to a beautiful and talented performer in February of 1985, when Baby Doll debuted for Jim Crockett Promotions. Selected as Tully Blanchard’s “Perfect 10,” Baby Doll wasted no time in assisting Blanchard in two major feuds in 1985, with the “American Dream” Dusty Rhodes and Magnum T.A. In 1986, Baby Doll joined forces with Dusty, and worked with the “good guys” to battle villains such as the Four Horsemen and the Midnight Express. During this time period, it was not uncommon for Baby Doll to shed her valet and managerial role and don the wrestling tights, and help battle these “bad guys” in the ring as part of six man tag team matches! Alas, all “good” things must come to an end, and Baby Doll turned her back on Rhodes on August 9, 1986, assisting Ric Flair in his regaining the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. The Mid-Atlantic Gateway had the great pleasure to speak with Baby Doll recently, and we chatted about her upcoming induction into the Hall of Heroes Class of 2016, her amazing run with Jim Crockett Promotions and her latest comings and goings!
David Chappell: Welcome to the Mid-Atlantic Gateway Baby Doll, and congratulations on your inclusion into the NWALegends.com Hall of Heroes!
Baby Doll: I'm looking forward to it! It's a return to Fanfest. Greg Price was nice enough to offer me the Hall of Heroes Legends honors at the banquet. That's a big deal right there. Plus, look at who I'm getting inducted with, and get to see everybody, and a lot of people I haven't seen in a couple of years. Of course, there's Charlie Brown, my number one fan. It's as much a big deal for the fans as it is for us.
Chappell: I agree, for sure. Now that the Charlotte area is really your home area, and getting inducted into the Hall of Heroes in Charlotte, you combine those two together, what kind of feeling does that give you?
Baby Doll: What's really cool too, is we're right at the 30th anniversary of whenever I put a foot on the ropes for Flair and Dusty, whenever the title changed back to Flair. We're right at the 30 year anniversary of that, which that's so cool in as much of itself, you know?
Chappell: August 9, 1986…hard to believe almost 30 years has passed! And for you to go into the Hall of Heroes right at that 30 year anniversary, that is off the charts cool!
Baby Doll: I know. You've got Dusty being inducted, and Jimmy Valiant, and the Road Warriors, and then the Mid-Atlantic Gateway Boys. It's a big deal. It really is. It's an honor. Especially ... I've traveled everywhere, I've lived several places, and the Charlotte area is home. There's nowhere else that we would want to be.
Chappell: When you came into the Crockett territory in early 1985, things were setting up to become red-hot over the next couple of years. You were a big part of that. What stands out for you over those couple of years when things were booming so big in Charlotte?
Baby Doll: The enthusiasm of the fans. So much no matter where we went; whether it was Virginia or Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charlotte, Atlanta, even down in Florida; just how much the fans were part of it. As much as a show as Flair was, the fans were part of the show too. That is what I think made it so unique is that so many people remember that time in their life of those Saturday afternoons sitting on the couch with grandma and grandpa and then they get to see us.
Chappell: Back then, wrestling every Saturday was must see TV!
Baby Doll: Ricky Morton still does a lot of shows. Jimmy Valiant does a lot of shows. The WWE network has been a blessing to a lot of us to keep that memory alive. It was before computers and it was right when people, I want to say quit being dumb, but it was the last time the fans were really not smart. They didn't want to be smart. Everybody believed, and we made them believe. There was no doubt in their mind of what we were doing and that was so unique about it. I got to work with the best of the best. With Dusty and Tully, and the Russians and the Rock 'n Roll Express and Sting came; Luger and the birth of the Four Horsemen. In wrestling history there's never been another time like it.
Chappell: What a time frame. When they put the Saturday night 6:05 shows on the WWE network I went back and started from the first episode they had and just followed it through and you all really stand the test of time. It's as good today as it was back then. It's amazing.
Baby Doll: I remember whenever cable first started coming out, my house didn't have cable. The whole part of that city didn't have cable and I remember every month calling to talk to the cable company to see if my neighborhood had been put on the grid because I wanted to get the wrestling on cable. It was 5:05 in Lubbock, and at 5:05 I was watching wrestling and my mom and dad just didn't understand because they were like, "Well you watch wrestling all the time." And it's like, "Yeah I watch wrestling all the time," because when that came on that was like a whole new world ... I got to see everybody then. That was a whole new spectrum for us.
Chappell: I think the world stopped at 6:05 Eastern time on Saturdays for many of us back then…
Baby Doll: There for a while…
Chappell: Those two hours were magical!
Baby Doll: I didn't work; I didn't do nothin'. If I could, I was home watching TV, that's for sure.
Chappell: Now, one thing that I think is really important in your story is in that time frame, the role for women in wrestling was pretty limited and it seemed like you burst on the scene and went into a role that was absolutely out there with the men. I just wonder your thoughts on that aspect of your wrestling career. Do you consider yourself a trailblazer? Because I think a lot of people do, including myself.
Baby Doll: At the time, it was a lifestyle. If you're a wrestler, we're just different from everyone else. When a wrestler walks in the room you just know that there's something different about them. I think that's being a true breed of all of us. And the guys today which, I mean, it's just different. Back then we were like true mavericks. There was no one else like that; no one else had the lifestyle that we did. It wasn't like you moved…you lived somewhere for 6 to 9 months and then you got up and you moved and you went somewhere else and got yourself over. We're true performers. Back then it was something that was different, and I was fortunate to be part of it at that time.
Chappell: But your role was truly unique.
 |
| Eddie Cheslock Photo |
Baby Doll: It was just…how do you be something that no one else has done? The only thing that I can really remember is Sunshine had worked with the Freebirds a little bit in Dallas. I remember my dad commenting about watching her face. If anyone watched the match and watched her, you could tell everything that was going on in the match just by how she sold it in her face. I remember that and that's how I kind of copied it.
Chappell: Your facial expressions at ringside added so much to so many matches back then.
Baby Doll: But I was so different because I was so athletic and being almost six foot tall, if I wore heels, I was the same size as the guys. Having to hold my own, and try to be pretty and a girl and jumping three and a half, four foot up high into a ring every night. Fighting your way back to the dressing room with eighteen, twenty thousand people sometimes…and they really, really, really, didn't like you and security wasn't always the best all the time.
Chappell: And they didn’t cut you any slack because you were a woman…
Baby Doll: And you try to be girly and pretty at the same time, it was a challenge. Now I look back it was something to have heat when you walk into a building with twenty thousand people in Charlotte. The girls today have got different heat now because they've got the whole social media thing. Not only do you have the fans you're working on, you've got millions of people that know who you are and probably don't like you because you're successful. They've got a whole different lifestyle that I never even had to deal with.
Chappell: They women today certainly have their own set of problems that's unique to this era.
Baby Doll: And I look at my daughter, she just graduated college. There for a while she was going to school full time; she had a full college schedule. She was working full time as a manager in a restaurant and she was working every weekend. At least twice, sometimes three times a weekend for her, and I was thinking that lifestyle is totally different. Then I look back at whenever I first worked, I had fifteen days off my first year. It's a different time…I was blessed because then it was a career, it's your job, it was something you did and it was nothing to go drive four hundred miles one way and work a show and drive another three hundred and sleep and get up and do another show. To work five days in the same outfit and then have to go to Georgia Championship TV at 8:00 in the morning on a Saturday and not look like you hadn't gotten but two hours of sleep.
.jpg)
