Baby Doll On Gino Hernandez Death: 'Some Very Bad People Made An Example Out Of Him'

Younger fans are probably most familiar with Texas wrestling star Gino Hernandez by way of the "Dark Side of the Ring" episode, which examined his February 1986 death via cocaine overdose at the age of 28, one of many wrestlers who sadly died in their '20s. 

Though the episode seemed to lean towards the official story of Hernandez dying of an accidental overdose, in the end, it also, by way of scrutiny of errors in his autopsy report, provided many reasons to be skeptical of the official story. Now, in a recent interview with "WSI," Gino's friend and one-time on-screen bodyguard, Nickla "Baby Doll" Roberts, added fuel to the speculative fire.

"I had heard [it was] as massive cocaine overdose," she recalled. "I had also heard that someone had murdered him because of his ties with the mob and that he had owed some money from gambling, and every once in a while, they make an example of people and say, 'We can take care of him, we can take care of you.' With the amount of cocaine that was in the autopsy, there was no way someone could ingest that amount of cocaine unless you're just eating it by the spoonfuls, [and] no one does that." 

Roberts added that one thing that caught her eye in the "Dark Side of the Ring" episode was that a pack of cigarettes was in Gino's apartment when his body was found even though he hated smokers, to the point of not even allowing cigarettes in his home even if they weren't going to be smoked.

"I would like to think that he's somewhere on a beach, drinking a Mai Tai with a pretty girl, that he escaped all of this," she concluded. "But I think that some very bad people made an example out of him, and that they'd had enough."