The bodybuilding world was shocked by the sudden death of Gino Molina, aka Big Wicked, after the company he worked with, Strength Cartel, announced the sad news online. So what happened?
Molina was a huge part of the Strength Cartel team, and he held a lot of sway as a bodybuilding influencer. “May Wicked rest in peace, and our deepest condolences go out to his family on behalf of the entire Strength Cartel family,” the company said in the post.
Molina, who had 33K followers on Instagram, was known for his candid nature and his stories about his own struggles. He was inspirational, straightforward and he did a lot of community outreach in Los Angeles.
We don’t know exactly how he died, but we do know that he was hanging out with his sister over Memorial Day weekend. The strange part is that he posted about “second chances” and the fleeting nature of life right before he died. Some people think he knew it was coming.
Silhouetted by lights from boats and in front of a pier, Molina spoke directly into the camera. “Sometimes in life, we take things for granted and we don’t realize that sometimes people don’t get a second chance,” he said. His next statement was especially prescient: “Sometimes we don’t even know how fast things can be taken away from us.”
He expressed his self-reflection and how things could be different if he was “doing stupid things instead of being out here enjoying life.” Presumably talking about his jailed friends, he said that “some of us behind those walls never ever get another chance to do these things and see these things.”
He then talks about his incarceration of 13 years, and how he spent a lot of it in solitary confinement. “I fell off, took a lot of things for granted but now I have snapped back out of it, trying to see at the same time that life is good,” he said. “Gotta keep on striving no matter what. Gotta keep on going. Some people don’t get that chance.”
Did Molina know something was coming? It’s impossible to know right now, and unless someone comes forward publicly to say what happened, we’ll still be left in the dark over the whole thing. There may be a clue in a recent post about his death from a site called GHS News, which claims that Molina “died in an accident” and that the “details of the accident … are still emerging, and the community awaits more information.”
Regardless, Molina was a real one and it’s sad news all around. RIP.