Q&A with Koloff - #20

Hey, this is Mike Zwick from If Not For God Podcast, our show.

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But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. How are you today? I'm great, sir, and yourself?

I'm doing wonderful. Appreciate you putting aside some time to be on the show. Oh, it's an honor.

Well, it's great to have you, Jonathan. And hey, tell our listeners, where are you located, where are you calling in from, or where are we calling you? Oh, I'm from Walker, Louisiana. Walker, Louisiana. Come on. Tell me where that's near, because I'm not familiar with Walker, Louisiana. It's sort of the halfway point between Baton Rouge and Hammond. Okay.

All right. LSU fan? LSU and Saints fan.

LSU and Saints, yeah. See, you just had a quarterback, I think, retire there, right? Yeah, Drew Brees, one of the best ever to play the game.

He was a competitor, was he not? Oh, yeah. He's a great man on and off the field. Well, I've heard he's done a whole lot for the city of New Orleans, right?

Oh, yeah. He's definitely involved, outside of football. Well, and I know kudos to him, and I know the city of New Orleans has got to be grateful. I think I saw him write, so hey, I'm retiring from football, but I'm not retiring from from New Orleans, which is great, right?

Right. So, well, now have you born and raised there, grow up there? How long have you been there, Jonathan? Yeah, I've been here all my life, 38 years.

Born and raised. And what keeps you busy in Walker, Louisiana? Oh, mostly church and work.

Okay. And what do you do for work? I'm a manager for health care, health care organization. Well, you've had your work cut off for you the last year or so, haven't you?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, but my hat's off to all of you health care workers. I know it's been a real challenge for all of you, so I commend you and thank you for being a part of that line of that profession. You're very welcome.

Oh, you're very welcome. And so the other you said church, so what, you involve, like you teach Sunday school, what do you do at church? I play on the praise and worship team and also serve on the board.

Okay, okay. What instruments do you play? Acoustic guitar. Acoustic guitar. I'm guessing you picked that up at a young age, early age? Actually not. I took a freshman college course at Southeastern in Hammond. Had struggled with it, put it down, and then took some lessons years later.

I mean, I wish I would have started at an early age, but, you know, as they say, better late than never. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. So, well, I just commend you for being a part of the worship team there. Have you been doing that for quite some time or just recent? I've been playing in church on and off for probably about in 15 years.

Oh, fantastic. And what's the name of your church? Shady Bauer Pentecostal Church. Shady Brier? Shady Bauer.

Shady Bauer Pentecostal Church. That's awesome. How long have you been attending there?

I've been there about five years now, I believe it is. Okay, fantastic. And, well, it's great to have you on the show. And we're going to have you ready to have some fun today? Absolutely.

I have fun every day. That's a great answer. Sure. Well, let's fire up a couple of your questions and see. I'm not even sure what you're going to ask, so that's how it's going to be even more fun, because I'm just going to come into this kind of blind, if you will, let you fire away and see if I can come up with an answer for you.

Ready? Sure. All right, so let's just roll with your first question.

Go for it. Okay. If you had a run in the WWF back in the 80s or 90s, who would you have want to work with out of, I guess, three superstars and why? Good question, because a lot of times people ask me, why didn't I go to the WWF?

And let me just address that for those who are listening to the Q&A today. I never really felt prompted to do that. The NWA, Jim Crockett Promotions are the ones who gave me my break in professional wrestling. And looking back, I feel confident to say I could have probably went and have made that jump to the WWF and, I don't know, probably made 10 times the money.

But it wasn't really just all about the money for me, even though I really viewed it as a business. It was more so just out of my loyalty to the NWA. I like to say NWA for life, you know. But that said, even recently, people consistently will bring this up and somebody actually did a picture of Hogan on one side, me on the other side with the WrestleMania moniker on top. So that was certainly, that would have made, probably would have been a money maker and would have probably drew a pretty good crowd. So certainly I'd be remiss if I didn't say Hulk Hogan. It would have been fun to step in the ring against Hogan. I would probably say the Macho Man, Randy Savage. Oh yeah, Slim Jim, dig it?

Yeah, right? The Macho Man, that would have been, I think, a very colorful match. Maybe I'll just say it that way, in more ways than one. And then you know what, even as you ask that question, because people do ask me, did I ever wrestle Andre the Giant?

And the answer is no, although we crossed paths a few times and we're peers in the business. But that I think might have made for an interesting match as well to go against Andre the Giant. Yeah. Now the outcomes, for those who are just wondering, well, hello. I mean, the Russian nightmare would have persevered and come out on top against every one of those guys. I'm just saying, right?

Just a little confidence in myself there, Jonathan. Russian chain match, for sure. Russian chain match.

Hey, let me throw a question at you. Maybe some of the opponents I had a Russian chain match against, does anyone quickly come to memory for you? Sting, one of my favorites. The Stinger. Yes, we had. You want a quick, funny story about a Russian chain match against Sting?

What's that? You want a quick, funny story about, well, I think it's funny. Oh, absolutely.

I think it's funny. Sting didn't think it was so funny. But I actually did a two-part interview on the Man Up show with Sting. And we actually talked about this.

I say we reminisce about it. So I'm in Chicago, got a chain match against Sting. And of course, one of the things I do is wrap the chain around somebody's neck and throw them over the top rope and portray that I'm hanging them, right? Well, unbeknownst to me, Sting was, I wrapped it around his neck, threw him over the top rope, and I'm just like yanking on that chain. And the key is to get your fingers, for those of you who can kind of visualize this, between your neck and the chain so you can actually breathe. Well, it was so tight that the more he moved and the more I portrayed that I was hanging him, the more it cinched up, and it was starting to cut off his air.

Air, air, air, can't breathe, can't breathe. And the referee's out there, and I'm looking at fan reaction. I'm like, wow, he's like really putting this over. Well, little did I know, he's about choked out, and it was at that time that I finally released it, and he was able to catch his breath, and he said he was, I think, within seconds of passing out. And so one Russian chain match story for you. Wow, that's awesome.

Next question. Dusty Rhodes is one of my favorites of all time. I honestly think he should have been a preacher with his charisma on the microphone. But tell me one of your favorite memories with the American Dream. The American Dream, tower of power, too sweet to be power if you will. Yeah, Nikita and I are super powers. Everybody likes to imitate Dusty, right?

I just had to throw that in there for you and all of our listeners, Jonathan. Favorite memory with Dusty? You know, there's so many memories that come flooding back. And, you know, I think about the arm wrestling thing that we did in the ring to set up an angle, and then eventually, obviously, I say obviously, one of the greatest memories was when I made the turn in Charlotte, North Carolina from bad guy to good guy when I came into the cage and attacked Ole Anderson and went on to beat J.J. Dylan and the eruption from the crowd and we created the super powers is certainly a fond, fond memory. And that really led into a friendship outside of a business relationship that I had with Dusty to where we would travel up and down the road riding in his red convertible Mercedes from town to town and really just creating a friendship, creating a bond, creating a love for one another that lasted until his passing.

That's awesome. Yeah, I remember watching one of the interviews where he had the cowboy hat on the fur coat and you were the only man in Siberia that could walk around with your shirt off. You know, I remember that because I think I had my shirt off, right? He had the big fur coat on in the cowboy hat and I had my shirt, I think I was holding maybe the U.S. belt at the time if I remember correctly. But yeah, I remember saying that the kid is the only man that could walk around in Siberia with his shirt off.

He's that tough of a man. Yeah, right? Appreciate it. You brought back a great memory. All right, we maybe have time for maybe one, maybe two more questions if you have them, Jonathan. Okay. Okay, WarGames, past or present, who would you pick if you could pick anyone to be in the cage with you?

Whoa, that's a great question. Well, you know, I say often imitated, never duplicated. I know over the years they've tried to duplicate that WarGames match, but I say there's nothing like the original, including the Four Horsemen, but also the superpowers teamed up with Legion of Doom Road Warriors, along with precious Paul Ellering. Now, I guess if I wanted to just step out and say, I mean, there's so many guys that you'd have to consider to be on that list. I mean, everyone from Triple H to Shawn Michaels to, I mean, gosh, it would be hard to pick and choose, honestly. I mean, there's a guy, WWE Raw right now, I actually interviewed him on the Man Up show, Jackson Ryker, who looks phenomenal, you know, physique in the ring. And so there's quite a number of them, but, you know, of course, then we had Sting Squadron later on, right, with Sting and Ricky the Dragon's team, both Dustin Rhodes and some greats there as well, but just so many to choose from. It'd be hard to narrow them all down, you know? Yeah, you'd almost have to have a face team and a heel team and maybe a couple more. Yeah, yes, a couple alternatives, a couple alternates, that's exactly right. So we got time for one more question.

What do you got? Okay, looking back on your career, what three matches would you say stand out in your mind? Great question. Great American Bash, 1985 against the Nature Boy, Ric Flair. Very first, I mean, I'm only 13 months into the business, Jonathan, and at that point, I'm a World Tag Team Champion, a World Six-Man Champion, and now I'm wrestling the World Heavyweight Champion, the Nature Boy, for his title. And so, certainly, that's first and foremost, that's one that comes to mind. Secondly, really, you already talked about, but the very first War Games, the very first one, the original one, because in that arena that night, it was so electrifying.

I mean, it's hard to even put it into words what that experience was like because none of us really knew for sure because it had never been done before, so we didn't know what to expect or what would happen. But to see the fans on their feet for a half hour plus and never sitting down just out of the excitement was very, very memorable. And then the other one wasn't necessarily a match, but what's most talked about for me is the best of seven series against Magnum TA for the US title. And so, in fact, that's just by fan poll, everywhere I go, autograph signings everywhere else, that's the most talked about out of all the matches.

There's others, but those are probably ranked in the top three. All great matches. Well, yeah, and I appreciate you. Obviously, you've been a fan for a long, long time. Oh, yeah, I grew up. I was a Hulkamaniac and actually didn't know about you until later on. I turned on WCW one Saturday night and saw Sting and watched the Monday Night Wars over the years and just got the WWE Network and actually went back and just watched some of the old Jim Crockett promotions and saw some of your matches. I mean, there's so much lore there you can't possibly catch up, but it's just great. I'm an old school wrestling fan.

I watched the old, more than the new, honestly. I appreciate it. I say it all the time.

I'll continue to repeat it over and over again. We love, love, love our fans. You guys are the greatest.

I really mean that. You've got to be some of the most loyal fans on the planet and appreciate you dialing in or giving us the opportunity to call you today and have a conversation and answer a few questions. And for the rest of you out there listening, just like Jonathan, email me. Email me your questions. Koloff.net.

Koloff.net. Email me your questions. If you're available, just like Jonathan was today, I'll give you a personal phone call.

Let's have a conversation, get your questions answered. And thank you for tuning in today. Thank you, Jonathan, for being a part of Questions and Answers with Koloff.

Thank you for having me. God bless you. All right.

Bless you, Jonathan. Thanks so much. Take care. Take care. Bye. This is the Truth Network.