This is the Truth Network. Satan's Nightmare, Nakia Kola. This is a war! This is one warning. That needs to be settled.
What a brawl. What a fight. And it's out of control here. That's a bad man. No, that's a bad man.
No, that's a bad man. Anytime, any place, night, day, I don't care. I'm only a phone call away, my friend. Welcome to another episode of QA with Koloff, the Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back, QA with Koloff, Questions and Answers, where you might get a personal phone call from yours truly.
Once the Russian Nightmare, Now the Devil's Nightmare. If you're interested in that, go to Koloff.net and just submit a request. But with me today, not over the phone, but in person, right here in the studio. Mike Dylan in Mitch class with Richard Childress Racing. Welcome to QA with Koloff.
Well, thank you. Thank you, Nikita. It's an honor to be here.
Well, great to have you guys here. And Mitch, I'm going to start with you just for a moment because I think you got the ball rolling on me meeting Mike, which has been an absolute privilege today. And I just want to encourage you, just right out of the gate, make sure you go over to It's Time to Man Up and hear these guys' full interview over there. Today, we're just going to skim the surface. But Mitch, I think you got the ball rolling.
I think you emailed me or you messaged me or I got something from you. Yeah, I had heard about your ministry through, I believe it was one of the guys that comes to our Bible study. And so we, you know, with our weekly Bible studies, we have a guest maybe once a month. And so I said, we need Nikita to join us one night. And so I was like, I'm going to reach out.
And so, yeah, send you the email and just talk to you a little bit. And I looked up your podcast and watched some of your videos. Yeah, it's fantastic. Awesome.
Well, thank you. Well, thank you for reaching out. And to whoever said that, I thank them. It's just been an honor just spending this brief time together with, I think, is going to lead to more here down the road.
So, Mike, let me come over to you. I know we talked about on the other show, I mean, basically about a 40-year career in the racing world, plus or minus. You've been behind the wheel. I think you said you've done pretty much every aspect of it. Every job that you can think of at our operation.
Your operation. And you married into the children's family.
So you married, I guess, one of Rich's daughters. The only one. He only has one.
So you only have one child. Yes. Just the one daughter. Wow.
Okay. You got the golden child. I did, I did. How'd that happen? Just real quick, how'd that happen?
Like, how did you meet her? How'd that happen? We met in school, actually. We actually met out at Davidson Community College. We met a long time ago, way cruising Stratford Road in Winston-Salem.
Okay. But then we went to community college and And met out there, and I just told her, I told her, if you give me one shot, that you won't go out with anybody again. And you won't regret it. You won't regret it. Nah, I'm not going to say, you'd have to ask her.
I'm not going to. I will not tell that lie. Can't speak for her on that regard. No, sir. No, sir.
She might have regretted a few times. Oh, you are too funny. I love you're such a humor. That is awesome. And fast forward 38 years later.
Is that her? 38 years of marriage, right? Yep. 38 years of marriage. And I know I wrote it that way.
Two boys and five grandkids. Two boys and five grandkids. That's amazing. And Mitch, to refresh my memory, you've been married how long now? 25 years.
In June. I was married when he was 12. Yeah, I'm just saying. You can't see this guy, but I can. This guy does not look really, yeah, looks like in his 30s.
He does.
So 25 years and how many children? Just one. Just a daughter. Yep, 15. 15-year-old dog.
All right, all right. And so, you guys have uh, Mike, I'm gonna come come to you. You brought me a couple gifts today. You said you had some t-shirts for me, and and of course, you brought this book, The First Hour, Unleashing God, Unleash God's Power by Mark Cook, a 30-day boot camp for men.
Now, you guys, and Mitch, I'm going to have you talk about the weekly Bible study you do, and I know you do an annual event and all that. But first, Mike, let's talk about the book and why this book as a foundation for your weekly Bible study. What would you say? Um. you know, to to for the matter of time, I you know, a friend Mark Cook, who I didn't know it at the time, that wrote the book, sent this book through his, through, I don't know, through his son or he mailed it to me.
I think he mailed it, but anyway, sent it to me and said, Hey, hey, this book has changed my life. Thank you for helping my son first. He said, and then this book has changed my life. I hope he can do it for you. Same for you.
And it was a bookmark. And I've since then I've laminated that bookmark and I've got it in my grandmother's Bible. I took the book. It was we're used to maybe getting stuff every now and then. I'm sure you did the same way as a r as your profession.
Yes, sir. And I put it on the shelf. And I just kind of but the Holy Spirit kept pulling me back. to it and I'm like what you know like man so I finally one day I picked it up And opened it up, started reading, and I read his testimony in the book. And I said, wow, his testimony sounds just like me.
You know, it sounds a lot like me.
So then I started flipping through. I'm like, wow, well this guy sounds like me had still didn't pay attention to who wrote it. And he's a movie producer, by the way. He produced Lost in Space and some other pretty big movies.
So. Uh Long story short, it's a 30-day boot camp that teaches you gets you in the way of number one, I think prayer is the most important thing that you can do. That's the only way you can have a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. Power of prayer. It's the only way you can do it.
You've got to sit down and pray and talk to God every day. Start off my day with that and then read my Bible. And it gives you in a, it's like working out, you know. Once you get started, It becomes a habit.
Well, then the habit, then the Holy Spirit, I dare somebody to do it for 30 days. Because I tell people this: I say, hey, if you don't want your life to change, you're happy where you're at today, then don't do this. Because if you do this for 30 days, I promise you it's going to change. It will change. The Holy Spirit will grab a hold of you and it will change.
You can't do it and it not.
So it's kind of funny, right? In one, I appreciate you put the challenge out there to men because it seems like to get men to commit to anything in today's world is a challenge. But that's like our man camp. I'll tell you a quick story about Lex Luger in a moment. But like our man camp, you know, I was told a story one time where the wife was encouraging the man to come to camp, and he's like, I'm good.
And her response was, but you can't get better. Ow, ouch. And true story, that was a true story. That's what, and how I heard that story was: he was at camp. He's like, I'm good, honey.
I don't need to go to that camp. Man, I'm good. I'm good. Oh, but you can't get better. But the funny story about Luger is: so, Luger gets a jail chaplain, his last time in jail, befriended him, became his friend.
And his name's Steve Baskins. And he eventually leads Lex to the foot of the cross. He eventually leads Lex in a hotel room where he'd almost had a drug overdose six months earlier. That same hotel room, that same couch, leads him to the foot of the cross. He eventually moves into Steve's basement.
Well, Lex is getting up to go to the gym one day, and Steve's like, hey, where are you going? He's like, You know, buff buffed Lex Luger, you know, the chiseled Lex Luger says, What? Head of the gym. He goes, No, no, no. Hey, we hadn't had our Bible time yet.
He goes, What are you talking about? No, we need our hour. You know, we need our Bible time. We need to pray and read our Bible and discuss. And Lex, like, Okay, so he does it.
So Lex, as naive as he is, like his first time ever darkening the doors of a church is at age 46. Like legit, for real, right?
So naive Lex thinks, well, every Christian gets up, you know. First thing in the morning and does their hour, or what, however, long, right? But oh no, like he quickly learned: no, not every believer or professed believer does that.
So I appreciate the challenge. And so, one highlight from the book, and I'm going to come over to Mitch and his role with Richard Children's Racing. Want to highlight from the book for you? Like, one, how did it most impact you? This book.
Would you say? Is understanding what it's like, what it is like to have. A personal relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Okay. And having something having that the Holy Spirit guide me in my steps. And as far as the book itself, You know, obviously the prayers, the 18 prayers are in there, but the first one on the family prayer is to your wife. And I can't read it. today.
Without breaking down today. And then I told you earlier that I went through it again with a friend about a year later. And then it went to my prayer that stuck out the most was to my boy or my family, my kids. And same kind of thing. There's nothing, it's like reading the Bible.
There's 31 Proverbs in the Bible. There's 31 days in most months.
So there's no clue. There's not a better. Self-help book there that they can possibly be. If you want more wisdom, there you go. There you go.
So it's just getting in it. But you know, I've done that now for four years.
So how many times? Is that 50, 60 times I've read Proverbs?
Okay. But it's something new every single day. Every single time you read it, right? Every single time.
Something new is highlighted. And I'm looking at the book.
So there's daily devotion, daily prayer you mentioned. And then here's what I really like. I'm looking at action steps, right? Yeah. You know, I tell people all the time: I go, you know, I said preaching last Sunday morning.
I said, I give you information. I give you education, but the real key is application. Application. Action. Taking action.
Going out of here after Sunday service and putting action to what you just heard in the Sunday sermon, right? That's the challenge for all of us, right? All right, Mitch, let me come over to you here before we get to our questions.
So what's your role with Richard Tilda's racing? Yeah, I pretty much handle it. The social media for Mike's the Hometown Foundation, our group. That's the name of it, Hometown Foundation. Hometown Foundation.
And we started again with our Big Men's Fellowship 2023. And yeah, just to handle that to all getting the guys up to date on what we've got going on, what we're planning to do. We've done some charity events. We've even done some, we're at the Davison County shelter over the fall and crisis ministry, and we did some lunch for everybody. Should do some outreaches and stuff as well.
Okay, we'll try to get our men out and do that stuff. Mitch is being a little bit humble. He takes care of all Hometown Foundation is just what we have. And Mitch. He puts it out on social media everywhere.
I mean, like I told you earlier, my social media, I think I'm doing social media when I'm texting somebody.
So I'm not into social media at all. And no offense to it. That's the way it is, right? Right. Mitch handles all that, and he pretty much directs the show and runs it for us and has taken that on voluntarily because we're cheap.
So it's a. Oh, man. It's a. An awesome thing. We've got a group of men that are involved in this whole thing.
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So I know you know what's your big event? And it's a weekly Bible study there. Where's the Bible study at? Yeah, we do it in the RCR Museum. Which is located where?
In Welcome. In Welcome. Yeah, which is North Carolina for those. In Winston and Lexington, about right in the middle.
Okay, Welcome. Because this show, the podcast goes 109 countries. Oh, wow.
So, yeah.
So they need to know where Welcome is. You're welcome to come to Welcome. Welcome, yes. Yeah, there's a sign that says welcome to Welcome, North Carolina. Welcome to Welcome.
Okay. All right.
So they're in the museum. The Richard Childers Racing Museum. Yep. Okay. Every Tuesday night.
Starts at what time? At 7 p.m. And we always open at? At 6:30.
Okay. Yeah. And we usually try to stop at 8, but like Mike says, we try to start weaning down at 8. We're out by 8:15, 8:30. But a lot of guys just love hanging around fellowship after the end.
Which is important for guys to fellowship together. And because I think you said you average about, on average, 60, 70 guys on a weekly basis. Yes, sir. Which is amazing. You've had them as big as, I think, 100.
Oh, yeah. And the big event is 700, 800 guys, right? Yeah. Yeah, we've had such a good turnout at the annual events, so we just decided to do the Bible studies. And we always know when we have a big turnout crowd because we've got like 100 chairs in the museum.
And when we're out of chairs, we're at 100. Yeah, yeah. Nice. All right.
Well, that's amazing.
So if somebody's traveling through Wellcome or lives around Wellcome or might be an hour or two or three away from Wellcome, Mike, how can we? They find out or miss either. Just show up. It's every Tuesday night. I mean, you have a web.
Well, so website, social media. Oh, sorry. Yeah, absolutely. With Facebook, we have Hometown Men's Fellowship.
Okay. And that, you know, we always do a post there and say, hey, tonight we're in John 16 or what we're talking about. But the Times, Facebook. All the other platforms, too. I still call it Twitter.
But personally, I'm just old school. Yeah, we're not on Twitter or X right now, but yeah, we do use YouTube and we put a lot of our Bible studies and big events on that. We even had a. How do they find you on YouTube? YouTube is Hometown Foundation.
Hometown Foundation. And you'll be able to tell by the logo, black and white logo, there's a cross. The T is a cross.
So you'll be able to identify that pretty quick.
Okay. Yeah. See that? And yeah, absolutely. Anybody welcome to come to welcome and join our Bible studies.
I mean, we literally have. Men of all ages. Men of all ages. Oh, sure. Yeah.
We have high school. Young men from high school to a 90-year-old. Yeah. Oldest guy. And I know you said last year they kind of keep their eyes open.
I know you said last year you did for the first time your big event live stream for the big event.
So if they plug into your YouTube or Facebook or show up in person, they get more information on that.
Well, incredible. A 30-day boot camp for men, the first hour, unleash God's power. Mark Cook is their foundation that the Bible study, the men do each and every week. And so, all right, well, let's in our last few minutes here together, Mitch, maybe I'll come to you first and then we'll come over to Mike. Random question for me.
I don't know what you got for me, but let's shift gears here and turn the table and give you the opportunity to ask me a question. All right, all right. We'll go totally off the grid, maybe. What about you and Ivan in Greensboro Coliseum? Can you think of a memorable match in Greensboro?
In the cage. In the cage. In the cage, in the Greensboro Coliseum against the Rock and Roll Express. Oh, wow.
And, you know, they for Rock and Roll Ricky and Robert first came in. You know, I think they came out of Memphis Wrestling, I think, with the King Jerry Lawler there in Memphis, I believe. Don't quote me on that. There's going to be some wrestling aficionado right now that hears this and goes, that's not true, Nikita. The wrestling fans are the greatest.
They always correct me on everything.
Well, the same way with the NASCAR fans, they're the same way. They're the same fan.
So I got to share this joke with you. I was going to do it over on the Mad Up show, but now's the time to do it. When I first came to the South, when I left Siberia, ha ha ha. When I left northern Minnesota, when I left Minnesota, came to North Carolina, I don't know how this is, but somehow we got into a conversation about education, and they asked me what the three R's were. And I'm like, well, hello, you know, I graduated with All-American At Morgan State University in Northern Minnesota, right?
And I'm like, excuse me, I go, I go reading, writing, and arithmetic. I mean, who doesn't know that? They go, no, you're in the South now. And I'm like So education is different in the South. And I promise you, they said, and with this vernacular, well, I said, well, now you need to do the three R.
There's wrestling.
Well, in this order, racing, wrestling, and religion. That was the three R. And they were totally serious. I was like, okay, got it. The longer I spent in the South, where I've been longer than anywhere else now in North Carolina, I'm a Carolinian, I guess, was racing.
Wrestling. Not wrestling. No, it's wrestling. Wrestling. It's rassling.
And religion. And I'm like, got it.
So anyway, all that to say, so Ricky Robert come in, and they weren't really on the map yet, you might say. And it was determined by the promoter we want to get these guys on the map. And so that, and we were, you know, world tag team champions. And what better way to get them on the map than for them to win the world tag team belts? And so we that executive decision was made.
The thing about the Greensboro Coliseum and the cage match was, and I later found this out from a guy who got into wrestling who was in the audience that night, Mike. was was it was in the cage Well I can't give you details of the actual finish itself, but at some point, for whatever reason, Ricky's climbing to maybe the top turnbuckle or something, maybe to come off the top turnbuckle. And I go over, and I'm 285 pounds, jacked up 8% body fat, pretty strong, right?
So I shove him over the top of the cage. You know, he's got a 12-15-foot fall to the concrete floor, right? And I found out later, one of the guys that got into wrestling was there that night, raced down to the ring, jumped the barricade to help Ricky get back in the ring because Ivan and Nikita were destroying his partner, Robert, who's now in the ring by himself in the cage, beating Robert to a pulp. Robert's bleeding, Robert is being beaten, right? Senseless, right?
Because they may have just won the tag team belts, but we're going to leave them guys laying and make the fan and gain more, what they call at the time, more heat on us, right? For the fans to hate those dirty Russians that much more.
So when they finally got the cage door open, Ricky's down selling on the concrete. They, of course, grab that security gets that guy because he was going to try to push Ricky back up like back over him somehow to help, right?
So anyway, Greensboro Coliseum, favorite memory. And I want to tag something real quick onto that because recently, dear friend of mine, by the name of Sting, wrestler named Sting. had his retirement match in that Greensboro Coliseum. And so I was fortunate to be able to work it out. I was preaching that morning, but got there that night in time to honor him and to be there.
So I'm sitting, I'm sitting front row behind Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone, right? Two legendary announcers. Front row, right behind him. And off to my right is the nature boy Ric Flair sitting on a chair. And off to my left is the legendary Ricky the Dragon steamboat.
Oh, yeah. And Stings in the Ring. And it hit me for a moment. I'm like, as I'm sitting there and looking around, 17,000 screaming people, I'm like.
So, this is what, like, to be a fan. Yeah. And why, because in my mind, I'm like, I would have been in that ring against Rick Flare or against Ricky Stable or tag teamed with Sting and never knew what that experience was like to sit in the audience and watch a match. And so I got at his retirement, I got to experience that from a fan's perspective. to sit in that audience and just take it all in.
not being in the ring and being the center of attention. but being in the audience and getting a fan's perspective on it. It's pretty cool. Pretty cool. And then one little last caveat to that, as I'm leaving that night.
I'm walking out and I looked over and I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, you know, they've redone the Greensboro Coliseum, but there's still a lot of the old there.
So there's the old dressing room, which was known as the babyface, the good guy dressing room, right? And so I'm like, and there's nobody around. And I'm walking out, I'm like, so I went in just for posterity moment. And just to reminisce, I'm like, man, all the times I spent in this dressing room, all the stories, conversations, laughter, and everything we had. And it was just a moment for me.
It was a really cool moment. Yeah, it's really cool. That's incredible. Anyway, great question. Nobody's ever asked me that before.
That's a great question. Thank you. All right, Mike, last question. And, you know, then we're going to be out of time, but, or your question, I should say.
Well, um. Where where when did you or or have you always Find God.
Okay, that's a great question.
So, you know, I kind of jokingly say for the people who don't know, I'm not from Russia, I'm not. I didn't grow up in Russia or Siberia. I grew up in Minnesota, but I didn't grow up in church either. That's not to say I never went to church. But I didn't grow up in church.
And it's not to say that I never heard the story about Jesus. I had heard the story about Jesus, you know, like many people in America, at least back in the day, not so much now, but back in the day. And so I was familiar with the story, you know, and I tell people the Magi, you know, the spikes through the hands, spikes through the feet, spirit through the side. I knew the story. But the story had never made the eighteen inch trip from my head Down to my heart, right?
Knew the story. Had an intellectual understanding of the story, but that didn't change or transform my life.
So I retire. Unusual part of my story is: I leave at the age of 33 from active wrestling in Ring, which is. Not normal for that business. Those guys usually go in 30s, 40s, 50s, some of them into their 60s. Really?
But I make an executive decision leave at 33. And so it's 1992, November 92, my last match against a guy by the name of Big Van Vader, 450-pound Van Vader, right? I did get injured my last that last night. He injured my neck. I got a hernia from picking him up 450 miles.
Had hernia surgery, rehabilitating my neck over Thanksgiving Christmas. And I just said, you know what? I'm done. I'm done. I'm just not going back, right?
And so now I'm on this quest in 1993 of what life holds next for Nikita Koloff. I had a gym at the time. I'm like, ah, that ain't, I'm not going to spend my time in these four walls. There's got to be something else. I met a Christian couple through some other.
Uh, some other business ventures I was involved in who had been inviting me to their church, and it was just my just a divine God moment where I called them one day and said, Hey, I'll be there Sunday. I'm coming to your church Sunday, coming to visit your church. Great, we'll be there, we'll meet you there. And they did. And it was in that moment, sitting in that auditorium, that I had, you might say, that aha moment of the light, realizing.
I was successful but unfulfilled. Couldn't figure out what was missing until that moment. I'm like. The story needs to make the, like, I need to invite Jesus into my heart.
So I was first went to the altar, on my knees, confessing, repenting, 17 October 1993, asking Jesus to come into my life. Had a genuine encounter with him, and man, and I just fast-forward to today, life's just never been the same since from making that decision. That morning on that day. And yeah, and that just set me on, obviously, as you guys know, a whole different path, a whole different destiny, you know, and lots of stories between then and now. Just lots and lots and lots of stories.
So, yeah.
That's cool. That's awesome. Why are you guys grinning when we talk about the story making the 18th strip from the head to the heart? Yeah, we talk about that a lot. You know, you got.
Yeah, people Or, guys, you know, we probably talked about it last week, go to church every Sunday. Right. You got your, you even go to Bible studies, you do all this. Are you checking the box? Are you just doing it to check the box?
I need to go. I need, I've not been good, right? I need to go. You know, you go on Sunday. And that's what's happened.
Ferment myself. Is the difference of what you're talking about, the 18-inch travel? Is by praying and that getting that holy, getting the Holy Spirit that relationship and reading my Bible. Read your Bible and pray. And when it moves to your heart, you can't explain that to people what the difference is.
And you can't give it to them. You can't give it to me, and I can't give it to you. The only way we can get it is to get it from Jesus. Personal decision. And when that's what we talk about, it's like, man, okay, yeah, you got it here.
We all. You know, is it here? Are you living it? Because everything comes out of your body. Comes from here.
Yeah, the heart. I talk about it all the time. Like, I talk, you know, the heart is central to this whole story. It's key. Yeah.
And it's central to this entire story, is the heart. We see it over and over and over again. One quick last story before we sign off. To that point, so to one of our man camps, we had a guy come who is chairman of the deacons. Oh yeah.
Chairman of the deacons, right? Benedict's whole life. Yeah. Worked his way up to chairman of the deacons. But you know what happened at that camp?
There's gonna be no surprise to you. In that setting, when you get away from all life's distractions, we ask these guys. Put your phones away. You know, we don't confiscate them, but we say, put your phone away. We don't want you to be distracted.
We want you to focus on your relationship with God. with Jesus, right?
Well, lo and behold, during that five days, God reveals to him that the story has never made the trip. He's religious. He's religious, yeah. But he has no relationship. And so the chairman of the deacons at Mancamp gets saved.
right has a genuine real encounter with Christ. and goes home a change man. Never to be the same again, right?
Well, yeah, you know, that's just what it's about. It is, at the end of the day.
So, Mike Dylan. And Mitch Class Richard Childish racing, Childis Racing. I'm trying to make sure I didn't screw that up, and I just did. I think I did Richard Childis Racing. Thank you guys for being a part of QA with Koloff.
And again, I want to encourage you guys to go over to the It's Time to Man Up, listen to the full story over there. You're going to be really blessed by more of the story. You can hear a couple stories of Richard's experience behind the wheel of stepping in for Dale Earnhardt and filling in those shoes, so to speak, but behind the wheel. First hour, Unleash God's Power, 30-day boot camp. Mitch, one last time.
Facebook, where can they go to find out more? Check us out, Hometown Foundation on YouTube, and Hometown Men's Fellowship on Facebook. God bless you guys. Thank you for being here today. And for all of you out there, my challenge to you today is go out today and just have a God-filled and live a God-blessed day.
Until next time. If you are a business owner and would like to advertise your company or product on the Man Up Show and/or QA with Koloff. Contact me directly, Nakita Koloff at Koloff.net.
