Man Up with Nikiat Koholoff

Once a world champion wrestler, now a champion for Christ. Once the Russian nightmare, now the devil's worst nightmare. And your tag team partner, Nikita Kolov. It's time to man up.

The former Russian nightmare, now the devil's worst nightmare, Nikita Kolov here. And I want to welcome you to our brand new show. And what you're going to hear each and every week are stories that will help to spread the gospel and build God's kingdom.

Real stories with real men who realize it is time to man up. Today you'll hear excerpts from some of our upcoming shows, starting with my own personal testimony as I was sharing it with the million-dollar man, Ted DiBiase. Let me explain a little something to you that you seem to be missing. You see, for many years in the wrestling world in WCW, I gave the perception to the people that I was this big bald-headed bad guy from Moscow. As you know, I mean, I would talk to the people that said, and they would look at me like, what was I talking about? You see, I gave that perception, but that was not the reality, Ted. The reality I found in October of 1993. You see, I'm not from Moscow, Ted.

I'm not from Moscow, Soviet Union. I'm just a guy from Minneapolis, Minnesota. And let me tell you what I found.

Let me just tell you a real quick story, that I know some of these people here will relate to. You see, when I retired from professional wrestling in 1993, I, too, looked back on everything. I mean, I traveled the world. I had the World Championship belts around my waist. I was in the sports circle with the nature boy, Ric Flair, Ted. I was in there with the superpower, Dusty Rose. I was in there with the Dusty Rose. You know what, Tony, there's a storm brewing across this great land of ours.

Dusty Rose, the American Dream, and Nikita Kolos are in the eye of that storm. And I have the power that you're talking about. But let me tell you something. In 1993, as I was reviewing what I'd done with my life up to that point, I realized, even though I had all the stuff, I realized something was missing, like Uncle Ivan was talking about. And I walked into a church service in October 1993. And, you know, Ric Flair was very famous for saying, you want to be the man, you gotta beat the man, and walk that aisle. Kolos, the next time I see you, if God is my witness, you'll be mine.

Well, I'm gonna tell you something. October 1993, I walked an aisle. But it wasn't to beat Ric Flair, Ted Vibiase, The Stinger, Nikita, why don't we just do it face-to-face, right now, in the middle of the ring. I'm waiting for you, pal.

He wants Kolos. Lex Luger, Dusty Rose, the Road Warriors, or any of them. I walked an aisle in 1993, and this is what gave me the real power. I walked an aisle, and I bowed in need of the champion for the world, Jesus Christ. And he became my personal Savior.

Recently, I had Jeff Terrell, founder of Faith Force Ministry, in the studio with me. And he made a trip to Russia. Now, as many of you know, or some of you don't, I'm known as the Russian nightmare, having never been to Russia myself. However, Jeff did make a trip to Russia. And even though I'm the Russian nightmare, here's the reality.

For some, it is a real nightmare over in Russia. And I asked Jeff, I said, hey, is there a, like, a wow moment? Like, wow, God, you showed up and did this.

And here's what Jeff had to say. And so we were sharing, and I looked in the back of the room, and I could see this girl in the very back, and she had the saddest look on her face of anybody I've ever seen. And I remember thinking, I've got to go talk to this girl. And the Holy Spirit said, go get you a translator and go back there. So I grabbed one of the translators, and we walked back there after the program was over, and I said, I introduced myself, and she introduced herself as Natasha. And I said, Natasha, you look so sad.

What's wrong? She said, I had nothing to be happy about. She was an orphan. She had been sucked up into the sex slave trade. She had a one-year-old little boy with her, and she was pregnant at the time. And she had managed to escape from her captors. She'd managed to get out, escape, and get away, and get to this ministry center. And so we just, you know, we just talked to her and ministered to her, and I just said, Lord, you know, what do I do here? You know, I need to help her, you know.

And so I started praying for her, and I said, Lord, please help Natasha. And as clear as I'm talking to you right now, Nikita, he said to me, that's why I sent you here. Jaxson Ryker, WWE superstar, with the tag team Forgotten Sons. You'll find him on Friday night on SmackDown. Talks about his start in wrestling. Here's what he had to say.

Now give us a little, little backdrop. So you've been, you've been wrestling for how long? It's 20, 20 years, actually the August 28th will be 20 years. I had my first match in 2000, yes, right? Independence show in Lenoir, North Carolina, the armory in Lenoir, North Carolina.

It's actually torn down now, but there was probably 400 people there. The guy who trained me took me under his wing, said, well, you're having your first match. And this was like two months after training. Luckily, he knew what he was doing. Yeah, and I kind of called on quick.

It was something I called on really quick. I watched as a kid since I was five. It's what I wanted to do. And then I just chased my dream from my dad. My dad said, you got to graduate high school first.

You can't do it before then, but once you graduate high school, it's a free game. I never wanted to go to college. Never wanted to go to the military, but once 9-11 happened, I did. You know, it's okay.

I need to serve my country and give back. Wow. And so, but yeah, I've been wrestling almost 20 years. I'm 38 now. It's, man, it's been a blessing for me. It's been a great platform as well. That to me, you know, to be a pro wrestler yourself one day and the dream was fulfilled in 20 years.

Yeah, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, man. Like, I mean, it's given me a chance to see the world, just experience some, you know, crazy characters. I've got a chance to work with, you know, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair and Sting and like all these guys that I grew up watching. And I got a chance to wrestle Sting in 2012. So, here I am standing in the ring and I remember me and my dad were just, we loved Sting.

Loved him. And I'm standing in the ring and his music hits. I'm like, I'll just look around. I'm like, this is real. Like, almost, almost surreal. It was very surreal. Yeah, and he was so awesome and so giving and, you know, a man of God, of course.

Yeah. And like, we talked about that stuff. We talked about wrestling everything, but it was just like, it's been a blessing.

Just a great career. Yeah, that's, you know, you talk about about Sting being a man of God. Some people may not know the story, but you know, of course, I left wrestling until the end of 1992, beginning in 1993.

Eleven months later, found myself at an altar, surrendering my life to Jesus. I didn't see any of the guys. Fast forward to 1995, December of 1995. They're wrestling in the Charlotte Coliseum.

I heard they're gonna be in town. I grew up my hair. I mean, I had a mullet, dude. I shaved my mustache, my Fu Manchu off. And I just went down, thought, I'm gonna have some fun. I don't think anyone will recognize me.

Most of them didn't. The only one that actually recognized me was Lex Luger. He goes, I'm like, dude, how'd you? He goes, your eyes, bro.

You can't, can't change those eyes. Right? Well, I cornered Sting for about a half hour.

Let this be, to the listeners out there, let this be a note to you. I cornered him for a half hour just like, I'll say it this way. I kind of threw up on him all about Jesus, right? Like I had him pinned in the corner. Till he finally goes, dude, I gotta go get ready for a match. I gotta go. Right?

I'm like, all right, but I'm gonna, I'll, we'll continue this conversation, right? And but little did I know, you know, I feel like I planted some seeds because then fast forward to August of 1998 and I'd heard that he had surrendered his life and gave his life to Jesus. Frank Shelton, Frank Shelton Global Ministries, a man that is making a real difference for God's kingdom. Had him recently on the show and he talks about his experience up on Capitol Hill. I was born on Capitol Hill, President's Day weekend, February, a snowy day in 1972, and we are five generation DC Washingtonian. So a lot of people come to Washington to work or vacation or tourist, but I joke I was born to work here. My mom literally almost went into labor with me in the US Capitol. She was employed with the US Capitol Historical Society and my dad was employed with the US Capitol Police, so they both were working at my favorite building in the world outside of the US Capitol, and I just felt like God had put me right there and I was going to go on the politics, preach, or protect the president. Not in that order. I will say this to all you listeners, the Bible says whatever your hand finds to do, do it for God's glory.

So it's not the title, it's really our testimony, but I haven't said all of that. You know, some people are mechanics and accountants and lawyers and etc., but I was going to go into politics. So for 18 years I worked, I worked for the US Congress, I worked for the US Senate, I was a fundraiser for four years for George W Bush at the Republican National Committee, I was an aide to the governor of Maryland, and then I volunteered in four White Houses, and I also then thought about doing the law enforcement. My family has five generation DC cops, and you know this there Nikita, but for your listeners, my family has protected the last 26 of 28 United States presidents. They go all the way back to Abraham Lincoln.

Wow. It was my ancestor, Joseph Gayle Shelton, that escorted Lincoln to Ford's Theatre that night. He was two doors down, and when John Wilkes Booth shot the most powerful person on the planet in the back of the head, it was a Shelton who was one of the first to respond and was one of four men named in two obituaries.

He's recorded in two different newspapers that night to literally have hand-carried Abraham Lincoln across the street bleeding, and then helped gingerly lay him down across the street in the Peterson house where he died about five hours later. So having said all that, my dad was the assistant chief of the US Capitol Police, and you've been there out of 3,000 police officers in Washington with the Capitol Police. My dad retired as number two in charge out of 3,000. He was the assistant chief, and so I was thinking about joining the Secret Service, and I was going to be six-generation DC police in a room going all the way back to the 1860s, and I had the interview with the Secret Service, and for our listeners, the special agent in charge said, Frank, you'd make one beep of a special agent. I knew what he meant, but even at college I had the Clint Eastwood in the line-of-fire Secret Service poster in my dorm room.

I mean, you know, a lot of people try to make a living. My goal was to take a bullet. Recently I interviewed one of my best friends on the entire planet, well next to Jesus of course, wrestling legend superstar Lex Luger. We talk about his amazing 15-year career in wrestling, but even more amazing, his story of redemption, and here's an excerpt from that conversation. I would step away from wrestling at the tail end of 1992, and officially in my mind retire from wrestling in the beginning part of 1993.

No fanfare of sorts. It was just a decision I made, walking away under my own terms. Some have coined me the the Barry Sanders of pro wrestling.

The football fan may appreciate or understand that, but that decision separated you and I from essentially thinking 1993. I think I saw you again at the Charlotte Coliseum in 1995, but then I wouldn't see you again this near as I can recall until June of 2006 back in Phoenix, Arizona, but not this time, not to hit you upside the head with a belt, but we were at a conference hosted by Larry and Wendy Karachuk called AIM, Athletes International Ministries, and you and I would come back together, meet once again basically about 11 years later at this Christian Athletes Conference, because something happened in your life in April of 2006. Do you want to take a couple minutes and just share for our listeners what happened? Yeah, in June that you're talking about, of 2006, I was a brand new baby Christian. Just six weeks prior to that conference I got saved on a road to Damascus salvation. Back in my wrestling career, obviously went well, made tons of money, bought lots of stuff, had a very, what people would look at as a very successful full life, but I always felt like there was something missing. I felt like I had a full life but an empty heart, but I did not have any idea what was missing because I grew up unchurched and never had any kind of relationship or really knowledge of what I call religious people, and in the course of feeling like I had an empty heart, even though I was supposed to by worldly standards have everything, I started even pursuing what Solomon in the book Ecclesiastes calls the pleasure-seeking chasing the wind chase. When I should have everything but still felt an emptiness, I chased after with a lot of self-destructive things, which I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with, with so-called young, successful, sometimes famous people, drugs, alcohol, women, and I went down to what I know now is basically the path of destruction, was really in a life and death struggle with those things from around 01 through 06, even end up in and out of jail on felony drug charges. My life had taken a complete downward spiral behind the scenes, which a lot of people didn't know.

I hid it well from a lot of people, but it really gone downhill and I was really at that point, at any point could have ended, so last time I went to jail, I met a jail chaplain named Pastor Steve Baskins, and he introduced me to a pastor who ended up becoming my earthly spiritual dad. The week before I got saved, Dr. Frady, I went through a service and heard the end of the Sermon on the Mount, which was Matthew 7, 24 through 27, talking about is your life built on the sand or the rock, basically. Jesus being the rock, and there's a great quote by Edward Mote said, on Christ, the solid rock, I stand, all else is sinking sand.

I realized in that service that my whole life listening to Dr. Frady speak was built on sinking sand, that's why I had this emptiness inside of me. He did an altar call, it was a Baptist Church, and I ran out the back door, my heart was pounding, I didn't know what happened, the Holy Spirit had gotten a hold of me, but I ran out the door and thought I'd escaped, but obviously I hadn't, the Holy Spirit found me back to a hotel I was living at the time, and a week later in the same hotel room, I could have overdosed so many times of the lifestyle I was living back then, and the high-risk lifestyle I was living, Pastor Steve came over, I called him up and said I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, something's wrong with me, he came over, shared the gospel with me, we got down on our knees in that same hotel room over the same couch I used to party on, and I gave my life to Jesus and surrendered to him, and he became my Lord and Savior, and my life has never been the same since that emptiness was gone. Man Up is about real talk with real men, but today I have a special treat as Brian Johnson's wife, Jamie, joins us on the show, and we're talking about husbands praying with their wives, and here's what Jamie had to say. Jamie, let me ask you, we're talking about husband and wife praying together, he mentioned early on that you're a praying woman, and I was kind of teasing you that you're the glue that holds his family together, or the business together, okay, so he, he's the spiritual leader of the home, you're the glue that holds the business together, but let me ask you, Jamie, so, so you hear these two men talk, real talk with real men, and we're talking about, you know, men leading their families as servant leaders, praying with their wife and children, how do you feel about that, how do you feel about having a praying husband who'll pray not just for you, but also pray with you, and pray with you daily out loud, how do you feel about that?

Well, Nikita, for one, it gives you, number one, the most confidence, because you know that someone literally has your back daily, and you are set forth in the world with a whole different mindset, you're not, you don't feel alone, you don't feel like, oh, I've got to go tell my husband that my worries, or tell, you know, whatever, my family, my worries, you've been prayed for in advance, and that's powerful to me, and I teach, you know, my daughters and my son, you know, this is how, this is the way it's supposed to be, regardless of what the world says, it's popular right now, this is what works, we're a testimony to that, I don't know a lot of husband and wife that can work together daily, and own your own business, and go home, and learn how to leave it at the door, become husband and wife again, and go back into the family unit, and continue to teach your family, but it's got to be my most, the closest virtue is the crown in my, in my, you know, family, if we could not do what we do without it, we know God's the reason why our business is successful, our marriage is successful, there's no doubt in either of our minds, and we stop sometimes and say, you know, this might be going bad this week, but let's stop and remember all the good, because the good usually outweighs the bad, and we know that prayer is a huge reason for that, I mean of course we're given free will, and we go out about our day making our own choices, but you just have the utmost confidence as a woman out in this world, especially in my line of work, we were joking earlier, I live in a man's world, I'm in the car business, but our daughter has been taught to be a leader, and I go out every day, and I try to try to be a leader as well, because my husband gives me that confidence, and I've got that beautiful background backing me up, and I've got that prayer backing me up, and that, that's so reassuring sometimes, there's days that that's all you have. So do you believe in divine appointments? Well, coming up, Morris Scobee talks about his divine appointment with Franklin Graham, which ultimately will lead to him becoming a personal aid and assistant to Reverend Billy Graham, and his wife Ruth, for 40 plus years. So did you meet Franklin at some point, or how did that? Well, I, I saw him on campus a lot, it was a smaller campus, and we had chapel every day, so I saw him coming and going, and I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be the child of such an international superstar, well known around the world, and so I also sensed that he knew what it was like to be the child of a celebrity, and, and that he had to have some caution in just who to let in to be a friend, and that sort of thing, so I really just started trusting the Lord that if it was God's will, we would meet, and that I wasn't going to do anything to make it happen. And I think for whatever our prayers are about certain things and aspects in our life, that's going to be the toughest, when, when we really decide that we want to take it to another level, and that we're going to pray that if it's God's will, it's going to work out, and then let the Lord align your path, so to speak, to make whatever in your life is supposed to be His will for you, and so at some point, I think I probably realized it wasn't going to happen, and that was okay, and I saw him, we crossed paths a lot, but he always looked down, and he was just so bashful that first year he was there, and so it got all the way to the last day of school, and I had a 6 p.m. engineering class, and I was driving off campus, and I realized it was a Friday, the end of the school year, and I should probably get my campus mail, so I wheeled into the post office and ran up the stairs, and I was down fiddling with my little combination lock on my little post office box when somebody came in the door and stopped and looked over and said, hey, aren't you Maurice Gobi? And I looked, and it was Franklin Graham. So, you know, it's a wonderful illustration of praying and waiting, and then if it is in fact God's will, it's going to work out according to His will, and so Franklin had been hearing about me on campus and was hoping to meet, and in the last 15 minutes, his last 15 minutes on campus and my last 15 minutes on campus, and the campus was mostly 90% gone, so here again, when you're making a matter of prayer according to God's perfect will for your life, then things will seriously happen. That's amazing. I mean, that's what we would call a divine appointment. Do you believe in miracles?

Well, here's Pastor Chad Nelson to share his story on how he was miraculously healed of multiple sclerosis. We're together that night. You come running back in, and all of a sudden you have mobility in your hands, and you think, yeah, your ears. You come up and pray for me, which, you know, is a little intimidating in itself.

I mean, here's the rest of the night here. Put his big paw on your head and say, thank you for you, I guess, and I said, sure, and, you know, as I had put my hands up, it's like God took a filter and ran it through my body, so the best way I can explain it, and started with my head, and I felt it go all the way down to my toes, and I think one of the first things I said to you is, Nick, someone turned up the music, and you're like, no, no one's turned up the music. I said, well, it sounds so loud to me, but I wasn't used to, you know, my ears basically popped, and I wasn't, you didn't realize how bad your hearing was until you were set free of your sickness, you know, and the hearing loss, and all of a sudden you go, wow, I didn't realize how bad it was, and I'm looking at my hands, and I'm moving them, and I'm fully stretching them out, something I have not been able to do in three years, and it felt like, the best way I can explain MS for me is someone took a bungee cord and wrapped it around me. My body just felt hunched up, and I felt like that cord was instantly cut, and I could stretch out, it felt so good, and the first thing I said is, I gotta run, because, Nick, I've not been able to run, or anything like that in years, so I took out that door, and I ran all the way down a big hill, all the way down to this big place called Praise Barn, ran all the way back, and up that hill, you know, it's a mile and a half, but it felt so good, because it's something I had not been able to do in years, and just instant freedom. What you just heard was a sampling of stories, I mean a story of rescue from sex slavery, the fulfillment of dreams, redemption and salvation, divine appointments, the power of prayer, supernatural healing, these and many more stories you'll hear each and every week, real talk with real men. What's your story? If you don't have a story, today's the day to surrender your life to Jesus. You know why? Because it is time to man up.