Q&A with Koloff - #19

This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology, and we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network.

It's about to start in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening, and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Nafkeeta Kolof here. Questions and answers. Q&A with Kolof, the devil's nightmare. A special intro for Q&A with Kolof today. Why? Because the story you're going to hear today, the questions and answers, I assure you, you will not be expecting to hear what you're going to hear.

In fact, it may even be a jaw-dropping moment. Stay tuned. Victor Turnbull. Victor, welcome to Q&A with Kolof. Thank you very much for having me.

It's great to have you here. Now, you are out, Victor, you're out in the, correct me if I'm wrong, but the great state of Washington, right? Yes, I'm in Vancouver, Washington. Vancouver, Washington. And I don't know, I'm not certainly great on geography, but that's like kind of just across the border from Portland, Oregon? Is that kind of near there? Yeah, you go 15 minutes across the I-5 bridge and you're in Oregon.

God, you're only 15 minutes from the state line. I got you, okay. And Victor, you know, of course, we connected just not long ago.

You reached out to me through social media, Instagram, if my memory serves me correct, which it's still serving me, most of the time anyway. But hey, before we, I want to jump in on that and get to that, but before we do, tell our listeners, give our listeners just a little backdrop on Victor. Are you from out there? You've been a wrestling fan?

If so, for how long? I mean, just tell our listeners a little bit about Victor Turnbull. Well, I've been a wrestling fan since I was, I went to actually my first match when I was three years old.

Wow, okay. At the old Portland Sports Arena. Old Portland Sports Arena, and I remember coming out there for some of the shows, and as I remember, Don Owens was the main promoter out there in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, it was him and his brother, Elton. Elton I had never met, but I sure remember Don, in fact to this day I still say Don, when it came to paydays, Don gave us some of the best payoffs of any promoter in the business that I ever worked for. That's how I remember Don Owens. Yeah, Elton basically ran like Salem and Eugene.

Okay. And then Don pretty much handled the Portland area. Now, besides the Russian nightmare, Nikita Kolov, who are some of the other, so he's three years old, so let me jog your memory, who are some of the other wrestlers you remember out there in the Pacific Northwest? Well, the main one that I remember growing up, because I was a huge fan, was Jimmy Superfly Snuka. Okay, he was legendary, yep. I had my picture taken with him many times.

Of course, Jesse, the body's in terror. Yeah, I didn't realize he had spent some time out there in Portland. In fact, I read a story just recently, a story between him and Terry Funk. I think Terry at the time had the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. Jesse was maybe the local Heavyweight Champion there.

Yes, he was. Yeah, and he was, as I heard the story, he had like a 103-degree fever, and they were supposed to go a one-hour draw. And Jesse's like, Terry, there's no way.

There's just no way I can wrestle you for an hour. And Terry's like, brother, we'll make it happen. And as Jesse tells the story, Terry was unbelievable, just basically carried him through the entire match. In fact, in fact, for the fans out there, and you might even be able to visualize this, Victor, Jesse had his finishing move back in the day was a full Nelson. And he had Terry in a full Nelson for the last 15, 20, 30 seconds of the match. And the referee started calling for the bell, and all the people thought Jesse won the belt. He walks over to the referee to get the belt.

Terry had melted to the mat from the pressure of the full Nelson. And the ref goes over and awards Terry the belt, and the fans went crazy. They're like, no, Jesse won. And Jesse's like, no, I won. He goes, sorry, the time limit expired. He goes, but I heard him say I quit.

I heard him say I quit. It was just the greatest ending to an hour match. But the main part of that story is Jesse had a 103-degree fever. That's for the young wrestlers out there who might even listen to this show today. Hey, back in the day, man, you wrestled regardless, because if you didn't wrestle, you didn't get paid. You know, back in those days, like I say, you didn't work, you didn't get paid.

Yeah, that's exactly right. How about Billy Jack Keynes? Wasn't he big out there in the Northwest? Yes, I actually had the privilege of, I got to work out with Billy Jack in the gym quite a bit.

No way, come on. Yeah, because he would come to, just a quick little background. I was trained out here in Oregon by Jesse Barr. Yep, I remember Jesse, yes. And so he had a gym and a wrestling school at his dad's flea market.

Okay. And so upstairs was the gym and the wrestling ring and all of that. And Billy would come over and work out.

And I had a chance to lift weights and work out with Billy quite a few times, actually. And so you getting involved with Jesse, what did that lead to, Victor? Tell our listeners. Getting my rear end handed to me. Wait a minute, wrestling's all fake. Hang on here a minute.

Come on, what do you mean by that, Victor? I got tore up. I would come home at night. I would be so tired that I would have to have my girlfriend take off my boots. They wore you out. You said they wore you out, huh? Well, we trained, back in that day when I trained, we trained four and a half hours a day.

Wow. Between running, lifting weights, course ring work. So it was about four hours a day, six days a week. Well, and you remind me of a story of a guy named Lody, who some of the listeners may or may not be familiar with Lody. He wrestled with WCW, World Championship Wrestling, basically about 95 to 2,000, something like that, as part of Raven's Flock. And Lody, I didn't realize, he recently shared with me that his first four sessions in training and professional wrestling, essentially when he came back for his fifth time, the guy training goes, you're going to keep coming back, aren't you? He's like, well, yeah, I want to be a wrestler.

What do you mean? He goes, well, we spent the first four sessions just beating you up to try to run you off, but apparently you're not going to be run off. And that's how it was with me, because when I broke in, I was only 165 pounds. I was, as they used to call me back then when we were training, I was the runt of the litter. And we had guys from, the biggest was 340 on down. Wow. So how many years did you spend involved in the business then?

As far as active, about three years. And then I got injured. Yup. I've been involved in some aspect of it since I was 18. Okay. Because I want our listeners to realize and understand that wrestling is entertainment, but there are plenty of injuries that occur in a wrestling ring because it's not an exact science, right?

No, it's not. I mean, I got hurt. Quick story, a kid came from back east. Supposedly he was well-trained and he was practicing a pile driver and he didn't protect me. And I kept telling him, like, stop, stop, put me down.

This doesn't feel right. He says, no, no, no, go ahead. And he did it anyway.

And he dropped me on my head and crushed a vertebrae in my neck. Yup. Similar Stone Cold Steve Austin, right? Yes. And after that, I was done. Yup. Yeah. It was like, okay, I can go and continue to do this, but I mean, I have a family.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I still stayed. I still stayed, you know, I did, you know, anything that I could do.

Set up the ring, I'd carry the guy's bags. You know, I did, I'm still to this day, well, right now, with COVID, it's got everything messed up. But pre-COVID, I was working a couple different promotions out here doing the color commentary. Gotcha.

I gotcha. That's awesome. You've been involved for a long time now.

Yup. I mean, it's, it's been something that I've always wanted to do ever since I went to my first match. I mean, I still remember telling my mom, I want to do this someday.

This is something that I want to do. And I've known Sandy and Jesse, that whole family, I've known my whole life. And they took, they took really good care of me. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't know nothing about this business, but they taught me the proper way about the business to learn every aspect of the business that you can learn.

Old school. And the day that you think that you know everything, you might as well hang up your boots. That's right. That's right.

That's right. They taught you the old school psychology, the old ropes, and that's pretty amazing. Hey, before we, again, I do want to get to the message from Instagram, but before we do, we're going to transition there in just a moment. But for all our listeners out there, would you have a wrestling question or two, one or two for the Russian nightmare? Yeah, actually, how did you get started? Well, it's a very unusual way in that, you know, with no amateur wrestling background, no professional training, just a phone call from a dear buddy of mine, a good friend of mine by the name of Road Warrior Animal, who had broken in the business, was having some success, and a guy named Don Kornodle, who was Ivan Kolov's tag team, they were the NWA World Tag Team champions, and just basically said, they come up with a storyline for a nephew for Ivan and said, do you know any big guys who wouldn't mind shaving their head becoming a Russian?

I mean, that was the question. And I was like, I know the guy right now. So he called me, shared that story with me, gave me a phone number for a promoter here on the East Coast named Jim Crockett Jr., had a five-minute conversation with him, made sure he understood, no amateur background, no professional training.

And the day I showed up at his office and walked in, he took a look at me and partnered me up with Ivan and Don. I became Nikita Kolov, was born in the hallways of Charlotte with zero training. I didn't go to a Jesse Barr training school. I had none. And I debuted the next night in Raleigh, North Carolina, at the Dorton Arena on television, having no experience.

Talk about being thrown into the fire. That was not my beginning. I like to tell people that, in fact, I just did, I just recently updated my last book, which is my life story called Nikita, A Tale of the Ring and Redemption.

You can get that at kolov.net at the store there on the website. And I just wrote several new chapters and added some more new pictures to where people can get the whole story. I just gave you and our listeners the cliff note version, because there's so much more to that story. But that was my introduction. You see, I watched, you know, you mentioned Don Carnotle. I just, I am a huge watching and learning. That's how I actually learned, besides my training, is I was a huge VHS collector. I mean, I sat in front of my TV. My girlfriend at that time would get so mad at me, because I would sit in front of the TV for hours and just study tapes.

You'd get so heated. But that was smart. That was smart, though, for you to do, you know, in order to learn and perfect the craft, like you said, be a lifetime learner and want to continue to improve your skills in the ring, right? Yes, and I watched, I mean, I didn't, like, limit my watching to just certain styles.

I watched anybody that I could. Nelson Royal, right? Right. Denny Brown.

People that were more along my size. Right. But I still watched, I still watched the big guys like you, Road Warrior Animal, Hawk. Of course, my second favorite wrestler next to A Russian Nightmare.

A Russian Nightmare. The total package Lex loser. Yeah, yeah.

Now the complete package. We'll talk more about that at the very end. But, well, and you were wise to do that, and you mentioned some great names.

Nelson Royal, I mean, the World Junior Heavyweight Champion, and Denny Brown, and Gary Royal, and some of the others, George South, and some of the others that... Oh, yeah, and I watched Kendall Windham. Yup, yup, yup. Just anything that would catch my eye, I'd watch, and I would rewind those tapes. I don't know how many tapes I burned up.

Yeah, you'd wear them out. Now, some of our listeners may not even know what a VHS tape is. They'll have to go Google that, but that's good. Well, Victor, let's do this. Let's transit, because I know we could talk a lot, and we'll talk more. We're going to talk more this fall. We'll let others know why here shortly.

But I want to transition here now. Obviously, we've had a lot of fun talking about wrestling, but you messaged me on Instagram, and it really caught my attention to like, okay, I need to reach out to this guy, because there's more to this story. For the listeners, just a few weeks ago, this is what you said. I'm looking at it now, because I want to say it as you wrote it, because you messaged me. You said, just wanted to say thank you. A few years back, you saved my life. Then you went on to say, I was in a bad place getting ready to end it, and I turned on the TV to see you and Lex, and the message, the message that Lex and I were speaking made you drop the knife. Now, we're transitioning something from what was fun and entertainment to something pretty serious, but can you just briefly, Victor, and you and I talked actually prior to this show, and you shared some of that story with me, but can you give a condensed, help our listeners understand what you meant by that when you sent that to me? I just lost my boys. My girlfriend at the time took the boys and didn't tell me that she was leaving with the boys. Wrestling was kind of winding down. The territory was kind of slowly transitioning, and those were my two reasons to live with my boys in wrestling.

That's what I had. So I went in, told my mom, and I said, hey, mom, I just want you to know that I love you very much. And she says, well, I love you too, son. So I went to the kitchen, got a knife, went into the bedroom, and the main reason why I turned the TV on is to drown out the noise because of course, you know, I don't want my mom to hear this. So I turned the TV on, sat down on the floor, said a little prayer. Ulex came on, and I had the knife to my throat. I was pressing. I still have actually a little scar from it.

I didn't go as, you know, but there's a scar there. Getting ready to put the full force into it, and you had made a comment, hey, no matter what your day is like, find a reason to wake up every morning with a smile on your face. And I said, hey, mom, I just want you to know that I just tried to end my life. I need you to call 911, and I need to go to the hospital. I went to the hospital. I checked in to the hospital, and I said, hey, mom, I just want you to know that I love you very much. I need you to call 911, and I need you to go to the hospital. I went to the hospital. I checked in to the hospital. I stayed, I voluntarily stayed a 30-day inpatient to deal with it, have me on medications that I'll take for the rest of my life. But in all honesty, if it wasn't for you and Lex, I can guarantee you 99%, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you on the phone today.

I can guarantee it. I was at the low point. I had nothing left. I was in such a dark place that I saw no light anywhere. Right. You just felt you had nothing left to live for. There was nothing. So what's amazing to me is as you were sharing some of that in our conversation once we connected by phone, was that I'm just thinking even as I'm replaying or re-listening to you share that story again and for our listeners out there, because you know, Victor, your story today, there may be somebody listening today that may be in that very same place, feels like they have nothing else to live for, but just to know that there's a God of the universe that loves each and every one of us, and that's the God of the universe, and that's the God of the universe that loves each and every one of us, that we're created in His image, that as much as we don't think there's nothing else to live for, He gives us something to live for if we just turn our eyes to Him and turn our focus upon Him.

And what amazes me is, here's what amazes me is two guys that you more or less looked up to the most in the wrestling business, having many, many years in the industry yourself, in the business yourself, God, in my view, divinely puts those two guys on your television screen to interrupt what you were planning on doing, to let you know that He is God who loves each and every one of us, and He's out there, and He orchestrated that happening at that very moment for you to drop the knife and change your future, right? Yep, and you know, and people that might be listening, I mean, you're gonna have struggles every day of your life. I mean, I still have I still have struggles, but I have an amazing girlfriend, takes such good care of me. I inherited two beautiful daughters from her.

My sons are both, well, they're twins. Both of them are living with us now, and you know, we still have struggles because, you know, we're combining a household, but if it wasn't for them, you know, they're one of the reasons why I wake up every morning, because I have time, you know, to look forward to. You know, we just came back from Idaho.

We just took a big family, you know, trip, went to a big theme park, had a great time. You know, so, you know, everybody's gonna have struggles. You just have to learn to find something, no matter what it is, that's gonna make you smile and say, okay, yeah, I got to wake up tomorrow because I got this to look forward to. Right, and I want to emphasize for our listeners out there, something you just said, that we're all good. Look, we live in a fallen, broken world. We're all going to have struggles.

We all are. I've had my share. Like I say, it's been a, since giving my life to Jesus, 17 October 1993, I mean, it's been a roller coaster of a ride. It's been highs and it's been lows, twists and turns, ups and downs, and what has sustained me through it all is my personal relationship with Jesus. And so, you know, for those out there listening, maybe you don't have that.

Maybe you don't have that personal relationship. You've never surrendered your heart or your life to the Lord, and I just want to encourage you, even as you're listening to some of Victor's story today, you know, make that decision today, because there's no promise of tomorrow. And I assure you, I can, I feel confident to say, if you'll genuinely surrender your heart to the Lord, you will wake up every day with purpose and intent, and know that you have something to live for.

If at very least, that personal relationship with Jesus, who sticks closer to the brother and will never leave you, nor forsake you. And so, Victor, let me transition our last, our last few minutes together here today. Let me transition to say this.

So, so, you know, you have this, you have this experience, and here you are now, a number of years later, and I'm just reminded to hear your story. Your boys now are back with you, and, and you inherited a couple amazing girls, and, and, because God's a God of restoration, and God's a God of redemption, and, and reconciliation, and so I'm thrilled to hear that. But something exciting is coming up in, in this fall as well, and that is that you actually then, through our conversations, you've made a decision, and from what I recall from our phone call, have the support of your girlfriend. You are coming to man camp, you have already signed up, you've already registered, and so you get, in a sense, you might say you get to hang out with, with two of your heroes in wrestling for, for five days, but even more important than that though, which, which is all well and good, is that you're coming, and, and you're, you're submitting yourself to the process of, of running after the heart of God, for, yeah, you get to hang out with Lex and I, but you're going to run after the heart of God for five days, and here's what I believe, Victor, that God is going to equip you. He's going to equip you.

He's going to give some tools for your toolbox, you might say tools in your, in your tool belt, for you to go back home, and, and, and be better equipped to be that godly man that God desires, a godly husband, and a godly father, and, and are you excited about that in our last minute or two here? I'm so ecstatic. When I, when I found out that this was, that this was a reality, I mean, I had full support. My girlfriend told me right from the day, she says, well, you just need to get on the phone right now and register.

Just do it right now. Come on. Kudos to you. What's your name? What's her name? Her name is Sherry. Sherry. Kudos to you, Sherry. Good job, Sherry. Encouraging your man.

Good job. She is, she is absolutely the most amazing girlfriend that I have ever had. And we've only been together, we're going on 16 months right now. But she fully supports, I mean, everything. She, she's my rock. Awesome. Awesome. You know, she's got me going back to the gym because I, I had a scare here not too long ago. About two months ago, I had a mini stroke. Okay.

From, because I'm diabetic. But once I got out of the hospital, she's got me going back to the gym. She completely revamped my diet. Awesome. Good woman.

Like I say, she's my rock. Well, hey, let, let, I want to do this. I appreciate your time today. And, and so, so, so grateful that, that man, I'm just, I'm just thankful that the Lord had Lex and I on, on, on your television set that day. And, and lo and behold, now you get the opportunity, like I said, to spend a few days with us. But I, I'm going to pray for you and Sherry, right?

Yes. I just want to close the show today with a prayer. I just feel impressed to do that. So Lord, we, we just, I just humbled my heart before you right now and just say thank you, Lord, for Victor's story. Thank you, Lord, that he dropped that knife and Lord didn't, didn't end at all. But Lord, that, that, that began the process of, of a new vision for his life.

And that's led to this conversation, leading him to man camp in the fall. And God, that you have so much more for him and, and for Sherry, Lord. I just, your blessing upon Sherry and, and the children as they, as they would rain, raise these children, train them up in the way they should go, that they would not depart from it, God.

That they just impart into these children just godly principles and, and model for them what it looks like to live a godly life. And so Lord, just prepare Victor's heart, Lord, for, for camp in the fall. And we'll give you all the honor, glory, and praise because you deserve it all.

We just love you from the bottom of our heart, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Victor, thank you, man. Thank you for being a part of Questions and Answers with Koloff today and sharing some of your story. Thank you so much. It's an honor, truly an honor to be on this show. All right.

Well, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna see you, see you in October, okay? All right, my friend. All right. God bless. God bless. Thank you. Bye-bye.