Q&A With Koloff- #45

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This is the Truth Network. Knuck, Kita, Koloff here. Questions and Answers, Q&A with Koloff, The Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of Q&A with Koloff, Questions and Answers, where you, the listener, get the opportunity to ask me the questions. Sometimes I know what you might ask, most times I don't.

This is spontaneous and we just flow with it. If you ever want to do that, just submit some questions to me. Go to koloff.net.

You can email me right through the website, koloff.net. You too can receive a phone call from The Devil's Nightmare, The Russian Nightmare, Jatoita. But on the phone with me today, a man that I've come to know and come to love, Scott Rupp up in Ohio, Pettisville, Ohio. Scott, welcome to the Q&A show. Hey, how you doing, Kita? I am doing great. Great to have you with us today.

Yeah, thanks so much. Appreciate it. So, Pettisville, Ohio, and we'll talk about how we connected, but before we get there, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about Scott Rupp. Just tell them who you are and tell them what keeps you busy up in Ohio. Well, thank you. I really appreciate this opportunity. But yeah, I'm a financial advisor up here in Ohio, but also I run a men's ministry that keeps me busy. We call ourselves Pettisville Man Cave Ministries and have a bunch of guys attend and from some different churches, and it's just awesome.

Great group of guys. So, that's kind of cool. So, one, you're a marketplace guy, financial investments, and how many years or how long have you been doing that? Oh, 25 years. Wow. Well, if you've been doing it that long, I'd say you've had a taste of success.

Well, not bad, not bad. Yeah, and I'm guessing your clients overall are pretty happy with your services. I hope so, yeah. Well, and I'll bet some, now have you had, I'm just curious, so have you had some with you, you know, 20, 25 years? I mean, a long time? No, absolutely. Yeah, long time.

Okay. Well, that speaks volumes of your abilities, and so obviously if they're with you that long, they are happy with your services, and so that's pretty cool. You have a family up there? Yep, have three boys. I have a senior in college and sophomore in college and a senior in high school. What are their names? David is my oldest, and Matt, and Nathan.

Three boys. My oldest son is engaged. Whoa, whoa. Yeah, you gotta get a girl in the family here. Nice, there you go, there you go, and so a lot of testosterone around the house. That is right.

Yeah, at least there was before you went off to college, but well, of course, I've met some of your sons, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so you're a marketplace guy, but you also, as you mentioned, head up a ministry man cave. Man, I like that, the man cave. That's awesome. That kind of ties into the man camp that the total package, the complete package, Lex Luger and I co-facilitate, because on the video, one of the videos we did, we challenged men to get out of their man cave and come to the man camp.

That's right. And of course, we've known each other because you have been gracious enough to bring me, even recently, to bring me up to Pettisville, Ohio to not only preach and minister on Sunday mornings, but to do the Man Up Conference. So this is the part of the Man Up radio show podcast, but also I do these Man Up Conferences, and you've had me up there, really, I mean, I've been up there a number of different times. You guys are such gracious hosts, and just thank you for having me in. Yeah, well, thank you for coming. It's been fantastic, and I mean, if anybody's out there wants a good little men's conference, many men's conference, it's fantastic.

It really is. I appreciate it. So yeah, if you're a pastor out there listening to the Q&A and you like to bring the Russian nightmare into your community and do a Saturday Man Up Conference, we can do that, and I could hang over, preach on Sunday, and so I do appreciate that. I love the heartbeat of your church and your vision, Scott, for men and your passion for men to want to make a difference, and that's amazing, too.

You've got seven churches represented. That's not the norm. Do you realize that? Well, that's what people tell me. Well, they are right. We really enjoy it. I mean, for real, like, you know, I've been all 50 states and ministered over 1,200 churches, and I can testify and say it's not typical to get a bunch of churches either, A, working together, and or men coming together from a variety of church backgrounds and just running after the heart of God, so you're obviously doing something right, so congratulations on that.

Well, thank you. I mean, we work together. We go to sporting events together, and might as well do minister together, too, right? Yeah, and so something unique about what you do as well is you get guys out there in the community and doing some different types of projects, too, right?

Yeah, we do. We do a lot of stuff for, especially for widows in our area and people in need, and that was one of the things. We started out as a men's, you know, Bible study in my basement, and just wasn't seeing some of the guys change like we wanted to, so we started adding service projects. We started bringing in speakers to do some evangelism for us and also do some men's conferences for us as well, and really got big into discipling, and we're seeing some major impact in our men. Well, you just hit the nail on the head. I'm pretty sure that's part of the great commission was go out into all the world and make disciples, and so kudos to you for having that vision to disciple men, and that's part of the idea with our conferences and camps is just maybe maybe even jump-start men, or we've actually seen a number of men actually surrender their life and come to know Jesus in a personal way at the conferences and the camps, and then so you got your guys, you get your guys to go out there, get their hands dirty, and help the world, and help the widows and orphans.

I think that's pretty biblical as well. Congratulations on that one, and just go out in the community, whether it's whatever, right, changing the oil, you know, on the widow's car, or, you know, painting the fence, or putting the roof on, right? I know you guys do all kinds of different projects, so that's amazing. So, well, kudos to you, my friend. Well, all right, so it is Q&A with Koloff, so let's flip the table here, and I'm going to give you the opportunity to ask a few questions, and so fire away, let's see what you got. Well, you know, having the Russian nightmare, you know, on the phone here, you got to ask at least one wrestling question, right? At least one, if not more, but yeah, but yeah, go ahead. Well, in what moment in your career did you feel like you got the best reaction from the crowd, either heat or even cheers?

Ooh, that's a really good question. I've got a pretty quick answer to that, because I actually recently, or I guess it was recent, I don't know, time flies. Anyway, I did a podcast interview with a guy named Tony Schiavone, you know that name?

I've heard of it, yeah. Yeah, Tony Schiavone, he's one of the best of the best in terms of announcers in wrestling. I mean, he's been on, he was in NWA, what became WCW, he's with WWF, what became WWE.

Currently, he's with AEW, with JR, Jim Ross, and they kind of are a tandem there on AEW wrestling. And on his interview, I actually verified this, because I've heard this numerous times, others of notable names that confirm this, but I asked the man himself on my interview with him, I said, Tony, I always heard that, or you'd been asked, what was, and of course, he's been, I mean, he's called color commentary and everything for Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage and Rick Flair, and you know, the best of the best of the best himself. And they said, what was the biggest pop, what was the biggest cheer you ever heard? And he quite quickly said, the night Nikita Kolov turned babyface, the night he became a good guy, came to the rescue of the American Dream, Deathly Road, the tower of power, too sweet to be power.

And he said, and I found this out, I didn't know this part, he was standing next to Jim Crockett Jr., the promoter, and he said it's one of the very few times ever that Jim Crockett teared up at the fan reaction. Yes. Wow. Exactly.

I was like, wow, that's pretty cool to know that my turn had that kind of impact, one on the wrestling fans, but then on the man himself, like the guy who signed my check, that had that kind of impact on him, choked him up, man, choked him up. So there you go. Wow. That's awesome. I do remember that. That's amazing. Next question. Yeah, another question. You know, you're retired from business, and you said you gave your life to Christ maybe within a year after you're retired.

Eleven months. Were you discipled? And if so, can you kind of talk about that? Were you discipled right away? Were you mentored?

Who came along beside you? And talk about that a little. Great question, especially since you are big into discipling men, right? Yeah, that's right. So yeah, that's a really good question. Yeah, I did not immediately just jump out there, you know, head first, you know, or into the deep end of ministry. It was about 11 months after I made, that I officially retired. Now wrestling, there was no big hoo-ha or nothing like that.

They never made no big deal out of it. Well, other than Vader, Big Van Vader, who injured me in my last match right here actually in Winston-Salem, where Truth Radio Network is headquartered. So it's interesting.

I happened to be doing a show and a podcast from there. But that said, they kind of tell, oh yeah, he ended Nikita Kolov's career, which he really didn't. I mean, yes, I did get injured. However, I walked away under my own terms by choice, to set the record straight.

And then 11 months later, find myself at an altar, 17 October 1993, surrendering my life to Jesus. And like anything I've ever done, Scott, like I'm an all-in kind of guy, right? I mean, I pick up Iron Man magazine at age 12, and I'm enamored by the bodybuilders, and I get an immediate vision. And I say to myself and a few others, one day I'm going to look like one of those guys. Well, you can't just say that, and then just through osmosis, you know, it's not the Incredible Hulk show here, you know, turn into the big green giant. I mean, you actually have to lift weights and go and write and pursue that. And I did. And fast forward 12 years later, from the time I picked up that magazine to the time I walked into Jim Crockett Jr.'s office, and I went from about 100 pounds soaking wet with rocks in my pocket, just a little guy, to 285 pounds of 8% body fat and 34 inch waist, right? And so that happens. And so whether it was that or football, like I fell in love with football, and I ate, slept, and breathed it. I mean, you know, I knew the playbook back and forth, inside out, you know, and was writing, even writing my own, writing my own plays, right? So football, wrestling, I said, okay, I'm not just gonna be a wrassler, as they say in the South. Hey, ain't you one of them wrasslers? I guess.

How do you spell that? Anyway, so, but I dove in head first, I give my life to Jesus, and guess what I did? I dove in head first, right? And so the church doors were open on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, church revival, whatever. I mean, first thing I did, Scott, is I went on building projects.

I thought, let me go get my hands dirty here. And, you know, I wasn't, I never built houses, I wasn't a construction guy, but I went to Trinidad and helped build a church, laid a concrete floor and laid some cinder, big cinder blocks. Then I went back to the sister island a few months later to Tobago and helped build a Bible school and form columns and pour concrete and all that kind of stuff. And then I made the ultimate trip, my first trip to Africa for three weeks to help build a church over there. And so I just got my hands dirty, and then I went on three mission trips with my daughter's youth group to Singapore, Moldova, and Bogota, Colombia.

And I was the security guy, probably can't guess why, but I was the security guy. But all that to say, there was a five-year window in there from 1993 to 1998 to where I just, I was discipled, Pastor Tom Whitten, Pastor Jay Stewart, who's still my pastor today, 28 plus years later, began to mentor and disciple me, as well as a number of others now over the years, from Mike Bickel to Francis Chan to Rick Joyner to Dr. David Jeremiah to Alistair Begg. I mean, I've had some pretty impacting ministries and men of God who have spoken to my life. Wow. Yes, sir. So you're gonna start speaking at churches and stuff right away? No, five years. Five years.

Five years. In fact, I'll say this real quick too, in fact, in Africa, it was the very first time I had an opportunity actually to speak, and they're like, hey, we want you to do the dedication service. And I'm like, and say what?

I've never preached before and ministered. And then the Lord reminded me, actually, it's kind of a cool story, the Lord reminded me the month prior to going, he was just downloading stuff to me, man. I was just journaling and writing, and I'm like, oh, this is cool. And then when I said, what am I supposed to speak about, he kinda tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me, hello, you know all that stuff I've been just downloading to you this past month?

Yeah, that's probably what you should say. I'm like, oh, aha, okay. And then fast forward a year later, believe it or not, fast forward a year later to Bogota, Colombia, and the youth pastor says, you're supposed to speak one night here. And I'm like, oh, okay.

And a similar situation had happened. But then it wouldn't be till, really, and I spoke briefly at some of the youth events back home, but really God opened the door in December of 1998. He opened the door wide open, and phone calls just came randomly in, emails, and I'd meet people, and they're like, come to our church and speak.

And all these years later, 30 countries, 50 states, over 1,200 churches, and men's ministry, and camps and conferences and all that. That's neat. God's really using you. It's amazing. I feel fortunate that, yeah, that God has given me all the opportunities that he has given me.

Yeah. So why did, what drew you to minister to men? Oh, man.

Well, actually, I'll flip it around. Men are kind of drawn to me. And one, from the wrestling persona, right, the Russian nightmare, Nikita Kolov, being an athlete. And so that was part of the draw. So men have kind of been drawn to me, and over the years, even young men, right, even back in the days of football, even prior to wrestling. I mean, I just had this certain, I guess you might say, charisma, so to speak, to where people were just kind of drawn in. And then God gifted me with the ability to speak and talk on microphones and in front of cameras. And, you know, the smallest audience has been an audience of one. The largest audience I've been blessed to speak in front of was over 73,000 in the island of Jamaica.

And, yeah. And so men just, especially, I went to a camp of my own in 2006 out in Texas, the ministry called Fellowship of the Sword, a camp called Quest. And God greatly impacted me. It was a defining, another marker. He marked my heart, and it was a defining moment for me.

And that really birthed the vision to minister to men from that camp. Wow. Yes, sir. That's neat.

That's really neat. Well, we definitely appreciate you. Our men definitely appreciate you when you come here.

We love Nikita. I appreciate it. I am blessed.

I am blessed by you. Any other questions? Yeah, one question I have for you. You know, when you're growing up as a, you know, young man in your life, and it seems like you're drawn to, men are drawn, you're in teams a lot, we're working together a lot. We go into the workforce, you know, we work on teams, we, everything is, you're working with other men, but it seems like in church, we're kind of isolated a little bit. Why do you think that is?

Kind of a, I guess maybe somewhat of a, I'll give a, like a short answer to that, or a shorter answer. You say isolated. Are you meaning?

We try to, a lot of times I think we try to do our walk on our own. Yeah. Yeah, which the Lord, the Lord never intended for that, right? That's correct.

At all. I mean, you know, it's interesting, interesting that you would really, honestly, that you asked that question, because like, even in my, just a devotion this morning titled, you know, let your friends carry you through hard times. That's the title. By helping each other with your troubles, you truly obey the law of Christ, Galatians 6, 2. And because, and here's what it says, God, it says, you know, you're going to go through major disappointments in life. It's natural to want to pull back and isolate yourself. Interesting, right?

You want to handle it yourself. I mean, part of that is the big P word, right? Pride. Yeah, absolutely. Men and their pride. And their egos, right? You know, you want to handle yourself. You want to keep your, you know, your losses, your failures, your mistakes, your crisis a secret. There's a tendency and there's a tendency to withdraw, which is a horrible idea, really, honestly, because it's not what God described it, right?

You go through disappointment. That's when you need your friends the most. I mean, come on, right? And in my view, God doesn't, He never intends for you and I to handle pain and stress by ourself. I mean, one of the healthiest things we can do is accept help from others. But again, you have to humble yourself. You know how many men have said to me, oh, yeah, I'd like to come to that camp, you know, but, you know, and they give one excuse after the other why they can't, which really, then really they don't want to come.

They just, you know, their pride is like, uh-huh, yeah, I want to do that. But see, the bottom line is we're wired for, God wired us to be with each other. Like, even this whole last 24 months, I'll just say, you know, God never intended for us to be isolated. I mean, at all. You know, this whole separate, social dist, there's nothing social about distancing.

Hello, come on. There's nothing social about distancing. If anything, it's antisocial. Hmm, sounds familiar to some of the, antichrist. Hmm, okay.

So maybe we're seeing a rise in the antichrist spirit here in the last two years, okay? Because nothing, God never created us to be alone or be single. In fact, I'm pretty sure in Genesis, I think it was 218, where he said these words, it isn't good for man to be alone. Now, of course, we, you know, that's more related to, hey, I'm gonna create a woman for the man, but even this caught me. Think about this. It isn't good for man to be alone.

God didn't create us to be alone. So, Scott, I think it's a ploy of the enemy. I think it's a strategic ploy of the enemy to get men to isolate themselves, be so puffed up with pride that they can't humble themselves, to ask for help when we, because we all need help. And especially in, you know, in painful situations or troubling situations or challenges or difficulties.

And so, that's my answer, that it's a strategy of the enemy to convince us to either do it our own or just keep everything a secret and don't put it out there because you'll be too embarrassed or whatever else, but we need each other, period. That's right. Does that answer your question, I hope?

Yep, you did. Life is tough. We need each other and men need men and we do. We need relationships.

Proverbs 27, 17, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens the countenance of his friend, right? We need, I call it a battle buddy. I call it a battle buddy. It comes from a good friend of mine, Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, battle buddy.

We all need a battle buddy, man, someone that can get in the trenches with us, that won't, you know, throw us under the bus if we're struggling with something, you know, whatever it is, but will come and wrap their arms around us and embrace us and help us to get out of the pit that we might find ourself in or whatever struggle or challenge that we're faced with. So, we need each other. So, there you go.

Absolutely. It's like the Lord's Prayer. I mean, it starts out right away, our Father who art in heaven. It's not my Father, it's our Father. It's my Father, it's your Father, it's everybody's Father. That is true.

We need to be praying for our brothers as well around us. That is true. You are exactly right. Well, listen, we are out of time, but man, you came up with some great questions, Scott. And again, I appreciate you having me in Scott, Pettisville, Ohio today on the Q&A show. Thanks for being here. Thanks for keeping it. Appreciate it. God bless you, my brother. Thank you. This is the Truth Network.