Q&A With Koloff- #56

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Ladies and gentlemen, the following contest is set for one flaw. Introducing first, from Lithuania, he weighs 123 kilos, the Russian nightmare, Nikita Kolov. Welcome to another episode Q&A with Kolov, the Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode Q&A with Kolov, Nikita Kolov, your host, and we just have fun with this show, right? Because this is where you get the opportunity to ask me some questions, and although we'll have a little conversation along the way as well, but if you'd like a phone call from the Russian nightmare, Chetoyta, then just submit some questions to kolov.net, go on my website kolov.net, submit your questions, and you may get a personal phone call from me and get you on the show. Q&A with Kolov, but in studio with me today, in studio, so not a phone call today, in studio, Eric Everhart, the butcher's block, the man of the hour when it comes to meat. Thank you, Nikita. Glad to be here.

Great to have you on the show, Eric. And, you know, I say that, but in all seriousness, you know, your place of establishment, the butcher's block, for those who would not know or don't know, you got a location in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and one in Lexington, North Carolina, where you were born and raised, right? Yes, sir.

Born and raised and born and bred in Lexington, North Carolina. And you're out there, I know from some of your story, you're out there in corporate America for many, many years to 25 plus years, and then had a vision just five or so years ago to start your own business. But you had the heart of an entrepreneur from about the age of 22, is that right? Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. That was actually when the whole idea of me wanting to own my own business came about, was in my early 20s. And I said I wanted to open a butcher shop because there was nothing similar to what I do even back then.

And now to this day, there's very few that do it like we do. So some say, you know, you always hear the expression, oh, he's an overnight success. But yeah, your butcher's block is an overnight success with 25 years experience underneath you. Exactly. Many, many years of planning.

Many years of planning. And against your mom's better wishes, you stepped out, took a risk, and launched in the first shop in Lexington, North Carolina, the butcher's block, and then expanded to Winston Salem. But you have some of the most unique items on the planet, right?

We do a lot of very unique items that you won't find in your typical grocery stores by no means. Yeah, you were talking about some kind of Japanese beef or something. I've been to Japan, and I've had one of the most expensive steaks ever on the planet, and it was called Ribera's Steakhouse in Tokyo. And I think at the time, this was back in the 80s. Yes.

I think at the time, the steak cost me over $100. Yes, yes. Yeah. Was it wagyu?

You know, I don't know, but here's what I do know. And I thought this was the craziest thing. I'm like, this does not happen. Like, they hung the cows like they never touched the ground. They had them like hanging in, like suspended in air.

Wow, yeah. Just kept feeding them. And so the meat was the most tender meat I've ever had, obviously because it's never walked or exercised. Yeah, it depends on, you hear a lot of stories about how the cows were raised, but that would be wagyu.

Okay. I've heard the stories where they play classical music, they hand massage the cow and give the cow beer. It depends on the story you've heard, but yeah, that would be the wagyu, and it's the most tender beef in the whole world. Yeah, like it just melted in. Just like eating butter.

Yeah, just melted in your mouth. Yes. Yep, absolutely. And we offer that as well. And you've offered, yeah, and sold it out. You got it in, but sold it out. Oh, we sell out about every time. It's unbelievable.

That's crazy. And of course, you have some higher end beef and seafood and chicken and meats and stuff. But my understanding is people come from all over America to your shops.

Yeah, it's just pretty amazing. We've had some people come from Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia. A couple people that frequent, you know, that when they come in on holidays to visit their families, they come to us and purchase quite a bit for cookouts. And we did have quite a few people come that were on their way to Myrtle Beach that have came from the Michigan area and Ohio.

They Googled us, found us, stopped on the way down, picked up steaks to take to the beach for their vacations, which that just, you know, kind of blows me away. But it speaks highly of what you offer. Yes.

You have a very unique niche, right? Yes, sir. It's all about the quality, the quality and the service.

Okay. Well, and the service is impeccable for those who've never frequently to your establishments. And you have some very, I learned through conversations, some very loyal employees. You got one man in particular who's been in the butcher business for over 40 years. Yes, that'd be David, and he is phenomenal.

David, if you're listening, shout out to you, David. I love your story because I remember, and if I'm not mistaken, he was, he's a wrestling fan too, I think. Oh, yes, he was. Yes, still is.

Still is. It seemed like when I walked in, he kind of lit up and his eyes kind of got big, his saucers, as I remember, right? Yes, sir. But he said something to Eric to me that he said, okay, now those of you listening out there, just think about this statement for a moment. So this man has been in the butcher business, like chopping up meat in a butcher for over 40 years. But the statement he made to me is, he said, this is the best job I've ever had. That's quite a statement. It's huge.

It's huge. It speaks volumes about you though, as an employer. Yes, yes. And that's my philosophy.

My philosophy is take care of the people that take care of you and you will thrive. So not only do you have quality meats, along with many other amenities, by the way, in your place of business, I mean, you can not only get your entree, your main course, but you can get all the amenities that come along, including desserts as well. Yes, sir. We try to do everything to complete a really nice meal, all the way from the produce sides, as far as some of the other things, as far as some rice is prepared, macaroni, cheese, soups. Gourmet desserts. Yes.

Gourmet, we have pies, cakes, and majority of the things that we do offer, we try to provide as much local product as possible. Which is really cool. So you're supporting, not only are you a local businessman, but you're supporting the local businesses as well.

Yes, sir. So if somebody's I know you said a lot of the people find your website online. So what's your website? TheButchersBlockLLC.com.

TheButchersBlockLLC.com. And then another big avenue that people find us is Facebook. We're huge on Facebook. Okay. And of course, I'm grateful for you, Eric, because you're a sponsor, you're an advertiser on the Man Up show and actually our flagship, but you actually, that also parlays into the Q&A with Koloff. And so I'm just grateful that you believe in what we do and help support us.

Most definitely, most definitely. So, well, it is Q&A with Koloff. And so let's flip the tables here and give you the opportunity to ask me a couple, three questions, whatever you might want to throw out there. So let's go forward. Go ahead.

First question. What inspired you to become a professional wrestler? Wow. What inspired me? You know, it's interesting. So you were inspired to be an entrepreneur.

I was never inspired to put on a pair of tights and grab a sweaty guy standing across from... In fact, I remember Pete Grigelko, my high school PE teacher. Now that just sounds like a wrestling name, doesn't it? Pete Grigelko. I mean, he could have been a professional wrestler, but he was an amateur coach. He was the high school coach. And he wanted me to go out.

And I'm like, Mr. Grigelko, thank you, but no thank you. Looking back on it, Eric, I was like, the idea of grabbing a sweaty guy in my little underwear in front of 12 family members. Because I peeked in on the high school wrestling matches.

There's like 12 people in the crowd. It's like your family. But here's the worst part. I watched some of my buddies diet, not eat for days so they can, quote, make weight. I mean, put on the wetsuit, whatever they call it, the sweatsuit, go into the sauna and run forever. And I'm like, see, I like your business because I like to eat. And I like meat. I'm not opposed to meat. I like meat.

Good quality meat like yours. But I'm like, I like to eat too much. No, I am not going to. Look, you can wrestle heavy weight. I'm like, no. Give me a helmet. Give me shoulder pads.

Let me knock somebody's block off. Now that excites me, right? All that to say, and this is how I know God has a sense of humor. What do I end up doing for a living? Grabbing sweaty guys in my little leotard, as my daughters used to call it, my little leotard, for a worldwide audience, no less.

Yes, yes. But so it wasn't so much, Eric, that's a long version to answer your question, but it wasn't so much that I was inspired to be a pro wrestler. Some of my buddies had gotten involved.

You may have remembered the Legion of Doom, the Road Warriors, Animal and Hawk, because I know you were a wrestling fan. But in Animal, I recruited out of high school to play college football with me, and then he got into pro wrestling, recruited me into professional wrestling with a phone call and a five-minute conversation with Jim Crockett Jr., Jim Crockett Promotions. And so really, it's just a door of opportunity opened up. And like you're a risk taker, I took a risk in that I packed up everything I owned of my name, drove to a city where I'd never been, Charlotte, North Carolina, to meet a man that I only had a five-minute conversation with months prior. Walked into his office, and Nikita Koloff was born in the hallways of Charlotte that day. Wow. And the career was meteoric from there. That's an amazing story. That's how I got involved, that's crazy, right?

So anyway, yeah, that's it. The next question, what do you think you would have done if you wouldn't have got into wrestling? Well, so like your passion was to own your own business and bring people quality meets and all of that, right?

My passion was football. I remember as a 12-year-old, actually it started with a magazine called Iron Man. It was a bodybuilding magazine. So it wasn't just a weightlifting magazine, it was bodybuilding. And I was enamored, I mean, fascinated by the guys in the magazine.

I'm like, the fact that somebody could actually build their muscles like that big and be ripped like that and all of that, I mean, just intrigued me. And so I was 12 years old, I had a paper route at the time. So I was an entrepreneur, actually, starting in the sixth grade, like for real.

I got my own paper route, and that led to a second route, and that led to having the papers delivered, and that led to hiring a guy to deliver my papers and collect the money and pay him a commission. Well, I played football because football was my passion. So from weightlifting, bodybuilding, football became my passion. I lived a sleep, breathed it.

I mean, I knew the playbook front to back and inside out and upside down. So my dream was to play in the NFL. And I would pursue that through high school into college. Now, there were two setbacks in college, but I'd like to say this, a setback doesn't have to hold you back.

It can be a setup for a comeback. And my setbacks were in the way of fractured legs, a broken leg my freshman year in college, like Joe Theismann, if you remember when Roy Taylor broke Joe Theismann's leg and ended his career. Well, I had a very identical fracture to that way prior to Joe, but was determined to play in the NFL. So I rehabilitated, came back, played three more years only to fracture my other leg, my senior year in college, by the way, which I was being scouted by the NFL my senior year. My quarterback, Mark Reed, who backed up Phil Simms for the Giants for four years, that's how they found me, recognized me, was scouting him. But I still wasn't a deater. I rehabilitated that leg, but opted to go into professional wrestling instead of professional football. So the long answer to your question is, I would have pursued that professional football career, had not the door of opportunity opened to wrestling, but because of what happened happened, I never looked back. That's an awesome story.

Yep. So a couple of stories for you, but we have time, if you like, we have time for, you know, another question or one more. What is your most memorable match, wrestling? Man, most memorable. I mean, you know, as many matches as I had, like put in perspective 1986, I had 454 matches. Wow. In 1986.

Now for people out there listening, they're going to go, wait a minute, there's only 365 days in a year. Obviously I had more than one match some days. Exactly. So it's, it's honestly, it's hard to narrow it down. So a lot of times, cause I, you know, I've been asked that question a few times. I do a lot of other podcasts interviews and all over the world, but I'd be remiss not to say the very first ever great American bash in Charlotte, North Carolina against a guy named nature boy, Rick flair. He flies in on the helicopter. I'm the main event.

I'm only 13 months into the business. Well, and I'm already the world tag champion world six man. Now I'm resting the world heavyweight champion, the infamous Rick flair for his world heavyweight title.

And so that's certainly one, but a couple others really, I'll mention too though. I kind of throw up in that same category, the best of seven series. So it wasn't actually a match. It was seven matches against Magnum TA.

Okay. The best of seven for the US heavyweight title. And the other one I typically talked about is the very first ever war games, the superpowers, the Legion of Doom road warriors, along with Paul Ellering against the four horsemen and JJ Dylan in Atlanta, Georgia. And so many people talk about those three matches events type thing when it comes to my career. So yeah, those are some real highlights of my career. That's awesome. Yeah. Yep. Pretty cool. It is. It is awesome. Any others?

Not that I can think of. Okay. The main ones that I had, those are some pretty good ones. I appreciate that. Appreciate you. Appreciate you being a wrestling fan. I know we've talked before and, and your aunts and your brother and you used to watch wrestling growing up and you threw some pretty classical names out there in the past. Dusty Rhodes, who, who, by the way, the American bag, the great American bash and the war games and the best of seven series were all brainchilds of Dusty Rhodes.

He gets all the credit for coming up. He was one of those creative guys in wrestling I'd ever, ever met and been, was a partner with, but all that to say, um, yeah, so we had some, some, some, some great matches, some great friends, uh, from the wrestling business. And of course, uh, the, the butcher's block being a major sponsor and supporter of, of the Q and a with co-op as well as the man up show. Thank you for being on the show today. Thank you for having me. I lost for words, Eric Everhart, the butcher's block.

Go check him out in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Lexington, North Carolina, and be sure to check out his website. Tune in for another episode of Q and a with coal off. God bless you.

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