Q&A With Koloff- #62

Hey, this is Jim Graham from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we explore relationship instead of religion every week. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.

Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Dwayne. Hello, Nikita. How are you? Wonderful. Good afternoon. Thank you for making yourself available.

Oh, thank you for giving me the time. Dwayne Soper. Dwayne, great to have you with us. We met, Dwayne, I guess two or three, I don't know, four years ago, maybe now, when I was doing a 21-city tour in 21 days across Canada.

Four provinces, 5,500 miles, which I think equates, I'm not good in math, but I think equates like in kilometers to like 6,500 kilometers or something in 21 days. But we met at one of the wrestling events up there. You've been a longtime wrestling fan, right?

Yes, I was. It was at the CWE event and when they announced you were coming, I couldn't actually believe you were coming up to Canada because I had been a fan for you since 84 when they first saw you appear on TV with Uncle Evan. Well, that's amazing. One thing I learned about my trip across Canada was I actually had fans in Canada. Yeah, you've had a few.

I have. I was not aware of that for real. Like out of the 21 cities, I had only been to two of those 21 cities. So for me, it was like, what a huge blessing. One, to be able to travel across Canada, not have to pay for it.

On top of that, get paid to travel across Canada. That is, I'm like, God, you are so good. Thank you, Jesus, right? Yes. And then the icing on the cake with the cherry on top is I got to meet incredible fans like yourself, Dwayne. You and your whole family. Yes.

Yeah. My wife came along just to watch the excitement in my eyes and I had my three sons and my daughter and they all met you and they all left with an impression of why I became such a fan of you. Oh, well, thank you. I'm humbled by those kind words for real. And it was such a pleasure to meet you and so many other great fans, great folks across Canada. And to see your beautiful country. I mean, I love traveling and man, you know, I think you pronounce Banff, right?

Is that how you pronounce it? We got the opportunity to go up, me and some of the young wrestlers took them up to Banff on our trip and got to experience one of the natural hot tub resources up there and have a nice lunch and just take in that beautiful city as well. Man, it was just so amazing. It is a beautiful country.

It is. And thank you, too, for just being such a longtime loyal fan. My goodness, 1984.

Thank you. It's been a fun ride and I wish I could live it over again some days. Well, you've got the memories, right? So that we always have those memories.

Let me before we jump into your our topic here and your question and a very serious subject that we're going to talk about today. Give me one quick highlight. It doesn't have to involve Nikita Kolov, the Russian nightmare, but give me one highlight of being a fan of wrestling. One of your favorite matches and it can be anybody, but just give me one real quick. Well, I've grown up here in Alberta, of course, the home of Stampede Wrestling, got to see some great, great times here, but due to that, we didn't see a lot of outside stuff.

So everything was done by tape trading. And when I saw used to trade tapes with a lot of NWA fans and probably one of my favorite matches would be Starrcade 86 when you and Flair went toe to toe. Okay.

Well, again, I feel honored that out of all those years of being a fan that Starrcade 86, Night of the Skywalkers, I think was how that was built and and crazy match there, too, between the Roadwares, I think the Midnight Express and on that on that scaffolding. Right. But yeah. And so, yeah, you're so you're in Alberta. What what what city are you in?

Refresh my memory. Huh? Medicine Hat, Alberta. And of course, you mentioned Stampede Wrestling and there's some legendary guys involved in Stampede Wrestling, right? Oh, it's it's a who's who have come through the doors there.

I started watching it in late seventy nine and followed it right up to the closing in eighty nine. I think a lot of people have come through. Yeah. The Heart the Heart Foundation, right? Yes. The Heart Foundation, the Bulldogs. Yeah.

Stu Hart. What was it? He had like the dungeon or something? Yes, he had a dungeon that was a little bit different than the Russian dungeon Russian dungeon, but he tortured a few people himself. Yeah.

Like for real. I've heard some stories. Some of the guys who who went through that that dungeon and they had some horrified stories. Stu, I understand, was never met the man, but I understand he was pretty, pretty brutal.

I've heard some of the stories myself and it's eye opening. Yeah. For anyone who thinks wrestling is not real, just too bad you can't go back to Stu's dungeon and experience some of that. So anyway, but some of those training camps just I'm reminded Lex Luger told a story when I was interviewing him. Good friend.

But when he was going through Hiro Matsuda's camp, how Hulk Hogan went through Hiro Matsuda's camp was kind of goofing around, goofing off and Matsuda broke his leg, like for real broke Hulk Hogan's leg. Old school mentality. Yeah. Just felt like he was disrespecting the opportunity and not taking it serious enough.

And I think that got Hogan's attention. For sure. So, well, Duane, we're going to jump into your topic here, your questions. And, you know, I've been praying about this as you submitted this and it is a very serious subject. And I'll just say right out of the gate or right up front, I certainly don't have all the answers, but I think it definitely is something that, you know, we need to talk about and that people don't talk enough about it. But we'll just see where this conversation goes today. So we're going to talk on the subject of suicide.

Suicide. And I know just kind of reviewing my notes and what you had had sent me and submitted it. This was very personal to you. And because you had gave me a little background saying there were, you know, two guys that you grew up with that you said were more than just friends.

They were more like brothers than just friends. And, you know, you were in your teens. You got super close and then one day, one day you got a call from your friend Joe that Joe was found dead. And just reviewing some of your notes, you know, that he had committed suicide and apparently had found life was just too hard and he had given up. And, of course, you were devastated by that.

And then one of your other friends you never really talked about. In fact, you said it was probably close to 26 years now ago that this had happened and kind of just kept it in, kept it to yourself. And talk to me a little bit about that. And I have a story to relate to that as well.

But talk to me a little, you know, talk to our listeners, talk to me a little bit about all of that experience for you. Well, we were, like you said, we were like brothers. We were inseparable growing up. Everything we did, we did together. We worked together.

We went to school together. And the day that it happened, I was angry. The best way to put it, I was like, what the heck? How can you do this to us?

Like, it's not fair, not fair to your friends, your family. I didn't understand why I felt so angry. And as time went on, I was like even got angrier and angrier. And my wife was like, well, you know, you'll get over it.

Time will change. And I didn't even want to go to the funeral, Nikita. I was furious so bad at the morning of the funeral. I'm like, no, not going, don't want to do it.

He doesn't deserve my respect. And she convinced me that I would go. She goes, you'll never live with it if you don't go. And I went and my friend and I sat in the front row. And that was about the only time I've seen him cry.

It was the only time I cried. And we got out of our system. And we've never spoke about it since.

Friends forever and never even mentioned his name to one another. And I don't understand why we have to be super heroes, so to speak. And keep everything pent up inside. And why do we have our emotions of like, no, we're a man. We're supposed to man up, pardon the pun, to your show. And we're supposed to suck it up.

Like, I don't understand why men can't discuss this more in detail. Well, and it's great. You know, what you're posing is right.

You know, why don't we open up more? And I know part of it, and again, anger is a real emotion. And so there's really nothing wrong with expressing anger or sadness. I know at some point there was sadness involved there. And even confusion, right? I'm confused.

Why did he do this? And there's a number of reasons, I kind of think, or different reasons in my mind, why some choose that path. But to specifically address what you just asked, I think there is a real enemy. His name is Satan.

The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy. We know that from scripture. And I think part of his strategy is, men, women, and people in general, is to get them to not talk about these sorts of things and many other things. And as you said, kind of keep it in. And then he can kind of play with that and keep us, you know, keep us in bondage, if you will, in a spiritual prison, you know, through the anger, through the sadness, through the confusion.

He's the author of confusion, scripture says. And so it's only when I have found, you know, many times, and I have dealt with this with men on our man camps. You know, guys come to the man camp and sometimes this subject, this topic will come up. And I've been able to fortunately minister to men who are willing to talk about it. And you might say, bring it out of the, let's just say out of the closet, or even out of the basement or the attic where they've stuffed it, and just pretended like, or just refused to even discuss it. And their willingness to bring it into the light has brought some real healing. And see, that's again, I think, a ploy the enemy, Duane, is by not talking about it, we can continue to have those, whether it's the emotions of anger or sadness or confusion or whatever, and never, never be healed, never receive healing. I, by experience, once we bring it into the light, whether it's this topic or anything else, and things that have hurt us in the past, and begin to discuss it and talk about it, then we can ultimately receive healing from it and put it to rest, and it doesn't eat at us for the rest of our life. Does that make sense?

It does, yep. So I, you know, I commend you, one, on being willing to talk about it and even bringing this topic up. And it does hit close to home, but what I mean by that is I have actually experienced it just a couple years ago. A friend of mine who I had worked with closely, who had actually not only attended our camp in the past, but actually even came back and was on staff several times, serving on staff at our camps, and he was going through some real emotional trials. His whole family really honestly was under attack. In fact, he had a daughter and a son. His daughter first battled with suicide.

She was just a teenager. And, you know, they tried to correct that with medications and a number of different things. And, in fact, I had him and his wife and her sitting in my living room on the couch one night, just ministering to the family, speaking into that. And it's kind of crazy really, Dwayne, because it's like she, through prayer and some medications and other things, was able to kind of overcome that.

And it's like that spirit, that demonic spirit, jumped off her onto him. The next thing you know, he's dealing with suicidal thoughts. He goes on medication, and he told me through numerous conversations that the medication they had him on literally said on the label, may give you suicidal thoughts, like for real.

And so this was real. And he said he could hardly sleep at night, if at all, because he'd constantly have these suicidal thoughts, and it started really to just mess with his mind and ultimately, ultimately took his life, unfortunately. And, in fact, I talked to him literally the night before. I was trying to convince him to come and bring his son to an event, a men's conference we call the Summit of that next day. He's like, yeah, I don't know, you know, and then come to find out that next day he kind of went missing and it took him several weeks to find him. But then, if that's not enough, then that wicked demonic spirit jumps on his wife and son who both then made attempts at suicide.

So it was crazy. It's like it went through the whole family. That is, well, that speech was on that. That's hard to understand to affect the family that bad. Yeah, and now on a positive note, the good news is, in fact, I just recently talked to a friend of mine who came across the wife just recently and gave me a very good praise report that she's in a good place mentally, spiritually, she's in a healthy place now, as is the son and the daughter. So that is the good news. So I have had this hit close to home as well.

And so, you know, there are different, you know, there's different reasons why, you know, people make that decision. And an interesting thing is, you know, I was like, what, you know, there's an example in the Bible, right? His name was Judas. And so I pulled up Matthew chapter 27 and very early in the morning, the leading priests and elders of the people met again to lay plans for putting Jesus to death.

They bound him, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor. When Judas, who had betrayed him, realized that Jesus had been condemned to die, he was filled with remorse. So he took the 30 pieces of silver back to the leading priests and elders and, quote, said this, I have sinned, he declared, for I have betrayed an innocent man. And then, like, their response is, what do we care?

You know, they retorted, that's your problem. And then Judas, as many who know the story, Judas threw the silver coins down in the temple, went out and hanged himself. Here's an interesting thing about suicide. I just recently heard this actually from Reverend Billy Graham when he had mentioned, made a reference to suicide.

And here's the thing about suicide is, well, let me first preface by saying this. We're clearly a three-part person. And what I mean by that is, if you look at 1 Thessalonians 5.23, it talks about being whole, W-H-O-L-E, in spirit, soul, and body.

Being whole in spirit, soul, and body. So clearly, according to 1 Thessalonians 5.23, we are a three-part person as human beings. We are a spirit, we have a soul, which also is comprised of three parts, our will and our emotions. And we live in a physical body, right?

I like to call it the dirt suit. So we're a three-part person. But here, something that, I don't know that, perhaps this will help you today and all of our listeners who maybe have either dealt with suicide or are dealing with the thoughts of suicide right now, is we're three, by taking our own life, we really, we're only killing the body. Our spirit and our soul live on forever. So we're only killing our physical body and then, you know, I would say this, Duane, only God knows for sure where the spirit and soul end up, right?

For sure, for sure. But that's the unfortunate side of suicide is somebody thinks, you know, well, I'm gonna end my life and for whatever reason, you know, everybody else is gonna be better off with me gone. You know, I know that's what my buddy was thinking, but obviously we know, just as your own story, we know the after effects, people like yourself who were angry or at one point, you know, sad or then you came to, really you kind of came to some closure is what I'm hearing you say when you went to the funeral, right?

Yes. Thoughts on, any thoughts on that? Well, I agree.

It does give a little bit of clarity in the sense that we see the body, but we don't see the soul, we don't see what's in behind and like you said, we don't know, we don't understand what they're thinking at the moment that they do it, but we have to have closure because like you said, they are only killing the body, the physical being. Yeah, and so, you know, the hope would be, and I do know, I know there's been others, the very famous coach, Tony Dungy, there's been a number of stories, you know, his son and I've watched a video on him talking about that and his perspective and we do know that through, like with my friend, with the medication, how it really just started messing up his psyche, messing up his mind, you know, that I've got to, I'm going to in my heart of hearts trust and believe that the decision my friend made years earlier to surrender his life to Jesus and beyond that path and what I know of his story coming to camp and then coming back to serve and knowing his family that, you know, when he made that decision, you know, that there was a peace in his spirit, but then mentally, right, mentally he started struggling and having difficulties mentally and ultimately, you know, the medication played a role anyway in him taking his life and so, you know, we just have to trust and believe if we know somebody's background or some history that, again, God sorts all that out and it's unfortunate, but, you know, I am glad to hear that, you know, over the years, as you even mentioned, you know, it went from anger to sadness and really now to, you said to happiness, just remembering some of the memories you had with him, right? Well, for sure, it's, I don't remember the sad times or I can't remember an angry time because, you know, brothers and friends do have bad times, but all we do remember are the good times now and that's all I want to remember out of it.

Good. I want to just kind of forgive and forget on that sense. Yeah, yeah, for real and that helps, I think, for you to bring healing to your heart by releasing it and letting it go and focusing on the positive things and, you know, and just, you know, to your point or really to your question too about, you know, why it's so hard for, you know, people in general, but specifically you're talking about men, you know, to overcome the depression, you know, even anxiety and suicide, I think. I'm going to point to not to always blame it on the enemy, but that there is an enemy of our soul who, if he can convince, you know, that it's not worth living, go ahead and take your life because it's just not worth living, then he's certainly going to do that. And then there's potentially other factors, you know, maybe things that happen in childhood or other things that can lead up to that person ultimately making that decision, right?

Right. So, well, and, you know, and I just want to say thank you for bringing up this subject and I do want to say, you know, to the listeners out there, I mean, again, if you know somebody that's, there is help out there. I don't have a suicide helpline to, you know, as far as the number to give today, but obviously you can research that, go online, you know, look it up and I'm sure there are, if you have, whether you're somebody, you're a listener out there, you're struggling, again, with it yourself, we know that those numbers have increased over the last 12 months as far as depression, anxiety, people taking those medications now, people battling with all kinds of things, including lockdowns and shutdowns and viruses and everything else, that there is help. There is help. And hopefully my conversation with Dwayne today has perhaps helped you some and or at least encouraged you to either seek help or if it's someone you know to reach out to that individual and try to get them help, right?

For sure. You're not alone out there, so somebody will help you out. Yeah, we're not alone. We're, you know, as much as you want others, you know, the enemy tries to convince you you are alone, you know, because that's part of his ploy to isolate, separate, make you think you're all alone in this. I just want to encourage everyone listening, you are not alone and I just, again, just can't thank you enough for bringing up, you know, this topic and bringing up this subject. And hopefully, Dwayne, by talking about a little bit more today for you, it just brings that much more healing and closure for you today for your friend. It does because, like I said, I've never talked to anybody besides my wife about it, so just even vocalize it to somebody else, it actually gives you a little bit of shivers down your spine because it's like, well, you know, it happened and now I'm dealing with it a little bit better than I did back then. Well, and on the last note I'll make, again, you know, for our listeners too, you know, you said, hey, this, in a way, this has helped me to just put it into words, to share it with someone else, and so let's emphasize, right, Dwayne, that, hey, don't keep this bottled up. I mean, if you're struggling with this because maybe a family member or a friend, you know, committed suicide, don't, I want to say to you, don't keep it bottled up. Open up, bring it into the light, share it with a loved one or share it with a friend or share it with your pastor, you know, your priest, you know, your rabbi. Share it with somebody and I know even a lot of times like you did, you know, when you email me, just writing it down, putting it on paper can also just help in that process of healing as well. So, again, if you're dealing with this out there, man, just, we're believing in you.

We want to see you get some help or help you, your friend or family member, find some help. So, Dwayne, thank you. Thanks for being on Questions and Answers today and thank you again for just being such a loyal fan. Oh, thank you very much and thank you for doing what you're doing and taking the time with the fans because it's not something that's, as I mentioned it to you before, it's not something that's regularly seen on this in depth of the process.

So, we appreciate it as a fan and just as a man. Well, hey, and stay warm up there in old Canada. I follow you.

I watch some of those posts about all the snowfall and everything and I'm like, oh, man. So, stay warm up there, my friend. I will. Thank you very much. All right. Well, love to the family and God bless you, my brother. Same to you. Take care. All right. Thanks, Dwayne. Bye-bye. Thanks. Good work.