Q&A With Koloff- #115

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You don't want to miss out on the early bird discount ending April 15th. Ladies and gentlemen, the following contest is set for one flaw. Introducing first, from Lithuania, he weighs 123 kilos, the Russian nightmare, Nikita Kolof. Welcome to another episode Q&A with Kolof, the Devil's Nightmare. Today, what a joy to have online on the phone with me, Tina, yeah, Tina, Tina, Tina, I'm gonna get it out there. Tina Ari, Tina, welcome to the Q&A with Kolof.

Thank you. I got you laughing, I got me laughing, I'm like, why am I having trouble saying Tina Ari? So anyway, well, welcome to Q&A with Kolof, and of course, you know, your husband and I, and yourself, you know, we became friends a while back now, and I can't remember, probably, Tina, how did we first, how did I first meet you and your husband, do you recall? Oh my gosh, when, how long has it been now? I mean, it's been a few years. Yeah, I mean, but what was it?

2017. Okay, so about five years ago, and, because I was trying to rack my brain on how we were first introduced, but I know, you know, for for quite a few years, your husband had a printing business there in Lincolnton, North Carolina, of course, he's done and continues to do a lot of work for me, and you're there by his side, and kind of assisting him and encouraging him in that, but, and you've been gracious, I've had the privilege of being able to stay in your home, and you've been gracious to do that, and so, but tell folks, the list is out there, just real quick, okay, I mentioned Lincolnton, but talk about your husband for a moment, and your family. Well, we've been married, it'll be 25 years in March, and he has two daughters, Ashley and Kirsten, and they're both married, and we have a son together, John, and between the two girls, we have eight grandchildren now. The eighth one just arrived in November. Well, you're gonna, yeah, you're working on, you're gonna catch up to me soon, come on, so okay. I know, I love it, they're wonderful, aren't they? They are, the people who don't have grandchildren won't yet understand, but, and it's different than raising Joe, so as a mom who raised a son, has it been different has it been different with the grandchildren than raising a son?

Absolutely. It's just that, there's, and you can't even explain it until you're, until you're there. That you're experiencing it, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's just, it's just completely different. And, and so, so you're, you're, you're around the grandbabies, you get the opportunity to be around the grandbabies. Now, is there any marriage for John in sight anytime soon, or not yet?

Not yet, he's not there yet, he's just, he's just loving being on his own, he's living with a couple of friends, and enjoying life. Okay, well, and nothing wrong with that either, right? So, very, very good, very good. Well, and I know over the years, you know, we have, this audience might appreciate, you're in my view, Tina, you're what I call an overcomer, and by that I mean, you know, all of us go through life with our own challenges and struggles and difficulties, and of course, you know, you've had, you know, some, some different, just different health issues over the years, but, but your attitude and your approach, and it's just been an encouragement to me, I just, I just want you to know.

Oh, thank you, that makes me happy. Well, good, and it should, because you, and I, and I mean that sincerely, I mean, it's, I know some of the, I, you know, you hear these stories about how, you know, certain health issues, like, you can, you can tell, you can give a weather forecast before the weatherman, right? Oh, I really can. Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying, like, for real. He only laughs at me, but he only laughs at me because I'll tell him that, you know, weather's coming, and he's like, are you serious?

Yeah, because you're, I mean, yeah, your body tells you that for, it's a, it really may, how God created our bodies, but pretty amazing how we can do that, right? So. Absolutely. Well, and I just appreciate you. Well, I know it's the Q&A with Koloff, and so I'm, I guess I'm curious to see what questions Tina Ari has for me today.

So if you're ready, let's transition and just, you know, fire away with your first question. Okay, so I was interested, did any of your kids ever express interest in following you into the wrestling career? You know, I don't, I don't think I've ever been asked that question before, so it's a good answer, good question, Tina, and of course, I guess, so the short, the short answer is no, but I want to give us some explanation with that, and of course, you know, we've got two girls, Taryn and Tawny, who are, you know, there's a gap there between the older girls and Kendra and Colby, the younger girls, right?

And so the younger girls really weren't around it. Kendra was, she was born in 92, in June of 92, of course, I retired in officially November of 92, right? So she was just, now she was officially at my last match actually, in a stroller, I guess she said, but unaware of what dad was doing at the time, because she was however many months old, right? And then of course, Colby came along, you know, four years later in 1996, and so she was really never around it, although they had been around it in the sense of, by that point, I'm an evangelist, I'm traveling, showing videos in churches, to youth groups, and, you know, and other events and kinds. So they knew what dad did for a living.

Now, Taryn and Tawny being older were around it more, but still never really, to my knowledge anyway, actually, I guess I need to ask them, but if they entertain the idea, they never brought it up to me. But what's funny too is, as I look at now, like a lot of the guys I wrestled, I didn't even realize like how many of the guys, their children have ended up, you know, like Charlotte Flair, right? Like Ric Flair's daughter, like his sons who wrestled, Mike Rotondo, who's, you know, Barry, I mean, I can just go through, you know, Dusty with Dustin and Cody Rhodes and on and on, and I just recently learned Terry Bam Bam Gordy, one of the Freebirds, I had no idea that his children, you know, wrestled for, you know, WWE, WWF, you know, or different organizations. So it is interesting how many of my peers' children have entered into the industry of professional wrestling, but mine never really, to my knowledge, shown an interest, but at the same time, I'll say it this way, I never encouraged them to even consider or entertaining, as you might say, the idea of becoming a pro wrestler.

I just didn't want them to do that. And I'm just going to go ahead and make Paul Aylering, Tully Blanchard, daughters. So we're speaking daughters now, right? I think even currently, you know, are in the world of professional wrestling, but, you know, I just didn't want my girls involved in that industry. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just didn't want it for my girls.

I think I would be in the same boat. Yeah. Yeah. I just, you know, there's other things that they could do. And let me just say that because of my character, right, the Russian nightmare, the Russian, you know, it could have been, might have been more, maybe more challenging to, of course, they could have taken on any persona they wanted to, I suppose. They wouldn't have had to had the Koloff name, I guess you'd say.

They could have had any cast of characters that they could have portrayed, right? So anyway, there's the answer to that question. Good question.

Very good question. Thank you. You got to know what, yep.

Um, like going back to whenever you first started wrestling, what were some of the things that you guys did to save money on the road? You're listening to the truth network and truthnetwork.com Nikita Koloff here and I am excited. Did you hear the huge announcement, the big announcement?

Well, maybe it's a minor announcement. Anyway, Facebook, go look up my new fan page, Nikita Koloff fans and like it and follow today. ... of his newly updated life story, A Tale of the Ring and Redemption.

Go to www.koloff.net and donate today. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. When you travel. Ooh, wow. That's another good one, really good one. Because I think what people may not realize, those who will listen to this show and may not realize his back, this going back in the early 80s, there were not contracts, there were not buffet catered lunches at our television tapings. There were not doctors on hand to check for... Our concussion protocol, I think, was a snapping of smelling salts and making sure you could count how many fingers that the promoter was holding up, right? That's kind of... That was going to come into play with my next question to you.

Well, because that's kind of tongue in cheek, right? In other words, there were no doctors on hand. So there wasn't any of that at all. We were considered what was called independent contractors. In fact, on the back of every check we received each week, there was this whole long paragraph of stating the fact that we were independent contractors responsible for our own health, our own healthcare, yada, yada, yada, our own meals. I mean, we showed up at a television taping and that was it. You taped the television show and then you got back on the road, went home. So for me personally, how I saved money, which I thought was important, was I had this old red and white igloo cooler, red and white igloo cooler and a little button on the side that folds down, right?

And so in that, personally, I would pack all kinds of things, sandwiches and fruit and Gatorade and just different things. So that's one way. Back in the day, we had what was called trans, transportation costs, right?

Trans for short. And so we'd load up two, three other wrestlers in our car and actually track the miles that we would travel. So let's say driving from Charlotte to Raleigh, North Carolina, and it was 160-mile round trip. Well, I forget what the mileage calculation was. Let's just say it was 20 cents a mile. So we'd multiply 160 miles times 20 cents, whatever that worked out to.

Each guy in the car then, when you rolled up to this part for the night to whatever meeting area we agreed to meet at and all load into one car, each guy gave you whatever it was, four bucks, five bucks, 10 bucks, eight bucks, 20 bucks, whatever it was. So sometimes, believe it or not, on long trips like to say Norfolk, Virginia, or Richmond, Virginia, or up to Huntington, West Virginia or something, we could make more on trans than we made from our payday for our match in the ring that night, like for real. Oh my gosh. For real. People don't realize that.

They see the millions of dollars these guys make now from pay-per-view and just think everybody made that way back. Well, no, no, no. And then real quick, one other way, we saved the money. I mean, I can't tell you how many times Ivan and I shared a hotel room together. Now, we didn't stay at the Motel 6, but we also didn't stay at the Ritz-Carlton.

You understand what I'm saying? Right. We split the time there. So we were very strategic on where we would say, and I'll say this too, a lot of the towns we went to for years, the guys would all basically stay at the same hotel, a Ramada Inn or a Holiday Inn or whatever. So you get to know even the hotel owners and gym owners in all these different towns. And of course, gym owners a lot of times were fans, so they didn't charge us to come in to work out. They just loved the idea that these celebrities were in their gym working out, so they let us work out for free.

But you learn all that as you're breaking into the industry, breaking into the business from all the old timers. So yeah, that was it. That's pretty cool, yeah. Yeah.

All right, you got one last question for me? Yep. So you were talking about the smelling salts and all that stuff. So what kind of injuries did you end up with while wrestling? What was the worst injury that you got that you still had to work with? Hmm, that's good. Because I imagine you didn't get like from wrestling, so you had to work around.

Yep. And fortunately for me, because as many know, I lived a much shorter wrestling career than some. I mean, Uncle Ivan was in wrestling for, gosh, I think he was pretty much even still ring action into his 70s or certainly late 60s. And his body was a train wreck. I mean, it was from head to toe, from a frozen ankle to neck injuries and separated shoulders and all kinds of stuff. And so many of these guys have had much longer careers and much worse injuries than me. I mean, I think Hulk Hogan's had hip replacements, if I'm not mistaken, or guys have... Abe Jacobs, an old-timer, had both his knees replaced. And so fortunately, I haven't had to address any of those types of injuries.

I feel very blessed and very fortunate that I haven't had to do that. All that to say, but I certainly have my share of injuries. No broken bones or no broken bones or separated shoulders, but mine were more, you might even say neurological, and by that meaning, pinched nerve in my sacroiliac, or that I had to go and get adjustments and adjusted from chiropractors to put me back in alignment so that my nerve wasn't being pinched or a pinched nerve in my neck. My very last match against Van Vader, he clotheslined me in the back of the head and it pinched a nerve in my neck where my left arm literally went numb. I mean, I couldn't feel anything for about three, four minutes. It was just literally hanging, dangling there until I eventually got feeling back and continued the match, by the way, the one-armed bandit, you might say, and eventually I got the feeling back. And from that, I went and saw everything from a chiropractor, even up to an MRI and a neurosurgeon who then said, Nikita, at the time, I was 33, he says, you're 33, best I can calculate, you got the neck of a 55-year-old man with bone spurring, arthritis, and a deteriorating disc in your neck from all that fake wrestling.

Ha, ha, ha, tongue in cheek right there. So even though it was entertainment, most people understand this or many do now, even though wrestling was entertainment, it was still very physical and guys got a lot of serious injuries over the years. And so that was probably my most serious, was actually that very final match.

It didn't end my career, but I chose because of that, that factored in to my walking away and retiring from professional wrestling. So yeah, yep, lots of injuries. So well, Tina Ari, you asked some incredible questions today, and I'm very grateful to have you on the phone. Just love you guys, you and your husband heal me and congratulations on almost a quarter of a century of marriage, right? So... Well, thank you.

Yeah. And thanks for letting me be on. Wow, it's great to have you on. And so we'll have you on again sometime maybe down the road, okay? Okay, I appreciate it.

All right. So thank you for tuning... Have a good day. Thank you, Tina. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Q&A with Koloff. God bless you. Have a wonderful day. This podcast is made possible by the grace of God and your faithful prayers, support, and generous gifts. May God bless you for your continual contributions. Go to koloff.net and donate today.

Hi, Nikita Koloff. Be sure to check out The Man Up Show, now available on television, broadcast, and podcast. Go to MorningStarTV.com or the Truth Radio Network. Check out your local listings or better yet, download the Truth Network app today. If you are enjoying Q&A with Koloff, would you help us spread the word? Tell your family, tell your friends, tell your neighbors to download, subscribe, and leave a comment. Hi, Nikita Koloff and I am excited to announce that I will be hosting my first ever Holy Land Tour.

That's right. A trip to the Holy Land with the Russian nightmare. And I'm extending a personal invitation to you. Join me December 27th, 2023 to January 5th, 2024 for a once in a lifetime trip. Go to NikitaKoloff.com and get registered today for the Holy Land Tour. Nikita Koloff here.

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