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Enjoy it and share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Welcome to another episode of Q&A with Koloff, the Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of Q&A with Koloff Questions and Answers. And this show is so much fun for me because you, you, the caller, typically, now sometimes you're in the studio, but most of the time we're by phone and giving you the opportunity to ask questions. Now, you know, I know over on the Man Up show, I know many or most of you listen to that as well, and you probably have already figured out I'm usually asking all of the questions over there. So that's what makes this so fun for me is that you get to ask me some questions and it can be anything.
I'm always surprised by what comes up. But with me today, with me today, Christian Hodges, all the way from Delaware. Christian, welcome to Q&A with Koloff. Hey Nikita, it's great to be here.
I really appreciate it. Great to have you, and you're up in Delaware, and we'd meet, we met not that long ago. A friend of mine, Frank Shelton, had invited me up to Delaware for a men's conference, a men's dinner, and great turnout. Over 100 guys, several different churches represented there at the dinner. Then, of course, I hung over, stayed over, and preached that Sunday there in the local church. Had a great time up there in Delaware.
So you, give our listeners a little backdrop. Born and raised Christian there in Delaware? Yeah, born and raised here in Delaware. I'm a little small town, about 5,000 people. My mom is from this small town, and her roots, her genealogy goes back about 200 years at least that we know of just in this little small town, the same little area.
My dad and her met over in Oklahoma in college, and they've had four kids. I'm the youngest of four, and now I'm here at Liberty University studying finance. Hopefully, I'll get my MBA in a couple years. MBA, you are an aspiring man. We're going to dive into this in just a moment, too. You're also a book author.
That is right. You're over at Liberty, but it's not like you're 35, 40 years old. I'm trying to remember the first time. I think the first book I wrote, I was in my mid-30s, but share with our audience how old you are, Christian. I am currently 18.
Eighteen, and the book I'm making reference to, the title is America, Don't Give Up Your Right to Freedom of Speech, a Teenager's Urgent Call to Action. Take a minute and tell our listeners about what inspired you to write this book. I've always been interested in politics and government. My dad served on local town council for about 15 years. When I was little, 10, 11, 12, 13 or whatever, I remember going to all these meetings with my dad. I really wanted to, the first Monday of every month, go in there at 7 o'clock just to sit in the back, just to listen and try to be a sponge.
It was almost like a fire hydrant with splashy water all over me. I was trying to soak all of the knowledge and wisdom I could out of these meetings. I really kept that passion throughout the next few years of my life. I began working in the Delaware House of Representatives, had an internship there, and then for a pro-life policy group in Delaware. Again, I'm currently working for the Delaware GOP, but out of that last semester of high school, last year, about one year ago now, I ended up spending nine days in the hospital, six of which I was unconscious. I was diagnosed with viral encephalitis. My brain was swollen. I was obviously unconscious for the six days. When I woke up on the seventh, I wasn't able to speak. I could barely write. Doctors, nurses, family, friends, they didn't know if I'd really recover from it completely.
Typically, people who get viral encephalitis end up spending weeks, months in the ICU, so I only spent a couple of days unconscious. Coming out of it, they thought my recovery would be six, nine, ten months down the road, maybe even a couple of years. At that point, I knew I had to do something. I didn't want to spend the next months, years of my life, just recovering from something.
I knew clearly how I got. I got out on a Friday, and I had to start the new semester of high school on Monday. In that new semester of high school, I had to take the class called Senior Thesis Project. It was basically a college capstone class, but for high schoolers. We were tasked with writing a 20-page paper on any topic we want. It just has to be argumentative, which is the easy part for me.
I ended up choosing the declining birth rates of America and comparing them to what Japan is going through right now. I ended up getting a month through that topic, a month into the class. All my peers, classmates, they had been pages ahead, six pages out of the 20 done, but I had nothing done. I didn't even have a thesis statement. At that point, I told myself I had to choose a topic easier for me, when at the moment, with my brain fried, nothing is easy about writing 20 pages. I ended up choosing freedom of speech.
I thought it would be something that I was engaged in. I knew something about, at least I thought, until I got into writing it and realized how many aspects of freedom of speech there are. By the time I finished the project and interviewed six different attorneys, my paper was 70 pages. I had already been 50 pages over the word limit. I gave it to a couple of people to read, trusted family members, professionals, attorneys, and they all told me one thing, that more people need to hear this. I remember one day when me and my mom were driving home from school.
I couldn't drive during my recovery time. I would just read to my mom what I had read the day before in this paper. I remember when we were pulling into the driveway, I finished reading what I wrote.
She told me something that has really stuck in my mind ever since. She said, I can see you writing some books in the future. I can see some books in your future. At that point, I decided in my mind, it's not going to be in the long distance future.
It's going to be in the near future. This is going to be my first book. At that point, that was around April, and my goal became to become an author before an adult, to publish my first book before I turned 18.
My 18th birthday was on June 30th, so I ended up publishing this book, finishing the cover, the inside design, did everything myself, self-published it on June 29th of 2023. I met my goal, and ever since, I've been on Fox News, been all over the media, Newsmax, Fox Business, Real America's Voice, LAN, podcasts, all these interviews, articles, writing op-eds myself, just trying to get the Word out there and glorify God in all of it. Well, you are quite an inspiration, hopefully, for all of our listeners out there, regardless of what age they might be.
Just read a couple footnotes here. I'm just excited for your future. A 17-now 18-year-old passionate about the well-known Trinity of faith, family, and freedom, which is amazing. We may have to have you back sometime and talk about how God obviously had His divine hand upon you to really pull you out of what you were just describing.
He almost, in a sense, almost buried the lead there in coming out of a medical condition that the Lord obviously had His divine hand on you and has, in my view, quite a call on your life. I agree that this book, America, Don't Give Up Your Right to Freedom of Speech, is the first of many great things to come for you, that there's so much more in the future. Where can people pick up a copy of this book and learn more?
Yes. And also my website, americanontgiveup.com. Every copy sold on my website, I'll personally sign to you, whoever you want, whether it's for you, your grandkid, for your kid. I'll sign it for them.
And every book is $17.76. And just one more thing to add to what you're saying there about my future. I mean, I couldn't tell you where I'll be tomorrow, let alone three months down the road, four months, six months, a year down the road, five years, ten years, fifteen, twenty, whatever it might be. But if I know one thing, whatever my legacy is, may it just not be my own. If I'm known for anything, may it be Christ, may his name be magnified in it all. Whether it's big plans or it's small, as long as the difference is for the kingdom, that's all that matters. Let the Lord be magnified in your life. I love it, Christian, I love it. Well, it is Q&A with Koloff, so let's take a few minutes and give you the opportunity to ask me a couple questions.
And so if you want to fire away with your first question, let's transition here. 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. If you would like to support Koloff for Christ Ministries, for a gift of $25, Nikita will send you his two CDs, Adoration and Declaration. For a gift of $50, Nikita will include his book, Wrestling with Success. And for a gift of $100 or more, Nikita will include a signed copy 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. Yeah, of course. So I've never really been super big into wrestling. A lot of my buddies here at college, even back at home, they're really big into the UFC going on right now, Sean Strickland and all of them. So how did you really get into wrestling back in the day? You were born in Minnesota, I'm seeing here, but you're from Russian descent.
So how did that all come together? Yeah, Russia via Minnesota, right? Because the Russian nightmare was in character and in name only. My heritage actually, you're talking about your mom's heritage 200 years back.
My dad did some research and brought us back to England and Scotland and Ireland and Sweden and some of those fine European countries. So Russia wasn't even in the mix there other than being just a part of the storyline, right? And so it's an interesting story because wrestling wasn't on my radar. When I was your age, 17, 18 years old, I'm passionate about football, weightlifting and bodybuilding and nutrition and all those sorts of things and living, eating and breathing it, went off to play college football, scouted by the NFL my senior year, suffered some injuries along the way, but was an overcomer, recovered from those injuries and still in pursuit of that. When some of my buddies, quite a number of my buddies actually, had gotten involved in that crazy wacky world of wrestling and that I was in a sense recruited by one of my best friends. He was known as Road Warrior Animal and he had actually called me one day, shared with me a storyline of a nephew for this legendary wrestler named Ivan Koloff. And so all that to say I made a phone call to the promoter in Charlotte, North Carolina, showed up the day he said to be there, walked in, took a look at me, introduced me to Ivan and his partner Don Cunodle who were the World Tag Team Champions at the time and immediately put me on the set. The next night said be in Raleigh, North Carolina, you're going to debut on television with no wrestling background and no training either. So it's kind of a crazy start, a very unusual start in that profession unlike anyone else that we have really found in terms of our research. And that was my debut and as the old cliche goes, the rest is history.
I would spend about eight-ish, eight, nine years in that industry, won many types of belts and titles and accolades before walking away in the tail end of 1992. So yeah, that's how it all began. Yeah, it's crazy. That's crazy, it's through you in there and just like throwing a baby into a pool or something. They told you to swim.
However many championships you won. Yeah, that's great. Throw the baby into the pool. Learn to swim, right?
Yeah, trial by fire I sometimes say, right? Just throw me in the ring. And the night I debuted, I mean a sold-out crowd, like anyone who was into wrestling would know many of the names that were there that night. King Kong, Bundy, Stan, Larry and Hanson, American Dream, Dusty Rose, I mean Ricky the Dragon, Steamboat.
So many big names in wrestling were actually there that night. I guess you might say witnessing my debut. But anyway, great question, Christian, great question. You got another one for me? Yeah, I do. So you won all these championships, right? When you're winning these championships, like the night you won the championship, was there ever like an empty feeling in you, like the next day? You've accomplished it all, but you're still going? Is there ever like an empty feeling there that ultimately led you to come to Christ? It's really a great question. I wrote about it in one of my books called Wrestling with Success.
And how I reference it, Christian, is this way. I was successful in many people's eyes, and I suppose probably even in my own. You know, won all these world titles and like I said, other accolades, et cetera. Success on and off the football field and in and out of the ring, right? And how I say it, I was successful, but I was unfulfilled. And to your point, at the end of the day, come the conclusion of the show that night, the roar of the crowd if you're a good guy or if you're a bad guy, you want him booing you, right?
If you're a good guy, you want him cheering you. But by the end of the day, that ends. You go back to a hotel room or you drive home to your house or wherever you're living. And then you got to get up the next day and do it all over again or look for the next big thrill. And so whether it's wrestling or you're out there in the marketplace trying to climb the corporate ladder or just trying to find your way, what myself and several of my wrestling peers come to realize that all the success of the world, I'm kind of reminded of that Bible scripture, what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world but yet lose his soul, right? And I was on that path. I was on that path of gaining the whole world, being this famous wrestler guy, but ultimately losing my soul. And so I leave wrestling.
I'm searching for what's the future hold for Nikita Kolov. I meet a Christian couple in business. They invite me to their church. And really, 17 October 1993 was just a divine encounter at the altar that day and meeting Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Savior. And that set me on a trajectory, if you will, Christian, that I never anticipated or expected or looked for in my entire life. And now looking back, I'm so grateful and thankful, one, for what Jesus did for all of us. Sacrificing his life upon the cross, but also that opportunity to surrender my own heart and my life to him and the privilege of doing what I get to do today. Yeah, Nikita, I don't think you're the only one thankful that the Lord led you to that moment, that divine encounter. And like you were saying, if no one else is thankful, I'm thankful so we can at least be having this conversation today as followers of Christ, members of one body. But even in my own life, I was raised a Christian, went to all these Christian schools and everything, taught to read the Bible, everything like that.
And even praying the sinner's prayer at chapel or whatever it might be in class on the way to school. But I don't know if my faith ever became real until I experienced the power of prayer last January when I was in the hospital. The only way out of the hospital was through my family praying for me, friends praying for me, people all over the world in Europe and Jamaica, in California and Texas, South Carolina, Florida, you name it. They were praying for me. And that's why the Lord healed me, because he answered those prayers, because he loves me.
And the good news is he doesn't love me any more than he loves you or I or anyone listening now. I've had a question. Are there any times in your life that you can recall on the spot where you've just seen the power of prayer and seen God come through in prayer?
Yes, there's quite a number of different stories, different situations and circumstances that immediately come to mind. I'm fortunate in that I'm in a position where I get to pray with people a lot, whether it's at a men's conference where I met you up there in Delaware or Sunday morning service with people at the altar or some people come to my resource table after service and, hey, will you pray for me for this, that or the other, whatever their request is. Our camps that I do, I do a camp called Man Camp where men will come for a handful of days and I get an opportunity, one of my wrestling buddies actually, Lex Luger, facilitates that with me as well as an incredible staff and we get several days in order just to pour into men and pray over men.
And so I have seen, especially at the camps, just the hand of God with a physical touch. Like you talk about coming out of that hospital, people praying for you. Your recovery was nothing short of miraculous, right? You said some people are going to be in there eight, ten months in recovery.
It sounds like you were about eight or ten hours in recovery, which is miraculous, right? So I have literally had guys come back to me and say, hey, do you remember praying for this fill in the blank at camp or in this setting and I may or may not remember it, which is actually okay, but they'll go, man, God really touched, God healed my shoulder, God healed my knee or God healed my hip or on a physical perspective and or many, just more stories than we have time to tell of how he's seen the power, as you're saying, the power in prayer. So for our listeners out there, you're listening to Christian's story. I just want to emphasize as he has brought this into the light that there is power in prayer. So one, don't ever give up praying for somebody, no matter how dismal it might look. Continue to press in and pray for them and you too can see the hand of God work in somebody else's life.
Great question, Christian. Such a privilege to have you. I've got one more if we have time for it. Okay, go for it. Go for it. We'll squeeze it in.
Go for it. Yeah, yeah. So we look at our nation, we see it's in decline, right? And we know the saying that weak times, great strong men, good times, great weak men, right?
We're in a weak time right now. How can we be praying for other men to come to know Christ and to step up and to lead our nation back to him? Well, in regards to what I'm doing, what you're doing with your book, America Don't Give Up, it centers around your right to freedom of speech while at the same time just your stand at 18 years of age is in and of itself a statement to the world at large. And myself, I've got a few more seasons, years on you, but God put it on my heart, men's ministry on my heart, calling men to the foot of the cross, calling men to be discipled, calling men to fulfill their God-given roles as men, as godly men, godly husbands, godly fathers and I had godly grandfathers. I think it's just a matter of you and I modeling that for the rest of the world and being bold.
You mentioned in your book about being bold and obviously at 18 you are bold. You're not ashamed of the gospel. You're not ashamed to step out and share your faith. You're leading the way and I think you and I and others need to just challenge more men to lead the way, to lead the way for today and even for tomorrow's generation to lead the way. And so I think more than anything continue to pray. Continue to press in and pray for all you listening out there that more and more and more men will step up and be that man of God.
That's what you want to pray for. Lord, raise him up. I'm reminded, I'm reminded right now. I don't know, have you ever seen the movie War Room, Christian?
I have, yeah. So I'm reminded of the Lord at the end. Lord, raise him up, Lord. Raise him up, Lord. Raise him up, right?
And they flash like firemen and they flash all these different roles where men work, right? So I think that's it. We just stay committed and press in and pray. There's power in prayer and praying, you know, praying together. And we're just going to trust and believe that there's going to be, I'm going to pray. There's going to be a third great awakening in America, Christian. So, okay?
All right, americadontgiveup.com. Go and get a copy. Support this young man, Christian Hodges. Get an autographed copy of his book, 1776. Yes, that is a year, but that's also the price of Christian's book.
Go get a copy of it. Christian, thank you for being on Q&A with Koloff today. Thank you, Nikita. Well, and thank all of you. So faithful to tune in week in and week out. And I hope you were blessed by my conversation with Christian Hodges today.
And go out today yourself and live a God-filled, God-blessed life. Nikita Koloff here. If you're needing to buy a car and have marginal credit and considering using buy here, pay here, that's worse than taking the Russian sickle. Winston-Salem motor cars will put you behind the wheel of a car you can rely on while helping rebuild, repair, or establish your credit score. Conveniently located on Silas Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem. Be sure to check them out today at wsmcthenumberone.com because you are number one. 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. 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. This is the Truth Network.
