This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology. And we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network. It's about to start in just a few seconds.
Enjoy it, and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening, and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Welcome to another episode of Q&A with Kolov, the Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of Q&A with Kolov, Questions and Answers, where you get a personal phone call from the Russian Nightmare and get to ask me some questions.
And you are probably familiar with the Man Up show. You go over there, and I'm usually asking all the questions, but over here, you get to ask me. So today, though, today, today, today, what an honor, what a privilege to have Brent Dusing with me on the line today.
Brent, welcome to Q&A with Kolov. Hey Nikita, good to be with you today. Well, great to have you. And we met just recently at the NRB, the National Religious Broadcasting Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. And you really, our conversation really got my attention. You have a company called Trueplay turn game time into God time. And of course, being one who has 11 grandchildren and one on the way, you got my attention because you've developed an app where these kids can go on and be able to get some quality content if they're going to be on their screens, right?
So talk a little bit about that, Brent. Fill our listeners in on what Trueplay is. Yeah, so at Trueplay, we build a really high quality entertainment platform for kids.
It's out, it's live. We have a lot of people using it, and it's growing. You might have heard about it.
And here's what Trueplay, here's what our calling from God is. Look, things are really bad for our children. I think a lot of people listening out there know that fact, but maybe they don't know the details. Here's three details that'll make you shudder. One, anxiety, suicide, and depression rates are all-time highs for children right now.
And if you look at the rise of that curve, it's been exactly the match of the rise of social media on smartphones. Number two, the average male is exposed to pornography when he's 11 years old. The worst out of all is this. Only 31% of children in America believe in God. And that should make anybody concerned.
And you ask yourself, why is that? It's because kids are on screens 52 and a half hours a week. And if you look at the content that kids are consuming, there's so much darkness out there.
You know, sexual content pushed on small children and teenagers, hyper-violent gruesome content, drug use, demonic activity. And so what we do at Trueplay is we're coming alongside parents. We've produced a beautiful product that people just love. In fact, I'm going to tell you right now, because we're seeing it in our numbers, our children who play Trueplay, and the parents too, enjoy it.
If they try this and they try Roblox, which is a popular platform, they'll come back, be more likely to come back and use Trueplay. That's how much they're enjoying it. But every piece of content we make contains God's truth. There's games, there's videos, there's digital comics. If you've read the Action Bible, we've got comics from them. If you've read Kingstone comics, we've got comics from them.
We've got some awesome content and hopefully something that can not only will delight you, but they can help your children and help build your family in their walk with God and understanding of the Bible. Which is pretty amazing. I mean, even some of those statistics, you know, some people may not be familiar with, but, you know, I'm looking at, you know, the average child is exposed to pornography at age 11. Because you don't even have to be looking for it, right, Brent? I mean, it can, look, I'm on my phone. It's part of what I do. I mean, my phone is kind of like, for me, kind of my computer. And there's things that will randomly pop up on there. And I'm like, okay, I didn't ask for that.
Wasn't looking for that. But there it is, right? And so you've got to constantly be on guard. And I think the other statistic you mentioned, the 52 and a half hours a week on their phones or tablets. And I, for one, can testify that, you know, some of my grandchildren, I don't know how many hours they spend on those screens. But I know it can become an instant babysitter for some parents, right?
Yeah, it can be. And look, at TruePlay, we're here to come alongside parents. I think too often people like to blame parents. Look, it's hard to be a parent in 2024, right?
You've got, you know, you've got to work. You've got your responsibility to try to raise kids the right way and a godly way. And the problem is, it's like every technology platform and most of the pieces of content are working against everything you're trying to teach them, everything they're learning at church.
And frankly, everything that, you know, your mama told you was wrong, the content that, you know, most of the content out there trying to tell you is right and vice versa. So we're coming alongside parents at TruePlay with something, not just that, you know, tells God's truth and unpacks the Bible through video games, but something that kids are truly going to love and enjoy. People are, we have so many parents who write us and say how delighted their kids are, how their kids love the characters, how they want to come back and use it, how their faith is growing. And if you look at our numbers in terms of the usage and the return, you know, kids coming back and enjoying the game and coming back and playing again and again and again, they're enjoying it more than the most popular, the 10 most popular games in the App Store.
Our team's done a phenomenal job building a product that not only do people love, but that also shares God's truth. And you mentioned, I believe you mentioned, or at least in my mind, I thought I heard you say like parents are even having fun kind of playing, playing kind of challenging, right? They're challenging each other, right?
So you can get high score and different things like that, right? Yeah, we, I mean, we built the games and we write the stories in a way that yes, kids enjoy them, but parents enjoy them too. You know, look, I'm sure we all had the experience of watching some of the classic Disney movies.
So now lately there's been some real issues, but in the past, the Lion King from 1994 and you know, Pinocchio where you will sit and enjoy that movie just as much as your kid because the way the story is told and some of the jokes and things. And so that's the way that we write and we find and the way we design games. We find parents enjoy playing the games with their kids.
They enjoy competing against them who can get the highest score and we have a lot of feedback with with you know, something you could do as a family. I'll just tell you I'm a dad. You're a dad. It's not always easy to find something you and your kids can do together and enjoy and this is true play has been proven to be something that that does that.
That's pretty amazing. Now, let me ask you this and then we'll segue to the questions you have for me. But so is it because you have your own kids or what? What inspired you, Brent, to develop true play? Really feel called by God, you know, I was about to turn 40 and I was asking myself what am I going to do with the rest of my life? I've been a serial technology entrepreneur and God made it very clear just through other people and through just speaking to me directly in different ways. That this was something that I was supposed to do and as I started to walk down the road in faith as best I could, the numbers, the reason for it became more and more obvious, you know, as I mentioned only 31% of kids believing in God, anxiety, suicide, depression rates, all-time highs, everything that's gone on with Disney lately where they're putting very inappropriate, you know, content for kids with Roblox, which is one of the most popular gaming platforms. There's a lawsuit right now because parents are saying there was child predatory behavior on Roblox and the lawsuit is about that. And so there's just thing, you know, circumstance after circumstance after circumstance where it's become so obvious that there's a war on our kids and you ask anybody whether they're a Christian or not. What's the most precious thing in your life?
They'll say my family, my children and yet as a society, if we're to get a scorecard, we'd get somewhere between a D or an F. And so we're coming alongside parents whether you're a Christian or you're not and saying hey, this is something that's going to enrich and uplift your family and we're going to bring the truth of who Jesus Christ is and who the Bible is in a way that everybody's going to enjoy. That's what Trueplay is about. Yeah, and I love it. You know, you threw that term out, technology entrepreneur.
I love that as well. And so Brent Duesing, CEO founder of Trueplay, tell our folks where they can go learn more about your app. Check it out at trueplaygames.com, T-R-U-P-L-A-Y, trueplaygames.com. And please give it a shot. Download it, try it out.
There's a free trial. We hope you love it and please spread the word. You know, it's going to take a lot of us in this movement to transform society and culture for kids. We're starting a movement and we're coming alongside parents because we think parents make the best parents, not somebody, you know, making some movie or some social media platform in a faraway place from you. So we're coming alongside you and we hope you and your family are really blessed by the product at Trueplay. Well, that's amazing.
We're going to do our best to help you get the word out as well. So, all right. So Q&A with Kolov, questions and answers. I have no idea, Brent, what you're going to ask me. Now, I do know from prior conversations that I think you grew up watching a little bit of wrestling, or as we say here in the Carolinas, wrasslin'. Do they say that in Missouri? Do they say wrasslin' or do they say wrasslin'? No, we say wrasslin'.
We do. I grew up in Missouri. Yeah, I grew up in Missouri in the 80s and in the 90s and started watching wrestling right in 1990.
It was right when the ultimate warrior beat Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania VI. That's what got me hooked. Oh, wow. Okay.
Yeah. So, watched you, watched you when you came back. And in fact, for those listening, the way I met Nikita was I'm walking down a hallway at this conference where there's all these boos and there's a picture of Lex Luger. And I was a huge Lex Luger fan when I was a kid. And I said to my colleague, wow, cool, Lex Luger.
And you turned to me and I realized it was you. And I was like, wow, I enjoyed your matches and stuff. And then I grabbed Nikita and I said, why in the world did you ruin the greatest tag team match of all time? And without missing a beat, he goes, oh, you mean the Steiners versus Sting and Lex Luger. By the way, guys, if you haven't ever watched that match, 1991, the very first SuperBrawl, Sting and Lex Luger versus the Steiners. Those guys are some of the greats of all. Gosh, the Steiners in their prime, Sting in his prime.
I mean, it's unbelievable. St. Pete, Florida. Yeah, hit Sting in the face with the chain. But St. Petersburg, Florida had good reasons for it. Yeah, but that was accidental. Well, like I was going for Luger, but Sting came. I'm sure Sting understood. Well, I don't think he did because he fought me all the way out to the parking lot. I don't think he understood. He sacrificed himself for his friend. And there you go, which by the way, just a little side note here. So the Stinger who had almost a 40 year career.
It's unbelievable. Luger and I were both able to be at his retirement match in Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina in the month of March. And so, yeah, it was quite an honor to be there just to celebrate him. And it was an incredible match as well.
Well, that was my first question. Where does his legacy rank in your mind for Sting? Gosh, I mean, it's got to be. I mean, he's, you know, you mentioned what got you hooked was, who said Hulk Hogan against who? Who was it against WrestleMania 6? WrestleMania 6, the 1990 match.
Where he had The Warrior beaten clean for the first time. So Ultimate Warrior, which, so here's a bit of irony for those who aren't avid wrestling fans who might not know all the history of wrestling. So we're talking about Sting. You're talking about Ultimate Warrior and Hogan and of course, ironically, Ultimate Warrior and Sting both started their careers together as a tag team.
And then eventually, you know, then Warrior goes up to New York and Sting comes over to the Carolinas and the rest is history from there. But I got to tell you, you know, of course, Hogan had a phenomenal career. Ric Flair has, you know, had a phenomenal career. And there's many other guys, legendary guys, I actually write about this in my book, my life story, Nikita, A Tale of the Ring of Redemption, William Murdoch, who did the book with me as a wrestling historian.
You probably appreciate this, Brent. In my book, in addition to my own story, we take the history of professional wrestling back to the 1800s. We're talking William Muldoon and Lou Thes and some names that some fans probably aren't even familiar with, but the avid fan might be. But all that to say, I tell you, not just because Stinger is my friend, because he is, but I've got to rank him at this point with almost a 40-year career and on top for that entire time. And still, like if you were in Greensboro that night for his retirement match, I want to tell you, he performed at his, you know, he performed at a high level. It wasn't, you know, a 64-year-old guy, you know, just creeping around the ring. I mean, he's crashing through tables.
They threw him, shattered a glass. I mean, it's crazy, right? So all that to say, Brent, I'm going to have to, for me, I'm going to have to rank him numero uno number one.
I agree. I think if you look at his peak when he was surfacing back in the late 80s through the mid 90s, he was so strong. He was so explosive.
He could do a lot of aerial stuff, you know, go back and watch his, I know you have, but if you're listening, his matches with Big Van Vader are some of the best stuff you'll ever see in wrestling. It was incredible. Nikita Kolof 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 Kolof Fans, and like it, and follow today. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Would your company, business, or you personally like to partner with me in supporting Kolof for Christ Ministries, The Man Up Show, and Man Up Minutes? Go to kolof.net and click the donate button. You can give monthly, annually, or one time.
God bless you for making a difference around the world. If you would like to support Kolof 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.kolof.net and donate today. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. It's also interesting though on Sting's legacy, Ric Flair will say that if he gets asked who's the best guy you were in the ring with, he'll often say Sting. So that's somebody who obviously knows a lot.
All right, here's the next question for you. Wrestlers tend to have either really bad personal problems, and unfortunately, and very sadly, a very high death rate, or they tend to find Jesus and be very vocal. You, Lex Luger, who obviously is a good friend of yours, Sting's been very vocal about his faith. Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, he actually lives here in Austin. He's come out about his faith. And in fact, I don't know if you heard it, when Hulk Hogan was on the Joe Rogan show within the last year, he basically gave Joe Rogan the gauntlet show.
Yeah, her clips, her clips. Okay, okay. Why is it, Nikita, that wrestlers tend to be pretty binary? It either tends to be a really kind of tough, rad personal life, or boy, they find Jesus and they're just on fire.
Say the first part again. Well, why in your mind, it's been well documented how many early deaths there's been in wrestling, or how many people have so many bad personal problems. That's kind of one road by successful wrestlers going down. Or the other one is they've come on fire for Christ.
Why is it so binary? Why is it either or in your mind? I mean, you know, whether it's wrestling, professional, any professional sport, someone who's the CEO, you know, running a successful, you know, secular company, you know, it's the pursuit of success, right? One of the other books I wrote about wrestling was success, right? The pursuit of success and that people have a desire to want to, want to be, I think in general, want to be successful. And the interesting thing about the pro wrestling world and those coming to Christ versus those who met a more unfortunate death, you might say, and there's a whole list of guys that could, that we could fill in the blank there, is, you know, in the pursuit of the brass ring, as Lex Luger sometimes refers to it, you know, you reach the pinnacle, like I think about my own career, I reach the pinnacle, become a world champion, you know, different belts and titles. And then at the end of the day, you know, I'm excited about the roar of the crowd, but at the end of the night, the roar of the crowd ends, you got to get up the next day and look for the next, you know, thrilling moment to fill that void in your life. You know, as God created us, I guess part of the way I'd answer that question is God created us, I feel like he created us with this built-in GPS or this hole in our heart, if you will, and or a longing for something more beyond this life and not knowing what that is. People fill it with drugs, they fill it with alcohol, they fill it with sex, they fill it with success, fill in the, again, fill in the blank. And the interesting thing about the pro wrestling world and how many have come to Christ, you mentioned a number of high-profile names, it's been later in life, right, that they have the aha moment or that revelation.
For me, it was 34. 34 years old, I knew the story intellectually, you might say, I had it, you know, the mechanics of it down in my head, but that story had never made the 18th trip from my head down to my heart until the 17th October, 1993, while I was on a quest on a journey of what life held next for Nikita Kolov. I'm like, Brent, I'm like, I'm successful, but I'm still unfulfilled. I mean, I'm world champion. I've got this level of quote, fame, but I'm still unfulfilled. Sting would say, I was successful on camera, but my life was a train wreck behind the scenes.
Lex Luger would say the same thing. I heard bits and pieces of Hogan's testimony, that at the end of the day, it's an empty chase, right? Solomon called it the empty chase, right?
Chasing that brass ring, right? And so I think a person has to get to that place, or at least for some of us as pro wrestlers, that we tasted success beyond most people's imagination, and yet it still left us empty at the end of the day. And through testimony, or through somebody testifying, or our own pursuit of what would fill that void in our life, we all came to the same conclusion that we needed Jesus Christ. And unfortunately for some of the others in our business, they had tragic endings to their life before they came to that conclusion. Yeah, I mean, look, you lived it, and your friends have too, very successfully. From my observations and the people I've met, it kind of feels like wrestling pushes you, because of the physical demand, and I think a lot of listeners just don't realize how hard that job is, and how physically demanding and mentally psychological taxing it is, that it pushes you to this extreme.
And then you really are, as you were saying, almost faced with the choice of going down a really bad path or choosing God because you know you can't do it all on your own. Would you say that's fair? Yes, 100%, yes, 100%. All right, I want to ask you this. Here's what's funny, if you're listening, I make video games, and obviously Nikita, very successful professor wrestler, there's a way to think about what you and I do, which is storytelling, right? So I'm telling stories through games, you told stories in the ring, and not only in the ring, but outside the ring, on the promos, and like you talked about, you and Sting having a fight after the match in the parking lot, which culminated, I think, in a Russian chain match, if I remember that correctly. My question to you is, what makes good storytelling in wrestling? What are components that make a really good story in the wrestling context? Well, what makes a compelling story? Yeah, in wrestling, yeah.
I mean, now that's changed, right? Okay, in terms of the modern day wrestling, that's changed in the sense that, and what I mean by that is the business itself has changed, where, I'm going to use the term, I'm going to use the term creative content, okay? Creative content, okay?
Creating creative content, okay? Where back in the day, so for people, and a lot of people maybe already know this, but maybe there's a lot of listeners that don't. Back in the day, we had, I say we, we as in wrestlers, had more creative control of the content. In other words, the outcome, I'll phrase it this way, the outcome might've been predetermined, okay? And not by us, but by a promoter, someone who signs you a check, right? Who hands you cash at the end of the night, your payoff, as it was called.
A booker, a more common term that some know now, a booker, who books all the matches and determines all the outcomes. And if I was going to the ring, Brent, to wrestle Ric Flair for an hour, which I can't even count how many times I did. I assure you, I didn't go to the ring memorizing a 60 minute match.
I didn't. I had a couple of minute outcome, and then for 55, six, seven, eight minutes, him and I spontaneously told a story to that crowd each and every night to draw you the fan into the story. And that was called the psychology of wrestling. Like we had to develop a psycho, and the ones who were able to develop that psychology excelled to the highest ranks, right?
Became a world champion in many cases. And if you didn't have that ability, you might've been middle card or opening match, okay? And so we had a lot of creative control in what we did. And again, it was spontaneous, whether through nonverbal cues and or as you got to know a guy, you know, nonverbal cues or even verbal cues, you know, where we're communicating in the ring without you even knowing we're communicating with each other, okay? And so the challenge was, the key was to tell a story that would draw you into that match and into the outcome, okay? Now where it's changed, where it's changed is at some point as it became sports quote entertainment, they started bringing writers in and writers started writing the matches from opening bell to the closing bell, you know, from start to the finish and interviews. Like if you go back and you watch a match or an interview of Dusty Rhodes or myself or Rick Flair or anyone else, those were 100% spontaneous. Like nobody's handed me a script. Okay.
At all. Like I'm in my mind thinking, what am I going to say about this town, this opponent, right? And that it would draw a fan to buy a ticket, in those days to buy a ticket and come to the arena, right? Nowadays it's to sign up for pay-per-view, right?
And so the business has shifted, taking nothing away from the talent and the athletes that compete today in the ring, but they've essentially removed that element. In fact, Rock and Roll Express, you remember that name? Yeah, I do. I remember them, yeah. Okay, Ricky and Robert.
Yep, here's a quick story on Ricky and Robert. So I was a part of Billy Corrigan kind of resurrected the NWA, right? And they were doing, and he was resurrecting the Crockett Cup.
What? Yeah, you won that, didn't you? Dusty and I won that in Baltimore, in a two-day tournament in 1987, right?
The Crockett Cup tournament. So Corrigan is resurrecting that and he has Magnum TA and I come to the arena and hand the cup to the winners and he's resurrecting the old World Tag Team belts as well on that same night. So Magnum and I are there to kind of present all that and I had to laugh to myself, Brent. I'm in the back and I walk by Robert Gibson and he used to call me Kita, Kita, right? He would never say Nuff Kita.
He'd just say Kita, hey Kita, hey Kita. And I'm like, what's up, Robert? He goes, I hate this. I go, what do you hate, Robert? He goes, we just spent an hour and 15 minutes talking about a 12-minute match.
I go, what? He goes, we just spent an hour and 15 minutes talking about a 12-minute match. And he goes, man, whatever happened is just calling it in the ring and listening to the crowd, right? He goes, I'm afraid to even crack a joke out there.
I might mess up my opponents and they screw everything up in my ring. I'm like, man, I'm sorry, Robert. I'm so sorry, right? But that's the product today. That's the business today. So is that, I hope I answered your question. I hope so. It's good.
It's good. I find from my experience watching wrestling, some of my favorite angles back in the day were the Savage Hogan, the first one, right? The Mega Powers angle, which was this slow burn, just a masterclass.
Or the NWO, how they breadcrumbed that story over time. And so I think that when you look at a lot of TV shows today and the way that these serial television shows, some of the most popular TV shows, where they build the story slowly over time and then there's a payoff, I think that's, as a fan, when wrestling's often been at its best, and I think you're absolutely right that a lot of the skill you guys had, you're talking about you and Flair, I think you may have been to Starrcade with him, right? Yep. Was your guys' ability to kind of read a crowd and almost kind of like jazz music, kind of improvise? Well, 100%.
So improvise and be spontaneous, right? And I'll say this too, we'll have to wrap up here in a moment, but I'll say this as well, you're talking about the buildup. And again, the business has changed, right? So there's basically a pay-per-view every month, right? So they've got to try to build a storyline or build a show and a storyline from month to month versus when I was the bad guy early in my career and we were building up that very first ever Great American Bash where Flair would defend his world title against me for the very first time. There was a six-month buildup to that and I never laid my hand, I did the dungeon scenes and I never laid my hand on him until in the studio in Atlanta, kind of right before that where I ripped up his clothes and his suit and everything else and sickled his best friend David Crockett, right? The announcer, right?
As part of that angle, but Brent, it was a six-month buildup. See, they really can't do that anymore because they're building pay-per-view to pay-per-view, right? So they call it, I think the term is hotshotting, right?
They've got to hotshot it, right? So anyway, well, man, you asked some great questions. I could talk to you for another hour and we'll just have to have you back on the show sometime. Would you be willing to come back? I would love to. Look, it is an honor to spend time with you, Nikita, not just in your career, but also the man that you've become since wrestling and everything you're doing for the kingdom and just so much appreciate you and love to spend the time with you.
I'd be happy to do it anytime. Well, and I appreciate it. Brent Duesing, CEO, founder of Trueplay and I want you to go out. Listen, go out and check out his website, trueplaygames.com, T-R-U-P-L-A-Y games, trueplaygames.com.
Check it out. If you've got children, grandchildren, you're a grandparent out there, maybe this is something you get for your grandkids, one way you can bless them and let's bless Brent and Trueplay and help get the word out. So go out and you live a God-filled, God-blessed day. Brent, thank you. Thank you, Nikita. God bless you. 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 coloff.net and donate today. Nikita Koloff here.
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