 |
|
|||
|
Ivan Koloff Class of 2008
RETURN TO THE HALL OF HEROES HOME PAGE
|
||||
|
PHOTO BY DICK BOURNE |
Member of the Hall of Heroes Class of 2008 IVAN KOLOFF |
|||
|
|
||||
 |
Inducting Ivan Koloff into the Class of 2008: DON KERNODLE
|
|||
|
|
||||
|
IVAN KOLOFF Paul Cantor, a professor at the University of Virginia, once cracked Ivan Koloff looked like “Lenin pumped up on steroids.” By any standard, that’s a pretty good analogy. Koloff might have been the most fearsome and successful of all the postwar grappling comrades, as he racked up full or partial ownership of 40-some singles and tag title runs during his storied career. “There were 50 guys at least running around doing Russian gimmicks, and he was a bigger star than all of them,” said veteran wrestling scribe Dave Meltzer. “That tells you it just wasn’t the gimmick. He was a hell of a wrestler.”
Though he only held the belt for about three weeks, Koloff’s reputation, backed by a menacing mien and his solid ring skills, was made. “I went to see him, and I was ringside, and Ivan threw a guy outside, and went outside,” said Rick Martel. “He looked like a Russian bear, with that big chest and the hair on him. He impressed the heck out of me.” Koloff went on to extended runs in the Northeast, again against Sammartino, the Midwest, and especially the Mid-Atlantic, where he was a fixture throughout the 1980s. He held the NWA World tag title five times and introduced “nephew” Nikita Koloff to the business, continuing to play on anti-Soviet sentiments. He quit World Championship Wrestling in 1989 when the company moved from Charlotte to Atlanta and wrestled on the independent circuit for a few years. “For me, it became too much of a change in wrestling, the credibility of it was being damaged by the change in going to so much showbiz and everything,” he reflected. His biggest victory in recent years has been his successful battle against drug and alcohol abuse, aided in no small part by Nikita, who helped him find religion, a tale chronicled in his autobiography, “Is That Wrestling Fake?” No wonder, then, that his induction into the Hall of Heroes is just another step in a long and remarkable journey.
- Steve Johnson |
||||
|
Click the image above to order this Hall of Heroes table photo. If questions, contact NWALegends@aol.com
|
||||
© 2005-2008 NWALegends.com, All Rights Reserved. Page Designed and Edited by Dick Bourne © 2008 Mid-Atlantic Gateway
|
||||
At the start, though, the “Russian
Bear,” born Oreal Perras, was strictly a member of the proletariat
as part of a 10-child family on an Ontario dairy farm. “I wanted to
wrestle since I was eight years old on the farm. Seen it on TV about
1950, when the TVs first showed wrestling. That was one of the main
programs that got a big rating back then,” Koloff recalled. He
landed at Jack Wentworth’s wrestling school in Hamilton, Ontario, a
breeding ground for dozens of pros. His big break came when Jacques
Rougeau Sr. helped turn him into a fellow traveler in 1967. “He
said, ‘Man, you'd make a good Russian if you shaved your head.’ He
said, ‘Would you do that? Come in to Montreal?’ ‘In a New York
second!’ ” Four years later, Koloff would end Bruno Sammartino’s
nearly eight-year reign as World Wide Wrestling Federation champ in
the middle of the ring in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Even
though the business is pro wrestling, many still regard that as the
biggest upset of the TV era. 