SLAGLE:  Hey everybody, thanks for joining us here today at www.superstarbillygraham.com, I'm Steve Slagle, and on today's show we're going to be talking to a man who is a legitimate wrestling legend, and one of the most fearsome and powerful villains the business has ever know.  Throughout the sixties, seventies, eighties, and even into the nineties,  he was definitely one of the biggest stars in the game, a former WWF champion, and perhaps the most "evil" of the many "evil foreigner" wrestlers competing during his era.  So, with that in mind, it's my pleasure to welcome the one and only "Russian Bear" Ivan Koloff to the show.  Ivan, are you there?

KOLOFF:  Yes sir, how are you doing, Steve?

SLAGLE: Good, good. Thanks for taking some time out of your schedule to be with us today.  Before we start, I'd like to ask, when did you officially retire?

KOLOFF:  1994, September of `94.  That was after thirty-four years of wrestling.

SLAGLE:  Wow, thirty-four years!  And what have you been doing to stay busy since your retirement?

KOLOFF:  Well, I've enjoyed helping to raise money for the Children's Miracle Network.  I've been doing that, actually, well, going on nine years now.  I go to different venders, malls, markets, wherever I can go, wrestling matches, and pretty well just sit back and do some autographs, visit with the people, selling pictures and what not.  I enjoy going to the conventions.  When I'm at home I just like to relax, and I have a nice little business here, so I am really enjoying my retirement.

SLAGLE:  Now, anyone who remembers you during your prime will surely recall the legendary endurance and stamina of Ivan Koloff.  Was that something you intentionally developed as part of your persona as, you know, 'the unstoppable Soviet juggernaut,' or was it simply your great conditioning coming across on camera during your matches?

KOLOFF:  Oh, I don't know, maybe a little of both.  I will say that I learned a lot from the guys I worked with.  Of course, Billy was a huge influence, but also other guys, all kinds of people helped with my training.  I mean, Ric Flair, that's somebody who taught me about conditioning, as far as, um, you have to be able to go.  You know, the 'sixty minute man'.  Ric was into the running machine, cardio exercises, you know.  Especially running.  Whenever he came in back in `74, here in the Charlotte area, he came over just to work out, and I'd go over to his place, and we'd just go running.  I hadn't been doing a lot of running, and it really, wow, what a difference just running a few miles can make.  I learned from so many guys.  I think that really helped me in the ring, as the years went on I think I got into even better shape.

SLAGLE:  Being one of the most well-travelled wrestlers of your era, you came across pretty much every promoter in the business.  Did you have a favorite one, someone you especially enjoyed working for?

KOLOFF:  You know, there are some genuinely nice people in the wrestling business, and I must say now that I really never had any that I disliked.  I've had run-ins with a couple of them, but you have that with any business you're in.  But overall, I think they saw me as , you know, business, money, and that's what they're in the business for, to make money.  You know, Paul Bosch in Houston was just extra nice, you know, he went out of his way to make sure you had a nice hotel, food at the matches.  That type of thing.  He just took care of you all the way down the line as far as payoffs.  You know, that you didn't have to go back and say to him, and uh, question this or that.  And I must say that Vince McMahon, Sr. was also a very nice man to me, very fair, right down the line.  It was the type of thing where if I felt I was having a problem or something was bothering me, as far as money or the schedule, he was the type of person you could sit down and talk to.  And the was really nice, you know?

SLAGLE:  It seems like Paul Bosch was really a favorite of a lot of the guys, he must've really been a great businessman to have so many wrestlers that were so supportive of him.

KOLOFF:  Oh yeah.  But you know, there was a lot of guys, like Frank Tunney, the Sam Muchnick's, or even just the local promoter in the area or territory that were very, very nice.  And then there was the guys that I learned a lot from, like Eddie Graham because of his psychology of wrestling, you could tell there was a lot of wisdom there.  You couldn't help but learn something from being around Eddie.  And Jim Crockett, who gave me some of my best money-making years, it's hard not to like a guy like that.  Although they were all different personalities, I don't have anything negative to say about any of them.  I have had run-ins before when I went from one organization to another, and never really had a written contract, if any, it was more or less just a verbal thing, an open contract, but they ended up getting very angry and I was blackballed.  You know, the idea that I'm not going to be hired anymore because 'you went and left my territory, and went to work for the opposition' as far as they were concerned, and they were going to teach you a lesson.  And I must say that they did that to me for a couple of years, the cold shoulder type thing.  It still didn't stop me, it didn't stop me from making a living because I went overseas and such, but I had to work my way back in.  I got my wrists slapped...After that, I was just like, 'Whoa, man, I didn't realize they would take it so seriously.  I mean, I didn't figure, you know, who am I, I'm like one guy, you know?  But I guess they figured that they'd set an example.

SLAGLE:  Now, are you talking about the IWA thing back around `75, where they were trying to go national and it kind of, you know, ruffled a few feathers?

KOLOFF:  Yep.  And then after that it was like, man, it was bad.  I didn't realize they would take it so seriously.  And really, it's against the law to do that, to blackball somebody.  You can't monopolize someone, especially when you don't even have a written contract with them.  But, I guess it was a lesson for me (laughs).

SLAGLE:  One thing I've always wondered about Ivan Koloff was, it's like you were such a convincing 'foreigner.'  To sit here and talk to you now, your voice is so different than that of "The Russian Bear's."  So I always wondered if by doing your Russian gimmick so convincingly during a time when the US and the Soviets were so close to war for so long, did you ever fear for your safety leaving the arena, or being out at a bar or something?  Like...when you and Nikita and Krusher Kruschev went to the US Capital in Washington carrying anti-US signs, and then you'd cut these very serious, very anti-American promos on not only the babyfaces, but also the fans sitting at home.  I mean, I remember stuff from when I was a kid that Apter used to publish about you being a distant relative of Stalin's, and how the FBI kept tabs on you because of your affiliation with the Communist party, all of this stuff designed to press hot-buttons with the wrestling public and get you over as like the consummate heel.  Some of it sounds kind of funny now, but it was very effective back then, and it got you a ton of heat.  It was such a kayefabed era back then, did you ever run into some occasions when your communist gimmick got you into trouble away from the ring?

KOLOFF:  Yeah, it did.  Not to the point it was really a lot of trouble, but they (gov't. officials) did come and check me out on a couple of different occasions.  One in particular that was kind of scary was when I had said something on TV, right around Veteran's Day.  I didn't say anything real detrimental about them, it was more along the lines that there's some Americans that end of taking advantage of the fact that they are U.S. vets, and that they could do something worthwhile, but instead they just lay around eating chips and drinking beer (laughs).  Man, that got some heat!  Some vets heard that and, man, they just called in and put so much pressure on in such a short period of time.  This was Saturday, a live show in Atlanta and by Monday in Augusta, they had the F.B.I. down there checking out all of my papers, you know, thoroughly checking me out, my background, 'who is this Communist, why is he saying these things?'  I was just lucky I had my papers with me.

SLAGLE:  So then, you really did have the FBI checking into you?  I thought that was just part of, you know, part of the gimmick.

KOLOFF:  Well, they identified themselves as the FBI, and I was convinced they were.  (laughs)  Like I said, I was just lucky I had all of my papers with me.  I always kept them after that first time they checked me out.

SLAGLE:  What about the fans, did you ever have any fans that wanted to, you know, come up and take a swing at you or something?

KOLOFF:  Man...a lot!  I had, not the kitchen sink thrown on me, but just about everything else.  I mean, people even took the seats apart, took the bolts out so they could throw the seats in the ring.  In Montreal, they use to take nails and shoot them with a rubber band.  I had one stick right in my head.  I got back into the dressing room and I felt something burning in my head, and it was a nail sticking in it, right in my head.  Knives thrown at me.  One guy threw a knife at me and hit me in the side with the wrong end, the handle.  It felt like a hammer or something.  I bent down, closed it up, put it in my trunks  and used it as a weapon on the way out of the ring...

SLAGLE:  (Laughing) There you go!

KOLOFF:  I kept it, I still have that knife today.  I mean...everything.  I've had the ring filled with chairs, literally filled with chairs.  This is in Montreal once again, Hans Schmidt and I, and they filled the ring up with metal chairs trying to kill us.  They were mad because we beat the babyfaces, the Rougeau boys.  We got the first fall on them, and then they rioted, and that was the end of the match.  We had to fight our way back to the dressing room.  I picked up a chair to block all of the other chairs that were flying at us, you know, as a shield.  And I got back to the dressing room, and like a fool, just before I went inside, this was in a hockey arena, and just before I went inside like an idiot I turned around to look back and BAM! the chair hit me in the nose.  In fact, I still have a little scar from it.  So, there were a lot of incidents where they threw stuff in the ring, anything.  The Boston Gardens, they got so wild that they had to put a big net from the dressing room all the way to the ring because the people way up in the stands would throw things and try to hit you.  I mean, it was dangerous!  There were a lot of occasions like that.  In Madison Square Garden, because in New York you really get all kinds, very different people, and some of them, they'll do anything to get even with you.  They'd often wait outside for me.  And in the taxi trying to get away from the ring, because we didn't dare park our car there, so you'd get a cab to take you to your car.  I remember one time, the captain was with me, Lou Albano, and we were...man that cab driver was scared!  They were tipping the car over, trying to get us, lifting the car, the wheels would go up, and they'd come back down to the pavement and squeal, people running to get out of the way.  It was insanity, Steve, very scary.  And the thing is, there are a lot of stories like that.  A lot of stories.

SLAGLE:  Now, I know you've probably discussed it a million times, but I still have to ask you about the legendary match with Bruno before over 20,000 at Madison Square Garden in which you ended his seven or eight year title reign and became the World Wide Wrestling Federation champion.  Can you explain the events leading up to the match, when you found out you were going to win the belt, and then, of course, the historic moment when you two, you know, literally shocked the Madison Square Garden crowd into a stunned silence?

KOLOFF:  I was wrestling in Hawaii, for a couple of months.  At that time, they ran Hawaii as a small territory, and they would wrestle about three or four nights a week on the different islands and such.  So I just took that as a chance to relax, to work out hard, you know, preparing to come back to a different territory back here.  And then I got a message sent for me from Vince McMahon, Sr. that said he, uh, needed me to come back.  They needed me to take this spot against Bruno, something that they had, they had chosen me to take the shot simply because I think the guy that they had at the time got hurt or something and it was asked 'well, who would you like to be in here wrestling against Bruno?'  My name was mentioned, they contacted me, and I said "Yeah, definitely!"  It was supposed to be a lengthy stay, it wouldn't be something where I was in and out.  And, indeed, in a phone conversation it was later verified.  Because, you see, whenever you made a move back in those days, it was usually...you either came in on the plane to do a couple of shots, and then you'd leave again.  But if you moved in for any period of time, if you had a family, you'd move your family in, you know, and it was quite a chore, moving from one end of the country to another.  So, that's what I had done.  But when I got there, there had been a change of plans, but it still benefited me greatly, just the idea of having that belt, and against the legend Bruno Sammartino, because we'd been feuding so long and he was so popular, so unbelievably popular with the people.  So much so that the night of the match, I got the one, two, three, and stood up, raised my hand and, you know, you wait around a little while for them to get the belt, and they weren't giving it to me.  So I said to the referee, "Give me the belt, man, raise my hand!" and he said "No, no."  I said, "Why not?"  You know, "don't be fooling around with me!"  He says "No, just go back to the dressing room now, and we'll explain."  So, I got to the dressing room, and Vince said they were afraid of a riot.  He could tell that the people, from the way they were responding, that they were figuring we were going to reverse the decision or something and give it back to Bruno.  So they were afraid if they announced it, that the people would riot.  I mean, the people were crying, the ladies were crying because Bruno had lost to a Soviet.  Vince came back to me with a deal afterwards that was very satisfactory to me, even though I ended up moving out after only a couple of months of being there.  I came back again later, but it was during this period of time the IWA thing happened and all of that.  So I didn't get back (to the WWWF) for several years.  And, it might've hurt me a bit, you know, a couple of tours up there.

SLAGLE:  Now, wasn't Mil Mascaras part of the IWA?  Wasn't he their World Heavyweight champion?

KOLOFF:  Yeah, I believe so.

SLAGLE:  Did he get blackballed as well, or was it just you that was made the example?

KOLOFF:  No, he didn't.

SLAGLE:  So you took the fall, so to speak, for the IWA from the NWA promoters?

KOLOFF:  I think that's fair to say.