Nikolai Volkoff

Defector who became Soviet-style baddie in the wrestling ring

Nikolai Volkoff , weightlifter turned wrestler. Born: 14 October 1947, Split, Croatia. Died: 29 July 2018, Glen Arm, Maryland, United States.

Nikolai Volkoff, a massive ex-weight lifter who played a Soviet villain in the professional wrestling ring and battled the likes of Hulk Hogan, has died at his home in Glen Arm, Maryland. He was 70.

His wife, Lynn Peruzovic, said he had recently been hospitalised with heart problems.

Volkoff portrayed a communist villain with convincing panache, wearing Soviet-style apparel like an ushanka fur cap into the ring and singing the country’s national anthem before matches. It was an ideal Cold War shtick in wrestling, where good vs evil is an evergreen storyline.

But even as the act turned him into a major star and brought him championship titles, he was uncomfortable in the Soviet guise. He was actually a Croatian born in Yugoslavia as Josip Hrvoje Peruzovic.

“They made me into a Soviet bad guy,” Volkoff said in Listen, You Pencil Neck Geeks (2004), the autobiography of his flashy manager, Freddie Blassie, which was written with Keith Elliot Greenberg.

“See, even though I’m from Yugoslavia, my mother’s Russian and I speak the language. My father is Croatian and Italian, and there were too many Italians already in wrestling. Croatians nobody knew about.”

But, he added, he disliked the character that Blassie created for him. He detested life in Communist Yugoslavia and said in the book that he could not wait to flee.

He did so in 1968, after a competition in Vienna, going to the Canadian Embassy and defecting.

“I was just so happy to get out from there,” he said in an interview for the book The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Heels (2007), by Greg Oliver and Steve Johnson. “Those communist bastards. I hated them.”

Blassie insisted that Volkoff ’s revenge on the communists he loathed would be to “show people how bad they are”.

In 2013, Volkoff told The Baltimore Sun: “It was unbelievable. I was the most hated wrestler in the United States at the time.”

Volkoff acted the Soviet baddie for many years. When he wrestled Hogan in 1985, they carried the flags of their respective countries to the ring. Once inside, Volkoff stripped off what appeared to be a Second World War Soviet military coat. When their match began, Volkoff – 6ft 5in and more than 300 lb – twice lifted the even larger Hogan over his head.

But Hogan, the self-appointed protector of America, defeated Volkoff.

Volkoff won several championship titles. But the most prestigious one was the tagteam belt he took home in 1985 with the Iron Sheik, another anti-american character, for the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment).

Volkoff was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005.

Josip Peruzovic was born on October 14, 1947, to Ivan and Drajica Peruzovic in Split, Croatia, when it was part of Yugoslavia. He was a junior weightlifting champion in his country.

At the time of his defection, he spoke no English. Finding his way to Calgary, Alberta, he trained with Stu Hart and Newton Tattrie, with whom he formed The Mongols, a tag team partnership in which Peruzovic was Bepo and Tattrie was Geeto. They briefly held the wrestling federation’s international tag team championship in 1971.

Eventually, under Blassie’s tutelage, Peruzovic became Nikolai Volkoff, the Soviet scourge.

Bruno Sammartino, the popular and gentlemanly champion, was one of Volkoff ’s most frequent rivals.

In March 1974, nearly four years after Volkoff (then billed as Bepo Mongol) defeated Sammartino, the two battled to a draw for 53 minutes at a sold-out Madison Square Garden until the 11 p.m. curfew.

“The Siberian,” as The Daily News referred to Volkoff, “was tremendously effective in the first half of the match and especially in the closing minutes when he had Bruno’s shoulders to the canvas for counts of two on three occasions”.

Volkoff called it his most important match. But Sammartino triumphed in their rematch the next month. (Sammartino died in April.)

The end of the Cold War did more than force the fall of the Berlin Wall. It turned Volkoff into a good guy when he teamed up with the uber-patriotic Hacksaw Jim Duggan in the 1990s. Volkoff continued to wrestle, on and off, until last year.

In addition to his wife, the former Lynn Breidenbaugh, he is survived by his daughters, Kirsten Peruzovic and Kara Lipinski; and his brothers, Ante and Tihomir.

In the latter years of his career, Volkoff became a county code-enforcement inspector in Baltimore. In 2006, under the Volkoff name, he ran unsuccessfully in a Republican primary for a seat in the Maryland House of Delegates. He finished last in a field of five.

He also worked with children at a recreation centre in Cockeysville, Maryland, teaching them chess and pool and supervising some in weightlifting.

“We just want to give kids a healthy environment,” the once-fearsome heel told The Sun, “so they stay away from troubles.”

RICHARD SANDOMIR

New York Times 2018. Distributed by NYT Syndication Service.