Ivan Koloff
| Ivan Koloff | |
|---|---|
Koloff in November 2011
|
|
| Birth name | Oreal Perras |
| Born |
August 25, 1942 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | February 18, 2017 (aged 74) Winterville, North Carolina, United States |
| Cause of death | Liver cancer |
| Professional wrestling career | |
| Ring name(s) | Ivan Koloff Jim Parris Orwell Paris Red McNulty |
| Billed height | 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) |
| Billed weight | 298 lb (135 kg) |
| Billed from | Moscow, Russia |
| Trained by | Jack Wentworth Dan Koloff |
| Debut | 1961 |
| Retired | 1994 |
Ivan Koloff (born Oreal James Perras; August 25, 1942 – February 18, 2017) was a Canadian professional wrestler, best known for once holding the WWWF World Heavyweight Championship. He was known as "The Russian Bear".
Perras was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and raised on a dairy farm in rural Ontario along with his six brothers and three sisters.
Since first watching professional wrestling on TV at the age of eight, he wanted to become a wrestler, and would often wrestle with his brothers growing up. At age 18, he left high school and joined Jack Wentworth's wrestling school in Hamilton, Ontario, where he would lift weights and learn wrestling holds. He stood 5' 7 1/2" tall, and weighed approximately 270 pounds. Towards the end of his career, he dropped a considerable amount of weight and was tipping the scale at 205 pounds.
Perras debuted as an Irish rogue villain character named Red McNulty, billed from Dublin, Ireland and wrestling with an eyepatch. For the next three years, he wrestled around the Toronto area, eventually quitting his regular job to wrestle in the north-western area of Canada. There, Perras acquired much wrestling experience, and from there he made his first trip to Japan.
In 1967, Perras became "The Russian Bear" Ivan Koloff, a bearded villainous character billed from Ukraine, and debuted with the International Wrestling Association in Montreal, Québec. He defeated Johnny Rougeau for the IWA International Heavyweight Championship the following year. Koloff debuted in the World Wide Wrestling Federation in late 1969, managed by "Captain" Lou Albano. He soon started a rivalry with then-WWWF World Heavyweight Champion Bruno Sammartino. On January 18, 1971, Koloff defeated Sammartino in Madison Square Garden for the WWWF World Heavyweight Championship by pinfall after a knee drop from the top rope, ending Sammartino's seven and two-third years reign. Koloff lost the championship 21 days later to Pedro Morales, essentially being used as a "transitional champion" (as he was used to move the title from Sammartino to Morales without having the two fan favorites work against each other), much like Stan Stasiak and The Iron Sheik would be in later years. After the loss, Koloff remained a contender for the title but never reclaimed it, leaving the WWWF in 1971.
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