With biceps the size of cannon balls and thighs bigger than tree trunks, Koloff crafted a wrestling character in the sport that remains a benchmark for others to achieve. His spectacular achievements in wrestling gained him notoriety and legions of fans.

These days though, the crowds he attracts are more interested in redemption than body slamming. As Koloff likes to say, he is now traveling the road to Damascus.

That road had a bumpy start with twists and turns along the way. Even his ardent fans don’t know the real story behind the man once nicknamed "The Russian Nightmare." Born on March 9, 1959, in Minneapolis, Minn., he was given the name Nelson Scott Simpson by his parents Olive and Paige "Pete" Simpson. Growing up he hated his first name so much he always told his friends and teachers to call him Scott.

He legally changed his name to Nikita Koloff when he began his wrestling career. Nikita’s family has a rich history.

The youngest of four children Nikita’s mother was born in England near the Scottish border. Her mother was English while her father was French Canadian. The couple met during World War I while he was in England with the Canadian Army. He paid the boat ticket for his future brides’ trip to North America when she was only 15 years old. Nikita’s father is of Swedish decent and his currently researching his heritage.

Paige Simpson became a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service after serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. During the war Nikita’s mother made bullets at a Minneapolis factory. She became a homemaker after her marriage.

Returning home after the war, his father had a difficult time adjusting. When Nikita was two years old, his father decided to leave the family.

For the next 20 years Nikita’s father was in and out of his life but that changed dramatically when Nikita entered adulthood.

With no child support Nikita’s mother set about the task of raising a family without a husband or a breadwinner. She found a job as a teacher’s aid in the Minneapolis school system and held that position for 35 years.

Such a low-paying job couldn’t support a family so she was forced to turn to welfare. Nikita found himself and the rest of his family living in the projects of Minneapolis for the next eight years.

Since the family was so poor Nikita had to rely on the public lunch program while attending elementary school. At times he was so embarrassed he would try to hide his free meal ticket from friends and classmates. The experience left a mark on the young boy.

Still, he holds the memories of growing up on the welfare system with dignity.

"I’m glad I grew up that way," Nikita said. "It gave me a greater sense of what I achieved and acquired. I have a great appreciation for my beginnings." When Nikita entered fifth grade in 1969 his mother moved the family to a home in Robbinsdale, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb. As a result of the move Nikita had to change schools. It created an odd circumstance of history when he found himself transferring from Ulysses S. Grant Elementary School to Robert E. Lee Elementary.

It was at about this time that he began noticing he was growing physically larger than most of the other boys at school.

When he entered sixth grade he stumbled across a copy of "Iron Man," a muscle magazine. Flicking through the magazine he found himself mesmerized at how men could build their muscles.

Shortly after he bought his first weight lifting set - a 110-pound starter set with money he earned as a newspaper boy. From then on he would never stop weightlifting.

By junior high school he pumped himself up to where he could squat 500 pounds. That’s an amazing feat for anyone let alone a boy barely in his teens.

In seventh grade he played his first year of organized football in a local league. With a strict 110-pound weight limit for players, Nikita found there were times when he had to run laps around the football field to trim his weight down to the weight requirement.

Since no league existed at the time for eighth graders he didn’t play football the next year. But in ninth grade he switched school districts and played defensive and offensive lineman on the Robbinsdale Junior High School football team.

It was at Robbinsdale that Nikita met Gerry McFarland, the school’s health and gym teacher. A body building enthusiast, McFarland took 35 kids under his wing, including Nikita, and coached them on the fine points of how to add muscle to their bodies. Nikita immediately took a shine to McFarland.

"He was probably my first hero. My first mentor, a positive role model," Nikita said. Watching his body gaining strength and girth, Nikita began dreaming of playing in the National Football League. It was a dream he would chase for more than a decade.

At about the same time Nikita discovered he had a knack for business.

He developed his newspaper route to where it was the largest in the area. After a few years he became an employer by hiring a neighborhood friend to take over the route chores.

But by tenth grade he gave up the route in favor of a job at a nearby McDonald’s restaurant. He held a number of jobs there from chef to cashier.

Nikita was so enraptured with the work he honed his skills to where he won nearly all of the speed contests the fast-food restaurant would stage for employees.

"I had a certain work ethic to be the best as whatever I did," he said.

As a high school senior Nikita moved up the job ladder to a better paying job. He worked as a busboy at a restaurant in a local swanky hotel. He earned enough money to buy his first car, a 1967 Chevrolet Impala which he bought off of his older brother. He moved up a notch a short time later when he bought a sporty Chevrolet Camero - all with his own money.

Between football, weightlifting and work that kept him out of serious trouble. But he readily acknowledges he wasn’t tops in his class when it came to behavior.

"I never got in trouble with the law, but I was not a model child," Nikita can now say with a smile.

Lifting with McFarland, Nikita transformed his body into a rock of muscle. Like so many weight lifters, Nikita was an introvert in high school. He was so quiet in school one home room teacher called him a "wall flower." It wasn’t until he became a senior that he embarked on serious dating.

That was due, in part, to his football dream. Training as a wide receiver and tight end it took up much of his time along with lifting weights. His time in the gym and on the field was starting to pay off. By 10th grade he weighed almost 170 pounds.

The school had a policy that sophomores couldn’t play or even dress for games. But Nikita was good enough that he was allowed to punt and kickoff for the varsity team.

Becoming a starter by his junior year he found he loved to catch a football. It was a rare sight to see the stocky teenager drop a pass.

His speed was a better-than-average 4.8 to 4.9 seconds in the 40-yard dash, and his "soft" hands made him a sure bet for catching passes.

By his junior year his muscles were bulging and he weighed in at 190 pounds. As a senior his strength developed to where he could bench press 275 pounds, quite a feat for a high school student.

His talent became so noticeable coaches asked him at times to play offensive and defensive end.

While loaded with quality players, his team couldn’t win the big games and never got into the playoffs. He blamed that in part on coaching and that players were divvied up among the three high schools in Robbinsdale.

As he created a road map on how he would reach the NFL, his school work was lacking. A "C" student, Nikita was not known for cracking the books.

"My mentality was my athletic ability would carry me through college," Nikita reflects.

When he entered his senior year was determined to boost his grades to earn him a spot at a top-flight college. He buckled down and burned the midnight oil studying. All that work though only netted him a 2.9 grade average in his first two quarters.

Undaunted, he studied harder in the third quarter but his grade average didn’t budge.

"I was irritated I couldn’t crack 3.0," Nikita said. "But I wanted to go to college." Golden Valley Lutheran College, a junior college in Golden Valley, Minn., was his ticket to higher learning. Located next door to Robbinsdale, Nikita was very familiar with the school.

Four former Robbinsdale football coaches who took the team to the state championship were now coaching at the college along with his former seventh grade football coach.

There were other pluses for the school. With only several hundred students Golden Valley’s football program was nationally ranked among junior colleges. The school could divide its student body into two main groups - athletes or Bible students. At the time athletics, not religion, was Nikita’s world.

Knowing older friends who attended Golden Valley also attracted him. So he and his teammate. quarterback Tim Peltier, signed up to attend and play football at the college. The school had no scholarships to offer. But with financial aid it amounted to a free ride for Nikita.

Geared to play for Golden Valley as a tight end, he and Peltier worked out six days a week that summer to ready themselves for their new team. When Nikita entered football camp he was a solid 210 pounds.

He was eager to play - and his stats showed it. In his first three games he caught the ball nine times for 335 yards and three touchdowns.