10 Most Infamous Fake Wrestling Relatives
6. Nikita & Ivan Koloff
The "foreign heel" character type has been doing the rounds for years, and Ivan and Nikita Koloff were two of its most famous practitioners. Nikita, the younger of the two, was brought into the NWA by his "uncle" Ivan to flex the Soviet Union's superiority in the 1980s, but neither man was actually Russian, nor were they related.
Nikita was born Nelson Scott Simpson in Minneapolis, Minnesota, while Ivan was really Oreal Donald Perras of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Nonetheless, they made a fearsome duo between the ropes, regularly teaming together across the country, before taking on Krusher Khruschev (better known as Demolition's Smash) as a third comrade in 1984.
The Russians became a fearsome unit. As a trio, they were awarded the NWA World Six-Man Tag Team Championships in 1984, and the Koloffs continued to run through the tag division, feuding with groups like the Road Warriors and the Rock 'N Roll Express. Nikita eventually turned on Ivan to join their rival Dusty Rhodes in 1986, while his uncle teamed with Dick Murdoch and Vladimir Petrov to gain a measure of revenge, though they ended up reuniting by the end of the decade.