REGINA — It’s safe to say that former Saskatchewan Roughriders defensive lineman Glenn Kulka has led a rather interesting life when it comes to his athletic ventures — from professional hockey to the CFL to the World Wrestling Federation and MMA, there are few avenues in the sports arena that he hasn’t been part of.
That’s meant a lot of battles over his career, but few have been as meaningful as the work he’s currently part of.
Kulka joined Barney Shynkaruk on The SportsCage recently to touch on his legendary sports exploits, but the first order of business was the most important one as he spoke about his current and ongoing work with Battle for Recovery and the Empower 2 Recover Foundation.
Kulka and Battle For Recovery are in southern Saskatchewan holding a series of events, including a stop at George Gordon First Nation this past Friday and an upcoming youth event in Regina at Darke Hall on May 30.
“It’s about the actual recovery and the aspects of getting kids and notifying them as far as drug use and what not to do,” Kulka said of the program, adding that his work with the organization has taken him to the streets of Ottawa and shown the devastation addiction can cause.
“In the [time] I've been on the streets and dealing with fentanyl addicts and whatnot, you realize that the best way to solve this is to not let them get there,” Kulka explained, adding that fentanyl addiction has become a prime concern. “British Columbia just said that if your children are aged between 10 and 19 that the number one way that they can die now in B.C. is through an overdose it's now taken over for alcohol drunk driving everything as far as the severity of this issue nationwide.”
That’s where Battle for Recovery comes in, focussing on getting youth into activities to occupy their minds and give other options to getting involved with drugs.
“You have to be able to replace their mindset and what they're doing with positive things, it's really quite simple,” Kulka said. “The dormant mind is the one that's going to stray and try to experiment in areas that they perhaps wouldn't normally do. So I recommend jiu jitsu or a martial art of some kind after school, just get them away from just hanging around. That dead time to me is death time as far as their choices are concerned.”
Kulka himself has dealt with addiction, with cocaine issues drawing an arrest and fine from the CFL in 1992. He weaves tales from that time of trouble into his Battle for Recovery engagements.
“I was a very functional addict,” Kulka said. “I could actually go and play football on the weekends and party for three, four days, shut’ er down for about a day before the game. That functionality allowed me to do it for 40 years, so I kept trying to get off and kept trying to get clean and it's the same thing. You're gonna hear this a hundred times, until that person wants to get clean, I don't care who else wants to get them clean, you got to make the decision yourself more than anyone.”
Being on the streets of a major city and seeing the difficulty addiction causes has only helped Kulka in his work.
“I'm talking about minus-30 out, and I have to try and convince a 80-year-old, 80-pound woman that there's a bed with a roof over her head and three square meals without a guard at the door, and I still can't get her to go,” he said. “This is an addiction. This is something that is very serious, and it's gonna be even more serious in the next four or five years.”
Outside of his work with Empower 2 Recover, Kulka also touched on his athletic exploits, beginning with how he got into football in the first place.
Hockey was Kulka’s first love, but as a 6-foot-3, 220-pound plus skater in the 1990s, the inevitable was going to happen, and eventually hockey’s loss was football’s gain.
“If I had a choice, I’d have played hockey my whole life,” Kulka said. ‘I stepped into football because I broke my hand five times fighting in hockey. So I couldn't even play hockey, I could barely shoot a puck. Then some friends told me that I could wear a cast and play football, and I said, ‘great, this is fantastic. This is a sport for me’, this is an easy change’.
Yeah, the transition seemed pretty natural.”
All told, Kulka played 11 seasons in the CFL, including the final two with the Riders.
It was during his time in Regina that Kulka was involved in a fundraising event with the then-World Wrestling Federation, which led to meeting up with Bret Hart and catching the sports entertainment bug.
“I did a guest match here in ‘96 against Psycho Sid. “I jumped up on the apron, Scott Henderson was there, Bobby Jurasin was on the sideline. I give [Sid] a shove, Bret had gone underneath the ring, pops up on the other side, does a school boy and rolls him up for the big pin. Everybody pops and everybody was happy and yeah, that was the start.”
A multi-year career in WWE and Power Pro Wrestling followed, but a badly broken leg would end up shortening his time in the ring.
“Now you think, why does this happen? God, why do you do this?” said Kulka, who would go on to have a family not long after his wrestling career ended. “My kids are 23 and 21 right now, I would not have had my children, who are the glory of my life at this point in time.
Everything happens for a reason, it does.”
For more information on Empower 2 Recover and their programs, be sure to visit www.empowertorecover.com.
