Oleg Aleksandrovich Prudius (Russian: Oleg Aleksandrovich Prudius; Ukrainian: Oleg Oleksandrovich Prudius, Oleh Oleksandrovych Prudius; born April 27, 1979) better known by his ring name Vladimir Kozlov, is a Ukrainian-American producer and retired professional wrestler. He is best known for his time in WWE, where he won the WWE Tag Team Championship once with Santino Marella. He is trained in freestyle wrestling, rugby, football, sambo, kickboxing, judo, jujutsu, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts. Prudius has also worked as a stage and screen actor, notably having a small role in Spike Lee's 25th Hour., and a walk-on role in the second season of the HBO series The Wire.

On the April 4, 2008 episode of SmackDown, Kozlov made his official WWE debut as a villain, with the unique quirk of having no entrance music and no Titantron video - his "entrance" consisted of complete darkness except for a solitary spotlight following him to the ring. He defeated Matt Bentley in his first match, and over the following weeks, Kozlov would go on to easily win several matches, first against local talent and then established names including Colin Delaney, Funaki, Nunzio, Shannon Moore, Jimmy Wang Yang, Jamie Noble, and Domino. On the July 11 episode of SmackDown, Kozlov debuted an entrance theme and Titantron video as he defeated Stevie Richards.  In the following weeks, as Kozlov continued to easily win matches, he began demanding "better competition". On the September 12 episode of SmackDown, he started to seek that competition, attacking Jeff Hardy. Over the following weeks, Kozlov would continue attacking both Hardy and the WWE Champion Triple H, eventually starting a loose feud between the three of them over the WWE Championship. On the November 7 episode of SmackDown, Kozlov earned a match against Triple H for the WWE title at Survivor Series after defeating The Undertaker by disqualification after he was attacked by Jeff Hardy. The match was originally intended to include Kozlov, Jeff Hardy, and Triple H, although Hardy was removed due to a storyline injury. The result of this was the addition of Edge to the match while it was in progress, and ultimately Edge would go on to pin Triple H and win the title.  Continuing his pursuit of the WWE Championship, Kozlov competed in and was unsuccessful in winning a Beat the Clock Challenge match against ECW Champion Matt Hardy for another title shot. This led to the two meeting at Armageddon, where Kozlov gained his first pay-per-view win by defeating Hardy in a non-title match. Kozlov competed in the 2009 Royal Rumble match, entering as the sixth participant, but was eliminated by Triple H after eliminating The Great Khali, Carlito, and Montel Vontavious Porter. He then qualified to be part of the No Way Out Elimination Chamber match, where he was pinned for the first time after receiving a Last Ride from The Undertaker, though he still remained unpinned in one-on-one competition. Kozlov's undefeated streak in televised singles competition ended on the March 2, 2009 episode of Raw, in which he was defeated by Shawn Michaels; this match was for the opportunity to face The Undertaker at WrestleMania XXV. His first televised singles loss on SmackDown came against The Undertaker himself on March 13.

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