Pro wrestling legend Harley Race enjoyed a lengthy 30 year career, during which he won myriad titles and accolades across WWE, WCW, All Japan Pro Wrestling, and various NWA-affiliated territories. He’s been King of the Ring, held both singles and tag team gold, and even has the distinction of being one of the few men to actually bodyslam Andre the Giant -- and before Hulk Hogan famously did it, at that.
And as an old school wrestler from the rough and tumble days of the territories, Harley Race’s life is full of crazy backstage stories of drinking, dangerous travels, and real-life fights.
10 That Time He Fought Some Bikers
Territory-era pro wrestlers had to be tough both in the ring and outside of it, as angry fans regularly tried to attack performers, and a wrestler’s credibility lived and died upon how they could handle themselves in a fight. Harley Race had a reputation for being a capable fighter for real, so one time a bunch of bikers tried to challenge him at a show, and he decided to take on the biggest one, breaking the man’s nose and taking him out with a sleeper hold.
9 That Time He Tased Owen Hart
Nope, that’s not a misspelling of “teased” -- Harley Race literally tased Owen Hart. Wrestlers love to prank one another backstage, and sometimes these pranks are too wild to believe. One time at a barbecue, Owen Hart switched out BBQ sauce for an incredibly spicy hot sauce as a goof, so Race decided to get even with Hart by doing the handshake joy buzzer gag from old cartoons -- but with a taser. Hart, of course, was knocked out from the shock.
8 That Time He Prevented A Screwjob With A Chain
The Montreal Screwjob -- where Shawn Michaels and Vince McMahon conspired to break script and take the WWF Title off of Bret Hart -- is one of the most infamous kayfabe-breaking events in modern wrestling, but it’s hardly the first time someone tried to screw a wrestler out of the title.
When Harley Race was NWA World Heavyweight Champion, a west Texas promoter/wrestler named Lawman Don Slatton tried to legitimately steal the title from Race by booking a Russian Chain Match and “accidentally” dragging Race across all four corners to win the match. But Race figured out what Slatton was up to and wrapped the chains around Slatton himself, dragging him around the ring to prove just how tough Harley Race was.
7 That Time He was A Process Server
Harley Race retired in 1990, and spent the mid to late ‘90s working as a process server, delivering court summons to unsuspecting people, many of whom were often trying to dodge the bad news. In his autobiography, King of the Ring, Race talked about an incident where a particularly slippery target was giving the courts some trouble, so Race tracked him down and threw the summons at the guy, which totally counts as serving papers so long as the recipient touches it. The guy tried to physically fight about it and Harley Race decided to slap the guy as hard as possible, knowing he wasn’t going to lose his job by hitting a dude in self defense.
6 That Time Honky Tonk Man Got Beat Up On Harley Race’s Behalf
Harley Race was incredibly well respected backstage, enough that other wrestlers would even stick up for him when he wasn’t in the locker room. One time, Honky Tonk Man decided to make fun of Race having a length of his intestines removed in surgery by saying he “didn’t have guts anymore,” so Dynamite Kid decided to backhand Honky out of his seat. Honky was reported to have cried and begged for forgiveness for talking smack about Race.
5 That Time He Mentored Vader
Big Van Vader had made a huge splash in stiff wrestling matches in Japan when he came to WCW in the early 1990s. Because the American style was so different from what Vader had been doing in Japan, Harley Race ended up taking the big man under his wing and helped him acclimate to the American wrestling scene and its expectations as they traveled from town to town for WCW. Vader and Race’s accounts of the era differ, as Race claimed that he would “babysit” Vader and kept him out of trouble, while Vader claimed Race was just trying to talk a big game when he said stuff like that.
4 That Time He Recovered from A Horrific Car Accident
In 1961, Harley Race got into a nasty car wreck that took the life of his pregnant wife, one month into their marriage. His career was just beginning to take off, too, and doctors were considering amputating one of his legs until promoter Gust Karras intervened to block the procedure.
Despite that, Race was still told he wouldn’t be able to walk again, much less wrestle, but miraculously he was able to make a full recovery.
3 That Time Harley Race Was A Road Warrior
Not the tag team. According to Vader, Harley Race was a maniac on the road, and regularly took on long road trips with a lot of beer in his system. Moreover, Vader detailed how Race had managed to train his travelling partners to contribute to his intoxication by noticing when Race was out of beer so they could open up a fresh can and put it in his hand, positioning it so that the mouth of the can was in the right spot so he could just lift the beer to his mouth.
2 That Time He Did Shots With CM Punk
CM Punk has a great story about being at a bar with Harley Race for his birthday. Race had bought shots for everyone, but CM Punk is famously straightedge, so he politely declined. The server insisted on Punk taking the drink -- you don’t turn down a drink from Harley Race -- until Race himself intervened to explain that it was fine. Punk decided to return the favor by buying everyone shots of milk, which nobody wanted to drink until Race did first.
1 That Time He Threatened Hulk Hogan With A Gun
A lot of old school territory guys weren’t happy when Vince McMahon made the World Wrestling Federation a national promotion, violating years of deals and agreements the McMahon’s father had reached with various territorial promotions. Harley Race was certainly one of those guys, and when WWF came to Kansas City, he ended up punching Hulk Hogan in the locker room and, when Hogan remarked that he expected Race to have a gun, Race pulled out a pistol.