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Wrestling Champ Harley Race Inducted To Missouri Sports Hall Of Fame

Posted: Jan 27th 2013 By: CMBurnham

A group of aspiring professional wrestlers gather inside an old, chilly warehouse and sit around a poker-turned-dining table, swapping stories. A couple of wrestling rings nearby ? one of them from the 1950s ? represent two blank canvases of opportunity for this batch of 20- and 30-somethings hoping to make it big.

They talk. They joke. They laugh.

Only a few moments after the noise begins to pick up, it reverses to a complete hush when one of the toughest son-of-a-you-know-whats to ever enter the ring opens the glass front door.

?There?s Harley,? one of them whispers to a visitor. ?That?s the king.?

An eight-time National Wrestling Alliance champion, Harley Race glances toward the table of his wrestling academy pupils before limping into his office ? a cramped space that doesn?t seem big enough for a burly man who once went by the name ?King Harley? while working for Vince McMahon and his up-and-coming pro league, the World Wrestling Federation.

Using the table for support, the king walks around to his throne ? a rickety chair that creaks when he sits down. His curled, brown locks now faded to blonde and white, Race reaches into his front shirt pocket to pull out a pack of Marlboro Lights.

?Do you mind?? he asks.

Race?s office is more of a trophy case than a workspace. It?s the only heated room in the warehouse that houses the Harley Race Academy, which is particularly noticeable on this 20-degree day in January.

Along with 14 others, Race will be inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in a ceremony Sunday in Springfield. He has a wall specially reserved for such honors, including World Championship Wrestling, WWF, and NWA Hall of Fame hardwood.

On another wall, he displays pictures with well-known wrestlers and former rivals such as Ric Flair, Terry Funk and Andre the Giant. (Race maintains he?s the only man ever to body slam the 525-pound Giant, and he has a picture to prove he did it.) A third wall shows a collection of Harley Race action figures.

But no matter where you stand in the office, your eyes are drawn to a glass case above his head. It holds an NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt ? the one he captured more times than any other NWA wrestler before him.

?I wish I could still be wearing it,? Race, 69, says in a slow, unvaried speaking manner. ?I was the big thing in wrestling.

?You know, I never really wanted to give it up. But what choice did I have??

A true bad boy of professional wrestling, Race takes two puffs of his cigarette, taps the ashes into a tray and begins to tell his life story. It is one of jubilation and triumph for a man who twice called Kansas City home, coupled with post-career bouts with grief, financial woes and enough injuries to allow him to place a handicap sticker on the back of his pickup truck.

One of wrestling?s longest careers was launched after a couple of rash decisions.

When Race was a freshman at Quitman High School ? an ironically named northwest Missouri city near Maryville where he was born and raised ? he picked a fight with two of his peers in the gym. This wasn?t especially uncommon, he says, but on this day, the school principal witnessed the entire melee.

To break up the fight, the principal placed his knee into Race?s back. Bad idea. Race turned and swung his fist, connecting with the principal?s face.

?I knocked his (behind) out,? he says proudly and without regret.

Predictably, he was expelled. He never took another academic class in his life.

Figuring he wasn?t cut out for school ? ?too much authority,? he said ? Race moved to a farm in Savannah, a town of 5,000 just north of St. Joseph. Against his parents? wishes, Race began training in 1958 with two Polish wrestling brothers, Wladek and Stanislaus Zbyszko.

It wasn?t quite what he expected.

?I went through a cycle of their training,? he said. ?And all it was was them beating the (crap) out of me.?

His plans to wrestle unshaken, Race caught a break when he was 16. After landing a job as a chauffeur for Happy Humphrey ? a professional wrestler who once stepped on the scale at more than 900 pounds ? Race began fighting the undercard bouts prior to Humphrey?s main events.

His career nearly ended only a year later.

A month after marrying his first wife, whom he declined to name, Race wrecked his car traveling home to Quitman. His wife died at the scene.

Race survived, but the outlook for his wrestling career was bleak. Doctors told him his right leg would need to be amputated from just below the knee.

?I was just beginning to establish myself,? Race recalls. ?I thought it was all over.?

After seeking a second opinion, Race had surgery rather than an amputation. He had four screws inserted into his right leg. It still doesn?t bend properly.

Another 12 pins were placed in his left forearm, along with two steel plates that ting as he violently smacks his right fist against them while gritting his teeth.

You can sense a few flashbacks coming.

?This,? he says between smacks. ?has come in handy over the years.?

Among the wrestling memorabilia inside the metal warehouse are newspaper clippings tracking Race?s career. Some of them vary when listing Race?s hometown, which isn?t surprising given his tendency to list more than one place.

There is no hesitation, however, when Race speaks about where his career was reborn: St. Joseph and Kansas City.

After a grueling 18 months of rehab, Race returned to the ring ? a moment that still chokes him up when he thinks about it ? flopping back and forth between the American Wrestling Association, a Minnesota-based circuit that expedited the career of Hulk Hogan, and the NWA, a widely expanding parent company that oversaw 29 leagues.

Taking on the moniker ?Handsome? Harley, Race and Larry Hennig became the AWA tag-team champions.

Central States Wrestling was one of the 29 promotions under the NWA. Race held part ownership in the league. While wrestling in Central States ? which showcased a weekly Thursday night show at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kan. ? Race won his first NWA World Heavyweight Championship by defeating Dory Funk.

Unsatisfied with the belt he received, Race had one custom made to suit his style. It cost him $150. He would own that belt eight times in his career.

?Harley Race was one of the best wrestlers there ever was,? said Karl Lauer, an inspector for pro wrestling, boxing and mixed martial arts events who met Race in the late 1980s. ?And the best part about it was he knew it. He knew there was nobody better.?

Race knew how to work a crowd. Outside his home bases of Kansas City and St. Joseph, boos shattered the ring when Race entered.

He was a disliked wrestler. Hated, even. In wrestling slang, he was a heel.

?I?d heard all these stories about him being selfish and cocky (behind the scenes), and if you saw him wrestle, you?d believe it,? said Rose Greenlees, who first met Race in 1986 while working for the WWF. ?None of that was true.?

The fans didn?t care.

When he reluctantly joined forces with McMahon and the WWF in 1986, Race won his first ?King of the Ring? event. If wrestling fans didn?t already know his name, they did then.

They didn?t like him. And he loved that.

?I loved (ticking) people off,? Race said before explaining his strategy. ?Totally ignoring them (ticked) them off 10 times more than actually arguing or confronting them.?

The writers didn?t do Race?s image any favors, pitting him against popular wrestlers such as Flair and Hogan.

While wrestling in the NWA, Flair and Race provided one of the league?s most memorable matches, a 1983 cage match in Greensboro, N.C., that left both men with bloody faces. A YouTube clip honoring the classic World Heavyweight Championship bout, which Flair won, has been viewed 78,000 times.

Race used this match as evidence during arguments ? and fist-fights in bar parking lots ? that wrestling was indeed real.

A prosperous career in the ring gave way to tribulations in Race?s personal life.

After the loss of his first wife, he remarried twice. He had one child in each marriage ? a daughter, Candice, 48, and son Justin, 42 ? before both ended in divorce.

The end of his third marriage left a void in his life that not even wrestling could fill.

So Race took up new hobbies ? playing golf and boating ? and spent regular time at the Lake of the Ozarks, a short drive from his current home in Eldon.

On June 9, 1990, Race took his boat out on the lake and crashed into another boat, injuring himself as well as passengers aboard the other craft.

Two years later, a Jackson County jury ordered Race to pay $250,000 to an injured passenger. Even though Race said he made nearly $500,000 at the peak of his career, he was forced to file for bankruptcy.

?I was still trying to live the life that I?d always lived,? Race said of the reason for his financial trouble.

The boating accident signaled a downward spiral outside the ring and the beginning of the end inside it, too.

A lifetime of cage matches, body slams and steel chairs to the head had taken its toll on Race, who decided to manage WCW stars such as Lex Luger rather than wrestle.

?He loves wrestling,? Lauer says. ?But I don?t think anything has ever given him the same thrill as being in the ring.?

The managing career didn?t last long anyway. Five years after the boat accident, Race struck a light pole while driving through downtown Kansas City.

He needed hip-replacement surgery. Race said he was essentially bed-ridden for nearly a year.

His wrestling career, officially, was over.

Using a wooden cane as a crutch, Race walks with an obvious limp as he maneuvers through the metal warehouse.

Albeit slowly, he makes his way to one of the wrestling rings, where 15 to 20 of his students train every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening. They travel from all over the region to learn the ins-and-outs of wrestling. Together, they form World League Wrestling, which put on 31 shows last year across Missouri, eastern Kansas and northern Arkansas.

For Race, the training center has became a curative pill for his wrestling itch. This is precisely what his fourth wife, B.J., envisioned when she persuaded him to move from Kansas City to Eldon, a town of 4,567 in the middle of Missouri. They moved here in 1999, and Race bought the WLW and turned it into a training seminar.

B.J. died suddenly in 2009.

?When he first showed up, oh my goodness, we didn?t know what kind of traveling circus had arrived,? said Dan Gier, an Eldon native who has worked for the WLW for 13 years. ?That quickly disappeared when they got to know him. Now he walks through Wal-Mart and everyone wants to shake his hand.?

The students pay $3,000 for six months of training to graduate from the Harley Race Wrestling Academy. Some, though, stay for years, including Seth Lesser and Darren Gamblin. Lesser moved from California to train with Race, a man they idolize.

?He?s the toughest man on God?s green earth,? Gamblin said.

Race doesn?t speak often during training sessions, but when he does, the students listen.

?He?s forgotten more about wrestling than I?ll ever know,? Gamblin said.

Indeed, Race?s memory is becoming more of an enemy than a friend. He needs help to remember dates, ages, details.

But as he approaches the wrestling ring, rests his elbows on the canvas and peers at nothing in particular, his memory often can make him smile.

?When the kids are in here,? he says. ?I live through them.

?This offers me a chance to do the only thing I?ve ever done in my lifetime.?

And it pays the bills. Race said he has worked his way back from the financial trouble, in large part because of the academy?s reputation.

Twice a year, a World Wrestling Entertainment scout will make the trip to Eldon. If the scout likes a wrestler, he will send him to Florida for NXT Wrestling, a developmental league for the WWE, formerly known as the WWF.

?Anytime he?s been fortunate enough to send someone there, they don?t stay there long,? Gier said. ?Everybody values Harley?s opinion.?

Among others on the current WWE roster, CM Punk briefly passed through the Race?s training facility.

Punk is the reigning WWE Heavyweight Champion and shares a mutual respect for Race, once calling him ?the best of us.? This month, many fans believe Punk channeled his inner Harley Race during a promo for an upcoming title defense against The Rock.

Punk is not a well-liked wrestler. Hated, even, just like his teacher.

It?s only fitting that Race smiles when he calls Punk wrestling?s next big thing.

Perhaps he, too, will hang his championship belt in an office someday.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/01/26/4033321/harley-race-reflects-on-a-hall.html#storylink=cpy