Harley Race achieved near mythical status for wrestling fans as the ultimate tough guy, but behind closed doors his life was haunted by violence and unimaginable personal tragedy.
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00:00I don't have to prove anything to any living human being.
00:10Harley Race is wrestling personified.
00:14The man that, when you mention the word,
00:17has rewritten every book that's been wrote on it.
00:21When you look at Harley, and then you look at the man,
00:24and then the two start coming together,
00:26then it's a perfect picture of a badass heel.
00:29And Harley Race was that badass heel.
00:31He was no gimmick. He was Harley Race,
00:34the toughest man on God's green earth.
00:36I've been shot at. I've been stabbed.
00:39I just looked at it, I must have been doing my job fairly well right.
00:42If there's one man who connects wrestling's modern era to its earliest days,
00:47whose legacy in the squared circle stands as a monument to the evolution of the sport,
00:52and who epitomizes the ideal of a fighting champion,
00:55that man is Harley Race.
00:58All mortal men are going to bow to the king.
01:03I knew all about Harley Race before I'd even seen a Harley Race match.
01:07His legend preceded him.
01:10Harley Race has literally been wrestling all his life.
01:13Earned his first paycheck in wrestling before he got his driver's license.
01:16As Harley's violence spilled out of the ring,
01:19the line between person and persona became blurred.
01:22The police came. That's when things went downhill.
01:27And I just wanted away from him.
01:29As a lifetime of tragedies and injuries took their toll on the man.
01:34And he was passed out on the floor in a fetal position.
01:37It was a pretty traumatic event.
01:39The boating accidents, the car wrecks, the in-ring accidents.
01:43The human body is not built to undergo punishment like that.
01:47In a land of tough guys, he was considered the king tough guy.
01:52He's given his body and his life to this business.
01:56And he did what he had to do to survive.
01:59I've got two rods and eight screws in my back.
02:14I've got an artificial hip.
02:17I've got four metal screws in my right knee.
02:20And two braces.
02:22I have 12 pins in this arm.
02:24How do you quantify toughness?
02:26Is a guy tough because he can beat you in a wrestling match?
02:29Or is a guy tough because he's just a badass street fighter
02:33and he can pull your eyeball out?
02:35Because when you think about Harley Race,
02:37the cumulative effect of the thousands and tens of thousands
02:42of slams and falls and bumps on hard rings,
02:46concrete floors and sawdust floors in a barn or at a carnival.
02:50Harley Race did all of that.
02:52He was legendarily tough not only for his ability to beat people up,
02:55but also because he gained a mystique as somebody that couldn't physically be hurt.
03:02No matter what you did to Harley Race or what he did to himself,
03:06you couldn't stop him.
03:07I'm gonna hurt you somehow!
03:09If I gotta do it that way, fine!
03:12You have insulted the world heavyweight champion!
03:18You better believe I was inspired by Harley Race.
03:22He was the first guy I saw to take a backdrop outside the ring
03:26and a suplex outside the ring.
03:28And he was doing this as the traveling world champion.
03:31Harley was among the very first to do tables-binds.
03:35I mean, he was before his time.
03:37Heading in full speed, going face first over the top turnbuckle,
03:41that's Harley Race.
03:43Getting your arms caught up in the ropes, that's Harley Race.
03:48Bombs away!
03:49Oh!
03:50Right to the side of the head!
03:51One of Harley's major wrestling moves was a diving headbutt
03:55where he'd come off the top rope and land head first on his opponent's head.
04:00Now, you have to imagine a man 280 pounds jumping off of a five-foot top rope
04:08and coming down completely on his chest and his belly
04:12while he's taking his forehead and driving it into another individual.
04:16The skill and the amazement of it was that it looked like every time Harley did it,
04:21he was killing guys.
04:22But in all reality, he was barely touching them.
04:25As a performer, as a wrestler, it just blows your mind
04:29because that's what you want.
04:30That's the it factor of pro wrestling,
04:33is make it look like we're killing them, but not.
04:36He has left an indelible footprint
04:39because he passed on his style to people like me who passed it on to others.
04:44The stars of today are borrowing liberally from the Harley Race catalog
04:49whether they realize it or not.
04:52One of the fiercest men to ever lace a pair of boots,
04:56Harley Race was a wrestler's wrestler who began his journey to the ring as a teenager.
05:02Harley Race grew up poor on a farm in Missouri.
05:05My name is Jim Cornette, and I've been a fan, an admirer, and a colleague of Harley Races.
05:11He had to work from the time he was a young boy, and that instilled in him the work ethic
05:17that he carried with him for the rest of his life.
05:20Harley was a good kid.
05:22We liked each other right off.
05:24Third grade on, we hunted, fished together, wrestled together.
05:29My name is Daniel Kever.
05:31I went to school with Harley Race, met him in the third grade.
05:34He would let people hit him as hard as he could in the stomach.
05:38I mean, these are big guys.
05:40He'd get up and wouldn't say nothing.
05:42If they wanted to do it again, he'd let them.
05:47I suppose in his mind, he was building himself to be a wrestler.
05:53We used to watch all the old wrestlers, Bob Brown, Sonny Myers, Yukon Eric.
06:00We played hooky one Friday afternoon.
06:03Every time Harley and I'd go somewhere, he'd want to,
06:05come on, let's wrestle a little while, let's wrestle a little while.
06:08Well, on Monday, principal called us in the office.
06:11He said, I want to know why you left here.
06:14Harley said, well, he said, a good day to wrestle.
06:17Harley was a part of the original around and find out era.
06:21My name's Trevor Murdoch.
06:27I'm a two-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion,
06:30three-time WWE World Tag Team Champion,
06:33and I was trained by Harley Race.
06:35The reason I know these stories is because I've heard them from Harley himself.
06:40So the principal gave him a big slap in the face.
06:44Harley knocked him out.
06:46He hit the floor and Harley hit the door.
06:50He was a fighter as a kid, and then that's when he wanted to start wrestling.
06:55My name is Ivana Hadbabini Race.
06:58I was married to Handsome Harley Race, the eight-time world champion wrestler, for 24 years.
07:04When he was 14 years old, he left home because his family couldn't afford to keep him up.
07:10He got a job on a farm out in the middle of nowhere, Missouri,
07:14and it just so happened that that farm was owned by the Zbysko brothers.
07:19Stanislaus Zbysko and his brother Wladic, the two of them were iconic names.
07:24Stanis was a former World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion.
07:28Harley found out they were wrestlers, and they offered to train him in exchange for his farm work.
07:35It amounted to legalized torture.
07:38They would stretch him.
07:40They would beat him up.
07:42They would put him in holes he couldn't escape from to see if he was tough enough to come back and ask for more.
07:47Because in their generation of professional wrestler,
07:50they knew the other guy had the ability to grab one of their appendages and break it instantly.
07:56It was the most primitive form of hand-to-hand, man-to-man combat.
08:01And that's what Harley learned, and that served him well when he went to the carnivals.
08:08That was the thing back then.
08:09That's how you got started in the business was on the carnival.
08:13Yes, that's true, Marty.
08:14I'll wrestle anybody in the business, any size or weight or at any time.
08:18I'm Eddie Sharkey.
08:19I've been in the business a million years, and Harley Race was one of my best friends.
08:24There's a flying head scissors by Sharkey.
08:27We'd make three, four dollars a match, which wasn't much money, but at the end of the night, it'd come out okay.
08:37At the carnivals in the 50s, one of the big tents had a champion wrestler.
08:42And the carnival barker, he would do the spiel.
08:45We'll give X amount of dollars if you can stay five minutes with our champion wrestler.
08:49You had truck drivers, you had farmers, you had butchers, you had a variety of guys with a couple of drinks in them,
08:57who would get up and challenge the carnival wrestler.
09:00And there were shoot matches, which are real matches, and then there were works.
09:05When they couldn't get a challenger from the crowd to challenge the carnival wrestler, there was a plant in the audience.
09:11But he would look like one of the locals, and Harley played this part a number of times, too.
09:15And then people would get behind one of their own, as he said, I can take that guy.
09:20And then Harley would get in the ring, and he would work with the carnival wrestler.
09:25But if Harley was the carnival wrestler taking challenges, it was a shoot.
09:30And Harley would have to go in there and do whatever he had to to win.
09:33And he's this 16-year-old kid.
09:35When you're there, you're taking on all comers, so you better know a little bit about what you're talking about,
09:41because you darn sure don't get paid when you get beat.
09:45That's why he needed to come up with shortcuts, like the headbutt to the bridge of the nose.
09:52Or the double wrist lock, where you could take a guy's shoulder out of joint if he didn't give up immediately.
09:57It was always dangerous.
09:59But that's how Harley survived.
10:01He just had to fight five or six strange guys every day.
10:06On the carnival circuit, Harley goes to work for legendary promoter Gust Karras,
10:11who puts Harley on the road with one of the biggest men in the history of the wrestling business.
10:16Happy Humphrey was a pro wrestler in the late 50s and 60s.
10:20His real name was William J. Cobb.
10:22In Happy Humphrey's pro wrestling career, he was somewhere in the range of 700 pounds.
10:27And Harley Race was chosen to be Happy Humphrey's driver and valet and attendant.
10:34He had to drive Happy Humphrey to the shows in a specially built Cadillac.
10:39And he had to make sure that Humphrey's needs were met after the matches,
10:44which one of those things entailed bathing Happy Humphrey.
10:50Happy Humphrey would lay down on the ground naked and Harley Race would take a bottle of liquid soap,
10:56a mop, and a garden hose, and basically clean Happy Humphrey off so they could get back in the car
11:03and go to the next town without enduring the unending disaster of B.O.
11:12That's paying your dues.
11:14In 1960, at just 17 years of age, Harley marries a single mother named Vivian Jones,
11:20who is soon pregnant with Harley's first child.
11:23Then, tragedy quickly strikes.
11:26It was around Christmas time.
11:27He had his wife in the car with him.
11:29She was pregnant with his first child.
11:32It was 3 o'clock in the morning.
11:34They're driving down this lonely road, snow on the ground.
11:38There's a tractor-trailer truck in front of them.
11:41Jackknifes.
11:43Gets into the snowbank.
11:45Harley's car rams into the truck.
11:47She's killed instantly from a head injury.
11:53And he's severely injured.
11:57To the point where when the people picked him up in the ambulance,
12:00they declared him dead as well.
12:02And then saw him move, and that's how they knew he was still alive.
12:08And when he was hospitalized, they were going to amputate Harley's right leg.
12:14Wasn't even 20 years old yet.
12:15And the doctors told Harley he'd never walk again.
12:27A car accident on Christmas Eve has killed Harley Race's pregnant wife.
12:31Somehow Harley is holding on, but concerned doctors want to amputate his leg.
12:35Kansas promoter, Gus Karras, when he heard about the accident, he checked on Harley and said, no, let's not do this.
12:44He's going to walk out of this hospital, which he did.
12:47They did a surgery, saved the leg.
12:50In effect, saved Harley's career.
12:53And from there for the rest of his life, Harley hated Christmas.
12:56Several years after the crash, as Harley continues his wrestling career, a chance encounter introduces a new woman into his life.
13:06I was a flight attendant.
13:07I was a flight attendant.
13:08Harley kept calling me all day.
13:09How about if I take you out for a piece of blueberry pie?
13:13I thought, wow, that's a neat way.
13:17And I said, okay.
13:19And we went out, had the pie, had the coffee.
13:22He had his blonde hair, and I wasn't used to that.
13:26I came from a little town, and I wanted a family, and I wanted a home life.
13:31And my mother and my father, they were very upset.
13:35My dad said, I don't want you seeing him anymore.
13:39But I kept on.
13:41It was like a magnet.
13:43We were on our way from Minneapolis to Duluth, Minnesota.
13:47And he said there was a bag in the back seat.
13:50We would pick it up and look at it, and it was a diamond ring.
13:54I always knew I'd marry an athlete, but I didn't know I was going to be marrying into wrestling.
13:59Marrying Ivana despite her parents' wishes, Harley gets back to the ring.
14:05When Harley first teamed up with Larry Henning, he had bleach blonde hair.
14:09So they adopted the nom de plumes of handsome Harley Race and pretty boy, Larry Henning.
14:15In the mid-60s, guys as big and rough as them, they didn't have bleach blonde hair.
14:20So it was a way to get heat with the fans, and it worked.
14:23He chose to be a villain.
14:26I didn't like it because everybody booed him and didn't like him.
14:30But he was good at what he did.
14:32Between the size and the strength of Henning and the speed and the athleticism of Harley Race,
14:39they had a tremendous run in several of the major territories as the top heel team in wrestling.
14:46When we had our son, and we traveled a lot together, when we'd go to matches, I would ask Harley if it was going to be a bloodbath at the wrestling match, or is it going to be clean?
15:01It was going to be a bloodbath.
15:02My mom and I were probably going to a movie or to miniature golf that night.
15:07My name is Justin Race, and my father is the king, handsome Harley Race.
15:12I got to see him wrestle a lot, and the chairs start flying, and the world title belt starts hitting people in the heads, and this and that.
15:19And Dad's gushing blood out, stumbling around.
15:22It was scary.
15:23But it was happy then, and he was a kind person.
15:27He was kind to everybody.
15:29He was well-mannered.
15:30It was fun being with him.
15:31Touring arenas, sports halls, and bars across America, Harley's status as a legitimate tough guy is frequently put to the test.
15:40Harley, he sees this man being very aggressive with this woman, just berating her, getting handsy with her.
15:47Harley goes over there to confront the guy about it, to tell him to back off her and leave her alone.
15:51What Harley doesn't know is the guy's friend is behind Harley and has a knife.
15:55He goes up behind Harley and stabs him three times in the back.
15:59The guy takes off, and the other guy takes off.
16:01Harley has to go to the hospital.
16:03Harley knew quite a few people, was able to find out where the guy lived at, and got a pistol.
16:09And went by the guy's house.
16:15Now, I had heard this story from somebody else, and asked Harley about it.
16:19He looks at me, and he goes, it wasn't a pistol.
16:22It was a machine gun.
16:33And that was enough for me to know that it wasn't a lie.
16:36As Harley's legend grows, so does his busy schedule, keeping him on the road for days and even weeks at a time.
16:46He was always wrestling, wrestling, wrestling, and he didn't have time for family.
16:51He was a good father, but he was only home three times a month.
16:55What I hated was when he'd stop after the wrestling match, got a six-pack of beer, and he started right then and there, drinking.
17:05And when his first life was killed, he was only going 30 miles an hour.
17:09And he never drove slow since.
17:11He didn't care.
17:13If the speed limit said 70, he thought it meant 90, and he'd be flying down the highway.
17:18And sure enough, we'd see a cop, and you would watch them power walk to Harley's vehicle, angry.
17:24Who's this person driving 90 miles an hour?
17:27And they'd get to the window and go, I need your license regi-
17:31Harley?
17:32Harley Race?
17:34Okay, Harley.
17:35Take it easy.
17:37Slow it on.
17:38That got me mad, too.
17:41He believed 100% he was the man.
17:45Inside the ring and outside the ring.
17:48Sometimes they realized who he was and didn't bother him.
17:51Sometimes they didn't know who he was and tested him.
17:54And it was a mistake every single time.
17:58He knew exactly what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it, and how he wanted to do it.
18:02I just don't know if Harley knew how to be anything else.
18:05A rising star across the territories with his tag-team partner, Larry Hennig, Harley Race emerges as a singles competitor after Hennig breaks his leg, setting the stage for a legendary run.
18:24When the Hennig Race tag team split up, Harley got a reputation as a top guy, and that's where he first got into contention in the NWA promoter's eyes for being a world heavyweight champion someday.
18:39Though the NWA title changed hands in the ring, the champion was actually chosen by committee, selected for their popularity, trustworthiness, and ability to protect themselves if a match goes off script.
18:51A stunning turnabout here at Comiskey Park.
18:56In 1973, the reigning NWA World Heavyweight Champion was Dory Funk Jr., and his father, Dory Funk Sr., was one of the most prominent promoters in the National Wrestling Alliance.
19:06For a long time, there's been quite a few between the Briscoes and the Funks.
19:11Jack had gone for years, you know, as the number one contender, and it was time for Dory Jr. to step down.
19:17Hello, everybody. I'm Gerald Briscoe. Jerry Briscoe to a lot of you. I'm a WWE Hall of Famer. I'm a 50-year veteran of pro wrestling.
19:25Jerry Briscoe clearly out-thinking his opponent thus far.
19:29The rumor was that the old man Dory Sr. did not want Dory losing it to another babyface. And, of course, Jack was a babyface.
19:37But if he lost to a bad guy who was a cheater, well, that's something different. So they put him in the ring with Harley Race.
19:46This served two purposes. Number one, he was going to lose to a guy that was a noted heel, a rule breaker, a cheater.
19:53But he was also going to be wrestling a guy who, if it came to it, if there was not cooperation, would be able to legitimately take the World Heavyweight Championship in the ring.
20:06One, two, three.
20:11Harley's first title win in 1973 really is what brought his name to national prominence from coast to coast.
20:26And there were champions that held the NWA title longer than Harley did.
20:30But Harley, at the time, was the most constant champion from the early 70s through the mid-80s.
20:38It was more often than not, you would see Harley holding the belt and he became kind of synonymous with it.
20:44That's exactly why Harley was there. It would just personify that image of the NWA belt that you got to be a tough son of bitch.
20:52He was wrestling an hour a night, one hour matches, night after night after night.
21:00As an eight-time NWA champion, Harley Race took on all comers, establishing his reputation as the most fearsome man in the business.
21:10And what a lot of people don't know, those hour-long matches, it isn't like wrestling today, where a lot of guys plan out their matches in the back.
21:18How could anybody go through the various injuries and accidents and things that he had done and still be able to do that?
21:27That's why all the guys looked at him like, this guy can't be human.
21:31Harley was so important to the Central States territory in Kansas City that he was allowed to buy into the territory and actually own part of the promotion.
21:41I encouraged him. I knew he was good at what he did.
21:45The NWA world champion's road schedule was probably the most grueling in all of professional wrestling.
21:52Nobody traveled as many different places, worked in as many different territories for as many different promoters, in as many different countries as the NWA world champion.
22:02And there were literally almost no days off.
22:04I wrestled for one hour in Tokyo, Japan on Friday night.
22:10I flew out the following morning and wrestled for one hour in St. Louis, Missouri.
22:17I flew out Sunday morning to San Juan, Puerto Rico and went one hour with Carlos Palo.
22:24He'd just fly from city to city and when he could have 24 hours, he'd fly home and then back out on the road again.
22:33And there was a horrible, horrible life to live in the limelight.
22:37Well, especially because he was who he was and how he was.
22:41You know, he treated everybody like gold except with me.
22:45I mean, he bought me Porsches and mink coats and things like that.
22:48Well, it doesn't buy love.
22:49This is Barbara Clary on special assignment reporting from Tampa, Florida.
23:02Across the street is the Hyatt Regency Hotel, where at this moment a special meeting of the National Wrestling Alliance Board of Directors is in progress.
23:09In 1983, the NWA decides Harley Race will lose his championship to Ric Flair at a massive event branded Starrcade.
23:17I think that I'm going to call my quest for the World Heavyweight Championship a flair for the gold.
23:24Ric was as hot as babyface as babyface it can get.
23:29Harley and Ric were perfect foils at that time.
23:32Ric the young, upcoming, cocky, flamboyant type deal where the raw, bone, badass Harley Race.
23:40A lot of people have thought they put Harley Race exactly where they wanted him.
23:43Well, seven times around, I proved every d*** one of you wrong.
23:50And I'll guarantee you this, in Greensboro flair, I'm going to prove you wrong.
23:55The match is meant to mark a generational changing of the guard, but rival promoter Vince McMahon has other ideas.
24:04Hello everyone, this is Vince McMahon in the studios of the USA Cable Network.
24:08We wholeheartedly welcome you to the premiere of All American Wrestling.
24:13In 1983, Vince McMahon Jr. had just moved from becoming the announcer for the WWF, his father's company, to the owner of the World Wrestling Federation.
24:24And most of the promoters didn't know yet, but in the next couple of months he was going to start a national expansion of the WWF that would see him moving into all of their territories and trying to sign away all their top talent.
24:40Rick Flair was over and Vince knew that when Harley dropped the world title to him, Rick was going to be the next big thing.
24:49And Vince was trying to do whatever he could to shut it down.
24:53Just hours before the NWA's massive Starrcade event, Vince McMahon meets in secret with champion Harley Race in an attempt to sabotage the show.
25:04Vince laid out an opportunity for my father to come over to the WWF if dad would not go to Starrcade.
25:10And for an extraordinary amount of money back then, $250,000.
25:14I think there's an element of truth to all of that.
25:18But if Harley had never lost the title, then how are they going to explain that to anybody?
25:23And whoever they made champion after that, the fans would not have looked at them as legitimate.
25:29That could have put you out of business.
25:31And of course Harley said, hell no, I'm not going to do that. I gave my word.
25:35I was with Harley for 10 years.
25:37You know, when you spend that much time with Harley, you get comfortable.
25:39You start asking him questions of stories that other people have told or rumors.
25:46And so, of course, that was one of the questions I had to ask.
25:49You know, have you and Vince ever gotten to a fight?
25:51There's times when you've got to make a decision where it has to come from what you truthfully believe.
25:59Apparently Vince wasn't very happy.
26:01Vince suddenly gets that look on his face and turns around and tries to leg-dab Harley and take him down.
26:07According to Harley, he just puts him in a front face lock, hooks his arms, and stands up with him.
26:14Basically puts Vince to sleep, drops him on the floor.
26:18Harley got him into a choke hold.
26:20He said, I wish I would have wrung his neck because he was driving us out of business.
26:25He could have broke his neck.
26:26And he even told me, he's like, I could have ended all this right then.
26:29I had too much respect for not only Rick and the wrestling business, but for me personally, to pull that wasn't an option.
26:42Fans, I'm Bob Caudill along with Gordon Solin.
26:44We're delighted to be bringing you, wherever you are, live from Greensboro, North Carolina, Starrcade 83.
26:52This is the wrestling event of all time.
26:55Fortunately, the main event of Starrcade 83 did come off.
26:58It did turn out to be the biggest gate of any NWA show previously in history.
27:02Here's Flair.
27:04Flair did win the title from Harley.
27:06He's got him down.
27:07One, two, three.
27:09He did it.
27:11He did it.
27:12Ric Flair has just defeated seven times world heavyweight champion Harley Race.
27:18Vince's failure to persuade Harley to leave the NWA and join the WWF
27:24isn't McMahon's only attempt to take over Harley's Kansas City territory.
27:28When Vince McMahon started taking his live WWF events all across the country in other promoters' backyards,
27:35running their buildings, running their towns, none of them appreciated it.
27:39But most of them didn't confront him personally.
27:41Harley Race did.
27:43When the WWF went to Kansas City, Harley showed up.
27:46That was his town.
27:47He had owned it, pioneered it, and he wanted to know why these son of a bitches were coming
27:52trying to take his fans and ticket money away.
27:54Now, Hulk Hogan has told some stories.
27:58You shall feel the wrath of Hulkamania.
28:01This is where the power lies.
28:03All right, get ready.
28:05They were promoting big that Hulk Hogan is the world champion.
28:09He is the man.
28:11And he was in Kansas City working in my city.
28:15The longer I thought about this, the more it ticked me off, so I drove over there.
28:20What I heard was that Harley had a pistol in his belt and he was looking for Hogan.
28:27He wanted to find out.
28:28You're the world champion, let's find out.
28:30And it's second, third, and fourth hand on stuff that I heard.
28:33But Harley come in and everybody held their breath for like a half hour, you know,
28:39to see what was going to happen.
28:40Harley went around looking for Hogan, couldn't find him, so he proceeded to light the ring on fire.
28:49They called me and said, Harley Ray showed up at 2 in the afternoon blind, drunk, and lit the ring on fire.
28:55He said, if you come to the building tonight, he's going to kill you.
28:58That was him protecting his business. That was him protecting the business of Kansas City.
29:04You had to assert to certain individuals who would tolerate that bullshit.
29:09I don't doubt it for a second. Even if it didn't happen, does it really matter?
29:20It's something that could have happened.
29:22Despite Harley's best efforts to ward off Vince's invasion, the WWF's nationwide expansion cannot be stopped.
29:31Harley bought into Kansas City and the territories were dying.
29:34Vince came along and offered him a pocket full of change and he grabbed it.
29:39But he knew that that's what he had to do in his next phase of his career.
29:44He knew Vince was taking over.
29:46Vince liked tough guys.
29:48And Vince liked veterans who had accomplished things in the wrestling business.
29:52So I think he respected Harley, but he thought he was too wrestling.
29:56He was just too plain.
29:58Nobody wants to see a tough guy wrestle.
30:00They want to see color and character and ice cream bars.
30:02That was what Vince was going for.
30:05And Harley was the antithesis of that.
30:08So when Harley got there, they wanted to make him the original King of the Ring.
30:12That character, that attitude.
30:15I crown you, and you only, the King! Handsome Harley Race!
30:22Did he like it? I doubt it.
30:25He never bitched about it because that wasn't Harley's style.
30:27Whatever Harley was handed, Harley would make it work for Harley.
30:32The WWF at that time was appealing to kids who they had no idea who Harley Race was.
30:38They're kids.
30:40And they see an older guy that's not particularly impressive, dressed up in this King outfit.
30:44And the older fans who knew Harley, they were like, wow, this is what it's come down to.
30:52Now we realized, you know, Harley at that point was very methodical.
30:57And I enjoyed seeing a guy of that age taking off from the top rope, dropping headbutts from the top.
31:03Here he comes down from his throat, headbutt!
31:07Big roundhouse right!
31:09Taking the big bumps still, like, he made it work.
31:14He was there to make a paycheck. He was there to take care of his family.
31:18But Harley's time in the WWF is cut short by an injury, ironically while in the ring with champion Hulk Hogan.
31:25Oh, he's going out of the ring! All right!
31:29Eight-foot-long table. So they had that out there, and Hogan got on the table.
31:34A chop to the throat, the Hulk got down on the table!
31:37Set the table up for something!
31:39And Dad leaped off the ring to land on Hogan on the table, and Hogan moved, and he went through the table.
31:46Coming down! Oh!
31:48That steel table bent in two!
31:51And the metal bar that goes underneath it, like, supports the table, had been bent down, not broken.
31:57The metal bar came up and hit him in his lower abdomen, just below the belly button, and blew out his lower intestines.
32:03Created a big hole, a rupture.
32:05He was at my apartment, and I left, and I came back, and he was passed out on the floor in a fetal position.
32:12I thought he was dead.
32:14A rock key coming down! Oh!
32:24After suffering an internal injury during a move gone wrong, the future of Harley Race's career is in doubt when he's found on the floor of his son's apartment.
32:33My gut blew apart, and they rushed me to the hospital and said, if we can't get this shot down, that's it.
32:41Harley had an abdominal hernia that required multiple surgeries to fix the damage, and it significantly hampered the rest of his wrestling career.
32:50That was a long recovery. He's a 300-pound guy. He went down to 200 pounds, needed care constantly, needed a lot of my help constantly.
32:59He ended up having two colostomy bags on the front of his stomach, some 300 to 400 stitches on the inside of him.
33:05Weighing in at 260 pounds, Harley Race!
33:12He eventually got back to his wrestling weight.
33:15He was a bit old to be doing that, to have to recover from something like that.
33:19Not to recover and go back to his job as an insurance salesman, sure, but to go back to wrestling, that was pretty tough.
33:25Harley wrestles sporadically over the next few years as his career winds down, and he spends more time pursuing his other interests.
33:33But once again, tragedy strikes.
33:39We had a lake home, we went boating, and we had good times at the lake.
33:44Some of the best, until that boat accident.
33:49It was in the morning, and he got up and started drinking scotch.
33:54So I went on the dock, and I sat there, and I kept coming in, and he'd just call me names, so I'd go out again.
34:01And that night, he stormed out the house, and he zoomed out of there, out of the cove.
34:09The story that we were told was that when he was drinking, there was a boat in the middle of the lake that turned off all their lights.
34:16Well, as he was coming around the cove, by the time he'd seen them, it was too late, and he ran into them.
34:24He was in the water, the other people was in the water. He pulled them over to shore. It was a pretty traumatic event.
34:33As a result of this accident, several other people in the other boat were injured, and Harley was as well.
34:41Harley was intoxicated and also had resisted arrest at the time the police came to investigate.
34:47And after he left, I called Harley's psychiatrist, and she said,
34:54back the car up, put your clothes in the car, get out of there.
34:58I called my attorney, and I said, I want to file for divorce tomorrow, and have a restraining order in place.
35:06The divorce, it was a very nasty divorce.
35:09Very nasty.
35:11What led to the breakup of your parents' marriage?
35:14Wrestling.
35:17I mean, the arduous relationship of having someone gone all the time.
35:25Mom raising me pretty much, and then once his career starts to wind down, and they're together a lot more, they didn't get along.
35:32He was a kind-hearted person. He just wasn't a family man.
35:38One time, when I was putting Christmas decorations up, I got a phone call and said,
35:43your husband has got me knocked up.
35:46I got a letter one time to answer to a woman from Wichita, Kansas,
35:52said that they want alimony for a 16-year-old girl.
35:56That was real. But he got out of that, too.
35:59How'd he get out of that?
36:02Because he's Harley Race.
36:05But I could never leave him because he told me he'd get rid of me if I left him.
36:10What do you think he meant?
36:12What do you think he meant?
36:14It was terrible. I was stuck. I was afraid.
36:17And even though he was rough with me at times, I should have done what they do today.
36:26They take you in. But I didn't.
36:28I would find out more sometimes about my parents' divorce through reading the newspaper.
36:37In fact, I remember the movie with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner called War of the Roses.
36:42Here in Kansas City, and they wrote articles about my parents' divorce. It was called War of the Races.
36:48My dad did his best, and he did a great job as a father.
36:52But, you know, different stories that are told that are true, not true, who knows.
36:56It was just too much.
36:59But there were a lot of arguments.
37:01When Harley and I would fight, I would take Justin in his little red wagon and take him out of there so he wouldn't see it.
37:08And there were so many of those times.
37:12I just hope that my son can understand my side of the story.
37:20It's true. It's not a lie. And I don't know that he will. I wish it wouldn't have happened the way it did.
37:29I'm glad I got out of the marriage.
37:31Divorced from his wife, Harley faces another challenge when a lawsuit from his boating accident threatens to wipe out everything he has left.
37:40The woman that was injured had two broken legs, but a couple of years later, when it went to court, she was still in a wheelchair.
37:46And as a result, she was asking for $10 million in damages.
37:51She ended up being awarded $250,000 because Harley was intoxicated.
37:57This was a time where not only had his wrestling slowed down, but also $250,000 as a judgment.
38:04It was a financial burden on Harley that he would possibly not ever really recover from.
38:10Everything he'd earned traveling the world for 20 years is basically gone, right?
38:16Man. Man.
38:25Facing financial hardship for the first time in his long career, Harley returns to the wrestling world.
38:31After the abdominal surgery from the accident with the table in the Hulk Hogan match, then Harley had torn his shoulder out.
38:39He knew his wrestling days were behind him, but Harley Race was still a major name in professional wrestling, and WCW had incredible respect for Harley.
38:48And they said if he can't wrestle on a regular basis anymore, he's still a personality, and he still has that knowledge, we can use him as a manager.
38:57Former heavyweight champion, Harley Race, and Vader!
39:03For a guy like Vader especially, Harley Race was a brilliant teacher because Vader was an ex-pro football player.
39:12He was used to coaches, and Harley was a no-nonsense guy that would not take any shit, and he'd tell him what he was doing wrong.
39:20What are you doing to my face?
39:22I was a little trepidatious, right? Because I didn't know if I was like a Harley guy. I didn't drive fast. I didn't drink much. But he really embraced me.
39:30Again, Harley Race now, grabbing Cactus and shoving him back in there.
39:35Harley had respect for Mick, but he thought Mick was crazy.
39:38Oh! Oh, my goodness!
39:40The bumps that Mick would take is, Jesus Christ, he's gonna kill himself.
39:44I know when I did my feud with Vader, the Harley stuff was just priceless. To have him there and have him be part of it was some of my greatest moments.
39:54Harley leaves WCW, but his next public appearance shocks even his closest friends.
40:00The 1998 expose, Wrestling Secrets, revealed that it was a work, that it was predetermined, that everybody was in on it together.
40:12And that's the antithesis of what Harley Race would have done publicly in his entire wrestling career.
40:18As a booker, your main job is putting two people together that'll draw money.
40:25The production was able to gravel out his voice, but not so much to the point where you couldn't tell who it was. And obviously the silhouette, if you knew who Harley was, you knew exactly who it was.
40:35But it was surprising to see Harley on there, a guy who respected and protected the business on a show called Secrets of Pro Wrestling.
40:44I was so disappointed, and I even told Harley, Harley, why'd he do it? And he said, money, brother. Just like anything else, money is the evil of everything.
40:52In a previous era, the consequences for that would have been dire, but the guy that would have been dealing out the consequences would have been Harley Race.
41:02Who are you going to get to beat up Harley Race?
41:05Retired from the ring, Harley starts his own wrestling school, where he imparts his knowledge to a new generation of talent.
41:11And in 2004, his long history in the business is honored with an induction into the WWE Hall of Fame.
41:19God gave me the talent to work in this wrestling business, and there's not a better spot on earth than under those bright lights.
41:31In 2019, after years of battling various ailments, including lung cancer, the wrestling world awakes to the news that Harley Race has died.
41:41Harley was in terrible pain, but he sure had kept it inside. The depression was kept inside. The tears were kept inside.
41:49The human body, no matter how much of a superhuman he might be, has its limits.
41:54He was 76 when he passed away.
41:57When I came into the hospital room, I whispered, Dad, it's me.
42:01I had a hold of his hand, and he, like, squeezed my hand, and I put my hand down, and I was crying.
42:05I put my head down on his chest, and he reached over, and he patted me on the back, and left his hand laying there, and it was just as warm as ever.
42:13I'm Harley Race, seven times world's heavyweight champion.
42:23I would like to introduce to you the star of this film, and also the star of my life, my wife, Yvonne.
42:31Deep in my heart, I have to say he was a good guy. Harley was a god in wrestling. He just wasn't meant to be a husband.
42:40One of the greatest men that ever stepped in the ring.
42:43It takes a certain talent to get over. Harley had that talent to get over.
42:48You could not be not in awe of Harley.
42:51After all these years, we're still referring to the Harley Race way of doing things as being the best.
43:01He was real. A legitimate tough guy.
43:04Some people are just born that way. He was one of them, and he was very good at what he did.
43:10I don't see how anybody could possibly be tougher than Harley Race was.
43:15Maybe there's somebody as tough. Mental toughness, physical toughness. Harley Race had it.
43:22I don't know if his toughness was to cover up emotions.
43:27When he had the wrestling school, he was married to his wife, BJ.
43:31And when BJ passed away, we were talking, and he said, I haven't cried.
43:36And he goes, I should be crying, Trevor. I don't know why I haven't cried.
43:39And he goes, I miss her. I love her, and I'm hurting, but I haven't cried.
43:42I told him, I said, I just don't think that's you. It's not who you are. It's not in your DNA, brother.
43:49There's probably nobody in the history of wrestling that gave more of themselves physically and their effort and their determination and their credibility than Harley Race did.
44:04To be continued...