Harley Race Talks Confronting Hulk Hogan, Owen Hart, and More

WWE Hall of Famer Harley Race recently appeared on “Wrestling Glory Days Weekly,” chatting with Steve and “The Scum.” During his appearance, Race talked about a plethora of topics such as his incident at “Starrcade ’83,” confronting Hulk Hogan backstage at an event, the passing of Owen Hart, among many other topics.

Below are Race’s words on “Starrcade ’83,” where it was questioned if he would even show up to wrestle Ric Flair:

“The thing on me not being there, it was all just a big rib to start with. I just wanted everyone there to think that I wasn’t going to be there because at that point in time, there was a board of directors, and the board had thought it was time to make a rotation with the title, and I just wanted everyone there to believe that maybe I wasn’t going to be there. Truthfully, I don’t know if I told Ric or not. You can ask him. I’m sure I have at some point in time; I couldn’t let that little lie rest still after all these years.”

The 1986 “King of the Ring” winner also talked about confronting Hulk Hogan during the WWF’s transition “across territory lines” in the mid-80s:

“In confronting the Hulkster, he was the type of guy that he was being paid to do what he did, and that is how he looked at it. He didn’t look at it as though he was running roughshod over everyone else out there. I confronted him about all that garbage. There was no push come to shove or anything. We never got into anything that far into it. Talent wise, he was as good as there was out there in that era. I was a wrestling style champion and the Hulkster was a talking style. Those were the two sides of it.”

Race also spoke about Owen Hart’s unfortunate passing and a conversation he had with Owen at “Over the Edge:”

“Who the god knew it would be my last conversation with Owen. With him it was always about talking about his father and what they did up there in the Winnipeg area, and me coming in and out of there. The Hart Family is as good of a family as there ever was on the face of the earth and they’ve got a lot of kids that were involved in the wrestling part of it. It is just a horrible horrible thing when stuff like that happens. He didn’t mention [being uncomfortable,] that was the amazing part of it. It could’ve been me. It could’ve been anyone else. No one knows when the man up above wants to call your name.”

Below, you can listen to Harley Race’s appearance in its entirety:

httpss://youtube.com/watch?v=ZVrDmvLhpjY

Editor’s Note

This was an informative interview on some topics that I was not old enough to recall. Harley Race definitely had some interesting things to say throughout his appearance.