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WRESTLER OF THE DAY: HARLEY RACE


RIPPA

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One thing I actually like about being old is I got to see NWA Champion Harley Race live when I was a kid. Wrestled babyface youngster Robert Fuller in a "rec center" that might hold 1,000. It's still real to me, dammit! 

 

Great wrestler, great talker. I could imagine worse people to teach folks to wrestle.

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I think you can make very valid criticism of Harley Race as a wrestler. I think he's also incredibly cool. 

 

If you watch the Rose vs Martel matches from 80 and put them next to the Race vs Martel one from the beginning of the year, it's night and day. Harley would bump big and hit his huge suplexes and hustle and generally make his opponent look good, but I really feel like a lot of his matches are ultimately empty.

 

He's so cool in so many other ways though.

 

 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9h8ir_harley-race-vs-koko-b-ware-pt-1_sport

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9h8q7_harley-race-vs-koko-b-ware-pt-2_sport

 

 

You know, for when you have an hour:

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I miss Harley Race because I miss old school stuff like wrestlers not having signature finishers and champions just being tough bastards that oulasted their opponants in title matches.

 

Harley Race also had the best afro ever worn by a white man.

 

Harley-Race-Showing-Belt-402x520.jpg

 

Here is Harley's best promo not named "Take The Damn Money!"

 

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Harey Race...let all know His good works.

 

In all seriousness, Harley is easily in my top five wrestlers ever. Legit tough guy, according to some, the toughest guy this side of Samoa. HUGE offensive set. Big bumper. Great psychologist and over all ring general and travelled the entire world (GOD'S GREEN EARTH) to prove he was the best in the world. Whether it was Porkchop Cash or Jumbo Tsuruta, Harley could work 'em. I said this about Nick Bockwinkel and it applies to Harley too: he was better at being Ric Flair than Ric Flair was. Give me a Harley Race match from 1976 - 1988 over any five Flair-by-the-numbers matches.

 

I'm an atheist but I believe in Harley Race.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI0EtTdByaE

 

Just in case you needed to see Race brawl like a motherfucker. Jumbo at this point is still pretty white meat in his babyfaceness, but Race brings out some of the nastiness that would make us love Jumbo in his later years. Of course there's blood. There's also some manly fucking headbutts in this. 

 

God, Race ruled.

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Harley was, of course, freakishly strong. Here he throws OMG around, just because he can.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEt4AuUtHdI

My apologies for diverting our thoughts from St. Harley (hallowed be his 'fro), but I must state that I have never gotten the appeal of Tiger Jeet Singh. I have never seen a match of his in which he did anything that I was impressed with. He epitomizes for me the laziest type of worker, and I can't even say that he was cruising on past glories because I have never seen or heard of any. He comes off as an amalgam of gimmicks of several other more significant workers (MLewin, Abbie, Sheik, Elephant Boy, Pampero Firpo), with the self-protection of The Original Sheik turned up to 11. I have never met anyone who has expressed any interest in his matches - has anybody ever bothered to compile a "Best of TJS" tape? Is he just really over with the Japanese/Canadian/Sikh/Pakistani mafia(s)? This has irked me for many years now...

-again, sorry for the diversion,

'RAF

p.s. - and Tiger Jeet Singh is a redundant name.

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For whatever it's worth, I share RAF's bemusement regarding Jeet Singh.  I put him in the same category with tentacle porn and vending machines that sell used panties: things that appeal more or less solely to Japanese people.

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Hey now, pally: I never said anything untoward agin tentacle porn or used pantie vending machines. Let's not set up any straw men here. However, I do again apologize for bring up The Blandest Sikh of Them All. By way of recompense I present this:

Check out the 5:50 mark where HR just straight up blades Vader's back.

Y'know, for the kids,

RAF

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That story is so tremendous, thank you. And that match I posted is in my Top 10 Favoritest PPV Matches of the 90s. I bought the Superbrawl III VHS tape in Times Square at a newly renovated porn store for $6.95. Bless you for that singular thing, Giuliani: adult stores had to have at least 50% non-X rated material to abide by zoning laws, making it a crate digger's paradise for magazines and tapes.

- screw him otherwise,

RAF

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who, seriously, ever tells Harley Race that "we'll settle it in the ring"?! Jesus

When I first read this I thought you were implying that the only person who could say that was Jesus

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