KC Confidential.com

The sad situation involving former pro wrestler Verne Gagne body slamming a 96 year-old fellow memory care patient who later died in Minnesota takes eight-time world heavyweight champ Harley Race back to his kinder, if not gentler days…

I was up there wrestling for almost five years from the latter part of 1963 through 1969, and I was always wrestling Gagne,” Race says.

What the now-senior citizen was like in those wild and wooly days?

“Verne was more of a person that was inclusive just within Gagne,” Race says. “He never was much of a partier that I knew of.”

One signature Gagne wrestling move was “the sleeper.” Did he ever slap one on Race?

“No,” Harley says. “I never let myself get in that position.”

Even though Gagne was wrestling a super star?

“So was I,” Race quips. “But just wrestling Verne during that period of time was grinding. He was on you constantly. He probably had – and this is no exaggeration – 20 different ways he could pin you. Probably his smoothest move was the inside cradle.”

Race has a theory as to why Gagne slammed the nanogenarian.

“Oh, I think it was sad as all hell, two older guys caught up in stuff neither one of them could help,” Race says. “And Gagne reverted back to his wrestling. Any time you’re physically provoked, that’s your inner core – it’s something you’re never going to forget – it comes back to you automatically.”

Race got an email from Gagne’s son, saying his father was moved to “a more secure place.”

Word on the street is Gagne was provoked by the 96 year-old, Race says.

“That guy was kind of a bully type and he tried to bully people around him,” Race says. “And Verne was taking up for not only himself, but also for the other people there. I have nothing derogatory to say about Verne Gagne and I never have – he’s always been a very class act.”

With perhaps one tongue-in-cheek exception.

“I saw him coming out of the bathroom in Waterloo, Iowa three or four years ago,” Race says. “And he stopped and pointed at me and said, ‘Not so handsome Harley Race.’”other people there. I have nothing derogatory to say about Verne Gagne and I never have – he’s always been a very class act.”