“I was barred from school property until I apologized to the shaken but unhurt principal,” he wrote. “I’m not the apologetic type of guy, so it would become a lifetime suspension.”

That suited him fine, because he already knew that he wanted to be a professional wrestler, having heard promotional spots on the radio and seen a few matches on a black-and-white television. He moved further toward that goal when he got a job working on the Missouri farm of the Zbyszkos, a family that included two brothers, Stanislaus and Wladek, who had been professional wrestlers. They taught him moves.

“Mostly what they taught me were submission holds,” Race wrote. “They’d put me in one and say, ‘Try to get out.’ The more I tried, the more I wore myself out or hurt myself.”

He began wrestling professionally in 1960, working in small arenas across the United States. A car accident in 1961 killed his wife, Vivian, whom he had married only a month earlier, and left him seriously injured. In his autobiography, he recalled a doctor telling him that he was unlikely to walk again.

“ ‘I’ll send you ringside tickets to my first match,’ I told him,” Race wrote.

He and Larry Hennig won a series of tag team titles beginning in 1965. Individual accolades soon followed. He won his first National Wrestling Alliance championship in 1973 by beating Dory Funk — a belt he would win seven more times.

Race accumulated assorted nicknames over the years: “Handsome,” “Mad Dog,” “King of the Ring,” “Greatest Wrestler on God’s Green Earth.” He would often play the bad guy in the ring, inviting the crowd’s scorn.