Mike Raybon graduated in 1959 from Bandys High in Catawba County and discovered wrestling while attending Appalachian State Teachers College. Graduating from Appalachian in 1963, he spent two years coaching football at Clover, SC before returning to North Carolina to start a wrestling program at Ragsdale High School in Jamestown in 1965.

Coaching the Ragsdale team until 1984, Raybon amassed a 216-45-2 dual-meet record, 14 conference championships, seven unbeaten seasons, and three state championships. Moving into school administration in 1984, he was an assistant principal at Ragsdale and Southwest Guilford High Schools before returning to Ragsdale in 1995 as an athletic director. He served as an athletic director until his retirement from education in 2008.

Raybon’s service to wrestling spanned over forty years and included 21 years of coaching, over 30 years of officiating, and many years of consulting the NCHSAA on the state wrestling championships. Raybon has been inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame (1997), the North Carolina High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame (2006), and the Guilford County Sports Hall of Fame (2015). In 2015, Ragsdale High dedicated the Mike Raybon Gymnasium in his honor.