Original subtitles

When we talk about wrestling in the 80s, it's hard to imagine how popular the

Von Erich brothers were. Those guys were ready -made.

The Von Erich family could have been the equivalent of the Kennedys. It was a

dynasty. It was a family dynasty.

They were the all -American boys from Texas. They are real -life Texas heroes

the flesh.

They didn't have to put them in a funny outfit.

They didn't have to give them a different name.

They had the look. They had the physiques.

They had the athletic ability.

They were superheroes in the ring. But then there was constant bad news.

The Von Erichs could have two legacies.

They could have a legacy of being one of the biggest attractions, wrestling

families in history.

Or they could have a legacy as a cautionary tale.

Von Erich was found dead and Von Erich was seriously injured.

He just couldn't take it anymore.

I've loved the wrestling business all my life, but it's not that important.

Some people say, well, it's just the pressure of the spotlight.

Other celebrities have been unable to cope.

Who knew we were going to have, you know, four major deaths over the next

years?

During their brief reign, the Von Erich family ascended to wrestling

superstardom, but just as quickly suffered relentless personal tragedy.

In this episode, the last surviving brother reflects on his unimaginable

journey.

You know, I wanted to get away from wrestling. I wanted to get out. I wanted

be anonymous.

And they say the Pacific Ocean has no memory.

Well, here I am in the smack dab in the middle of it.

Is there any other place in the world you'd rather be than here?

No, this is it.

It's the love and the peace and the harmony.

You can't put a price on that, you know.

I think I'm the richest man in the world.

My childhood?

Well, I was an older brother, and so it was a lot of fighting.

I could overdo that power of being a big brother, but so I learned not to.

But, man, they adored me, and I adored them. There was this us -against -the

-world kind of thing.

Lee, don't think I'm in a bad way, that I'm suffering at all. I consider myself

the luckiest man in the world.

These are some hunting pictures. We always hunted with our dad. These were

we were real young.

We lived in little 16 acres in this little shack.

That's how we lived out in the country when Dad was wrestling.

And then here's a shot just about...

Two miles from this spot is this farm, and this is where I raised my voice.

My dad always said, whatever you put into something is what you get out of

He was a really good wrestler, a solid wrestler.

There's no way I can be objective.

I think he was the best of all time. But he was a vicious wrestler.

My father, you know, wanted something different.

If you want to be a bad guy, you be the best.

So as far as my dad was concerned, a Nazi was about the most despised

could be, and he was a Nazi.

This is Von Erich from Berlin, Germany.

Here we go.

He could create a lot of heat just coming across as the German hit the ring

was going to beat up all the Americans.

My connection with the Von Erich family is I was Rich's right -hand man.

Rich was the main event.

He was a huge star in the 50s and 60s all over the country.

If you're wondering what qualifies me to be a pro wrestling expert, it's simple.

Almost 50 years of obsessive collecting, hoarding, and research.

So Fritz had gotten the reputation as the toughest guy in Texas.

As little kids, our dad being the bad guy, we didn't see it that way. So

watching wrestling to us was torment.

You know, when the crowd was cheering, we knew that was bad.

Because, without a doubt, he was the most hated villain of all wrestling. And

one brother would have to watch while the other brothers would cover our ears

and eyes and, you know, wouldn't look.

And the other brothers would say, Dad's winning.

So we'd start watching again, you know.

We were so into it.

Fritz also developed the Iron Claw.

The claw's a hold that my dad invented.

The crazy thing about it is that after years and years of doing the claw,

you get scary, crazy good at it.

You just grab and you do this, you know, squeeze the guy in the temples with

your big hands. You just, that's it.

My name is Dave Meltzer, and I've been writing the Wrestling Observer

since 1982, so it's been pretty much my entire life.

Fritz von Erich was actually wanting to get out of wrestling and raise his

family and do a lot less traveling.

It was always the goal of wrestlers in those days to buy a territory, become a

promoter. That's where the real money was.

Fritz had a big office, and he's the boss, and he's the promoter with World

Class Championship Wrestling, but he was also a very strong business person.

Almost every wrestler that became a promoter, he wanted your sons to be

wrestlers so they can be the stars of the next generation.

I don't know that even if he realized how big a star they were going to be. We

got into wrestling because we wanted to be like our dad.

I was born into wrestling.

One good thing about being brothers, we knew exactly what was going on. It was

beautiful. Almost should be illegal, what an upper hand we had on other

Because you know exactly what they're thinking. It was a perfect storm. The

young Von Erich boys had debuted, had gotten a couple years' experience. They

looked great. People knew them. And all of a sudden now they're on this new

-looking program.

They were household names. Everybody knew who they were.

Austin, we're the number one show at 9 o 'clock in the morning on Sunday

mornings.

They said, well, let's cover this like a sporting event. They would have the

cameraman and they would have the sound guy, like, actually in the ring.

You know, during the tapings, you look at it and go like... What's he doing in

the ring? Because no other company would ever do that.

We literally set the stage of where wrestling would go.

They came up with a comic book where there's some bad guys that are trying to

take over the universe and they need the Von Erks because their hearts are so

good. So that was just, we just cleaned up space a little bit. You know, just

the riffraff.

The girls just went nuts.

There's no telling what magazine you would see him in. They were teenage hot

drops. They were teen idols. Kevin, Kerry, Dave.

Going to the ring would be like a madhouse. The girls would cry about us,

know, and of course you've got to keep going. And so pretty soon your shoulders

are just, you know, scratched all up and bleeding, you know, and the place would

just go electric.

I mean, your ears ring. You go home from that shrill scream.

That was what we shot for. We wanted that feeling, that intensity to stay

way until it was over.

Kerry was the star.

Kerry had the movie star looks, had the physique.

He had great personality, just charisma.

I've never seen anybody that had his strength.

David was the best performer in the ring, all around, psychology, movement,

cetera, athletically.

David used to go to the ring with the big yellow rose, and he was hit there at

the Yellow Rose of Texas.

Dave was a technician.

There was not a hole you could surprise him with.

Kevin, I think, was the athlete. He was just insane, the things he could do. He

was probably by far the best raw athlete of the bunch. Then Mike. Mike didn't

have the size as the other brothers. He was real close with his little brother,

Chris.

Chris, funny, funny guy.

Just loved life.

The Von Eriks epitomized God, family, and country. They're heroes.

completely more popular than movie stars and more accessible. From the time the

kids were young, if they won an award in school, athletic award, it was talked

about on the television show, and they were in wrestling magazines with

out hunting or fishing out in Lake Dallas with their famous father, they

in the public eye.

They grew up on television.

That's a lot of pressure.

I'd like to say that it was, you know, clean -cut dyes, but I think people

realized we were human.

You could guarantee us that we had pure hearts and we had good motives. And

maybe that was something real about us, that we're a family. And we did love

each other and care and regard our fans as sort of people and not tickets.

And so to their fans, they were more members of the family in some cases.

There's something about those boys, every one of them, that everyone loves

and I love them. So literally, it was almost like I think everyone felt like

they were the parent.

and they had watched these kids grow up, they were busy on the road, because

you've got to realize, it's a 365 -day job. In other words, these guys were

wrestling everywhere, sometimes two times a day.

The talks were already out there that David could be one of the top prospects

be the next world heavyweight champion.

David was the worker.

Everybody universally said that.

He would have been the guy the NWA picked.

Even before Dave went to Japan, he was sitting with my mother at the table, and

I said, Dave, I just had that really bad feeling. I said, they're looking at

him, and it was looking more and more pale to me.

I got a phone call and was asleep.

To this day, I can't stand a phone call before daylight.

It just tears me up.

This voice says, David Manning, Joe Higuchi, All Japan Pro Wrestling.

David Von Erich Dent.

And here is after my first knee surgery.

On my third knee surgery, my knees were shot, and then I had to give up

football. I guess Dave was in chronic relief.

My parents, they knew how much I loved football, and so I said, Dave, be

what you say to him. He's just got the worst news of his life. He can't play

football. And Dave comes and says, so I heard you're a quitter.

When Dave died, I never got up from that all the way.

It hit me like no other one did.

I say I was the oldest brother, but I was the second son.

Our oldest brother was Jackie.

They lived in a trailer park because since they were always on the road, they

had a house trailer that they could move from place to place.

You know, Jack was actually coming home from school and it had snowed. I think

he was six years old.

And as he was trying to step over the tongue or go around the tongue of a

trailer, he touched it.

Somehow it electrocuted him.

And he fell in the snow face first and drowned.

I was looking for him, you know, a little three -year -old kid looking for

And I knew something was bad. And I was like watching it. My parents, they were

all crying.

And Jackie had been electrocuted.

Came in and saw my dad punch the car window and just shatter it. He came out

that different.

He was still an honorable man on the outside, but I think inside he wanted to

die. He was suffering. He'd think, what have I done to deserve this?

He was at war with the world.

He wanted to make everyone suffer like him. It was the first of unimaginable

tragedy that that one family had to go through.

When it came to David Von Erich getting the news that he passed away, it was

about 2 in the morning, and the phone rang, and I picked up the phone, and

voice says, David Von Erich dead.

And I said, so what happened? We find in room dead.

It's 2 .30 in the morning, and I'm trying to decide how do I get this news.

then, there weren't cell phones.

And so I got in my car, and I'll never forget, it was just coming daylight, and

as I pulled in, I could see Fritz in front of the motor coach in the window.

And I got out of the car, and I walked to the door, and he opened the door to

the motor coach, and he looked at me, and he said, which one?

So I think he knew for me to go all the way down there is something very, very

serious. I said, Fritz, they just called me from Japan.

David's dead.

My mother, she'd been told, and she just went running off into the woods. It was

barely daybreak. My dad just walked outside and stared in the sky.

I went a little bit crazy. I didn't want to see anybody.

I had to be in the woods, and I stayed in the woods, too.

Fritz said, you go to town, you make the phone calls, you find out what happened

to my boy. I managed to get a hold of Brody, who was also a legendary

popular in Japan.

Brody said that... When they opened the door, the way he was laying, it looked

like he was trying to get to the phone.

I knew Brody always to be so tough and such a strong, good man. But when he was

telling me, he was like, he couldn't talk, you know.

He's crying inside. I never saw Brody cry.

I said, Frank, don't think about it. Don't think about it, Frank.

And he goes, he's dead, Kevin.

Frank. God, it was terrible.

The next day after David died, you know, going to the mall in Wichita, Texas,

and you see like these like teenage girls and they're all crying and the

are consoling them. It was a big freaking deal in that part of the

It was almost like the fans had lost a son.

I mean, it was emotional on two continents because the Japanese fans

hung up in wrestling that when a big name foreign wrestler dies on their

mean, there was memorials and the guys were broken up.

I remember that airplane coming in with Dave's coffin on it. No one would look

us in the eye because they knew we all hurt. We hurt so bad.

And people hurt for us, too.

The funeral was just insane. It was like one of those old funerals of the silent

movie stars.

There was a lot of wrestlers right here in this area. When they went to the

funeral, the tears flowed. It was hard to take.

And so we estimated probably 4 ,000 to 5 ,000 people showed up for this service.

It was just beautiful.

expression of love. The schools let out. The Texas legislature convened. It was

like Texas got hurt that day.

You couldn't get anybody else in. They literally had to put a screen outside

speakers outside for the thousands of people that were there.

I didn't know that we were that big, I guess.

Inside the business,

We heard that he passed away in his hotel room in Japan.

That generally only means one thing.

There's all this word out that he overdosed, but there's no doubt that he

didn't.

One of the biggest rumors out there was that when Brody found him, Brody threw

away all the pills, and we waited to hear that autopsy report.

Fritz was adamant, I want to know what the autopsy says.

And whatever it says, that's what we're going to have to put out.

And it came back, acute enteritis.

His intestines, basically from an infection, swole up to the point they

ruptured. His body filled up with blood and heart failure.

About two days or a day before he was going to leave to go to Japan, he was

throwing up.

Fritz was very stern about, you make the shows you're booked at.

So he left and went over there.

No, I'm telling you what really happened.

We're not big shots that told the country of Japan to falsify those

You know, I'm a wrestler.

You're not going to listen to me for that. It was gastroenteritis.

A terrible way to die.

And we lost him.

Every man's going to die.

But we do our best.

We do our best until that day comes.

We had a guy named Glenn Goza, and he had wrote Heaven Needs a Champion.

And he literally put a song of there's a main event taking place in heaven, and

God brought David Von Erich there to be the star.

You wore the family name with pride. David Von Erich, as a person and as a

wrestler, was a true champion.

He had a great gift, and he knew how to take it to its fullest.

After David's funeral, Fritz would hold the Parade of Champions event in his

son's honor, which at the time attracted the largest crowd ever.

to watch a wrestling event in the United States.

There will be a new World's Heavyweight Champion crowd on that afternoon.

The brother of David Von Erich, Kerry, was going to challenge Nature Boy Ric

Flair for the NWA World Championship that had always eluded the Von Erich

family, and this time he said, I'm going to win it for David. We were adamant

with the NWA, National Wrestling Alliance, we had to switch that title.

I think that's where we saw Fritz had some clout. The dream of my brother is

my reality.

Leading up to that match, we knew it was going to be big. We didn't know how

big.

But all of a sudden, you've got 42 -plus thousand people at Texas Stadium, and

they're there to see one thing.

That title change.

Your referee is David Manning. Here I knew I was going to go down in the

books. The title was changing that night.

I was super happy for Kerry. I thought he'd make a great champion.

Here we go.

It was incredible.

You can feel the tension.

And whenever that one, two, three.

The whole place went nuts.

And then you got.

Kevin hit the ring. You got Fritz hitting the ring. You can see Doris in

background. I'm presenting the belt. The media's going crazy. We had all the

radio stations there.

The Yellow Rose in honor of Brother David.

It was a great night. Not bittersweet at all. Sweet, sweet.

That was probably a bigger deal to the Von Erich boys than it was to Fritz

himself and to the fans.

With Kerry's championship win and a strong emotional bond with fans, World

-class championship wrestling was now on fire.

But with David gone, there was a void to fill.

Fritz wanted to replace David because we were missing a piece of the puzzle, and

we decided to look for another Von Erich.

Whenever I saw Lance, he was the perfect guy. He was chiseled. He looked like he

could be a Von Erich.

It was a terrible idea.

We had never lied to our people.

It really hurt their image, and it started the downward spiral going a

bit quicker.

They knew he wasn't a real Von Erich.

They're lying to us.

Lance.

Growing up, of course, we wanted to be just like him. He's like real -life

Tarzan, you know, climbing trees. Any river he sees, he gets out of the car,

he'll dive in it, doesn't care what's in it.

We saw that fearlessness in every situation, not only in the ring, but in

And, you know, that's what we wanted to be like. And we're just grateful to God

that we can follow in the footsteps. And doors are opening in wrestling.

And we get to, you know, pick up where the Von Erichs left off.

Kevin and I talk, you know, I go to Hawaiian theme.

He's got two great boys now, Marshall and Roth.

Gosh, they're so talented. And when I look at them, I see the brothers.

You're just kind of crazy.

Thanks, sir. Can you tell us the story about Lance Von Erich?

Yeah.

Kerry and I were dead set against that. Of all of the angles that happened in

the final years of world -class wrestling, Lance Von Erich was the

They needed another Von Eriks.

Overall, it did a lot more damage than it did good. And then when they got on

the outs with Lance and tried to disown him, the fans just said, well, you're

the ones that brought him and sold him to us. That's where I think people lost

lot of faith. I have to say, Kevin was dead set against it. He felt it could

exposed and that Mike would be able to step up and take the role.

People shouldn't say that Mike was an athlete because he sure was. Mike was an

incredible athlete.

Mike got involved in wrestling and

he wanted to have the size of the other brothers. And he worked out hard.

You know, he had the drive, he had the stamina.

So it was hard for Mike.

Mike was a great guy, but he wasn't cut out to be a wrestler.

Mike had to walk in there and be David Von Erich and be a main event wrestler

19, 20 years old, and he wasn't a great athlete. The only thing he had going for

him is that he was called Mike Von Erich.

I mean, he just didn't look like a wrestler at all, and he's in there with,

like, Ric Flair and these big, great wrestlers who are just carrying him in

these matches that are just painful, in a sense, to watch.

The injuries did bother him, you know.

He was wrestling in Tel Aviv against Gio Hernandez.

Gino pulled just when he wasn't ready, and out it came.

This time it tore a lot of ligaments.

Only a year after David's death, Mike dislocates his shoulder in the ring and

rushed to an Israeli hospital.

They perform emergency surgery, and soon after, Mike is flown back to Texas.

They literally took him home, and all of a sudden his temperature is sky high.

The fever hitting over 105 is what did the damage, I think.

I put him over my shoulder and walked down the steps with him and put him in

car and took off.

Mike Von Erich, hospitalized for routine shoulder surgery, sustained a staph

infection that escalated into toxic shock syndrome.

It was toxic shock syndrome, what they called it.

And the doctor comes out and he said his blood pressure has plummeted, his

organs are starting to shut down.

He said, we've done everything we can do.

He said, I don't think Mike's going to make it through the night.

You know, they told us to say goodbye to them.

The hospital was getting like 250 calls an hour where they had to hire on extra

staff. People had been offering to donate their liver and their kidneys.

We were in the room, and Gary Holder, who was considered the chaplain of world

class, was there in the room.

Gary Holder said, God, you stand on your word. You said anything we ask in

Jesus' name, I will do it. That's when I didn't even look up. I thought, that's

disrespectful. You went too far.

He took the Bible and he slammed it down on the table. And he said, God, there

is your word.

So keep your word, God.

And it was less than 30 seconds after Gary finished praying. The doors opened.

Bill Sutker.

came in the room with his other doctor, and his exact words were, I'm not sure

what happened, but everything's functioning.

His temperature has dropped, so let's see where we're at.

They couldn't believe it, but he's a fighter.

And I want to thank everyone out there, all my good neighbors, for your prayers.

One week later, we rolled Mike out of the hospital.

He might have rushed it a little bit. He was so anxious to get back, and so we

did a big press conference.

I know I'll be back.

I saw on TV, well, Mike's going to come back, and they were milking to it and

trying to get people interested in it.

I just didn't see how it was going to work.

And when he first came back, I was like, God, I don't know if he should come

back and wrestle. He probably shouldn't have wrestled to begin with. He looked

really gaunt and hollow.

I wondered if there was brain damage.

And that's when he attacked a stoplight, attacked a parked car one time. Just

outrageous, you know, nobody in the parked car.

But they always wanted a feel -good story at the end. And it always worked

it was stuff that they could write.

But when it was real life and they couldn't control it, it...

It didn't work.

You got to realize when Mike came on the scene, the brothers were superstars.

So all of a sudden you had big shoes to fill.

And I think that was a lot of pressure that went on Mike.

And early Saturday morning, Von Erich was arrested on suspicion of drunken

driving and possession of marijuana.

The Von Erich family attorney assisted Mike during his release from jail.

He would be the last person to see him alive.

Mike missed an event. If you were Von Erich, you didn't miss an event.

I remember that night.

wondering where Mike was, what he was thinking.

They had a bulletin out everywhere, had all the police looking, and it was, I

want to say, two days, maybe three, before they found Mike.

The news of another tragic death in the Von Erich family has hit hard. Mike had

not been seen since Saturday and reportedly was depressed about being

the night before. As his mother and brother looked on, the family's worst

were confirmed.

Professional wrestler Mike Von Erich is dead, the apparent victim of suicide.

He overdosed.

So sad.

Everybody was just so sad. Dave and now Mike.

You know, I didn't know this thing was going to get so emotional. Maybe I

These are three big things, I guess.

You guys, could I take another break for just about ten minutes?

Oh, yeah, of course.

That was taxing.

And once again, another Von Erich brother is called upon to step into the

Chris Von Erich was the worst part of the whole thing because he had had

problems. I'm sure he wanted to be like his brothers because his brothers were

his heroes.

Kevin was actually helping Chris work out. He had to work ten times harder

everybody else. His body wasn't built like his brother's. He wanted to be a

wrestler so bad.

It's just not going to happen.

The Von Erichs were believable heroes to thousands of fans.

But continual misfortune chipped away at their image, and they would have one

last desperate attempt to revive it.

My brothers taught me about wrestling, but I taught them about eating.

Mike was really something special.

I thought you were full.

These are for dad.

We did a few TV commercials, shot it all night. For a joke, Carrie puts all

these foot products over in my thing. I didn't even notice it. This is a gift

from a fan right here.

Really old picture. We loved our fans, and to this day, they're the most loyal

people in the world. We wanted to be, like, good and be good examples to kids.

And, you know, after Dave's death and Mike's death, you feel like you're

everybody down.

It's really hard.

With this being the third death in the family and being such a strong Christian

family, I think the first thing everybody wants to do is question, well,

they're such strong Christians, why is all this happening to them? I'm not

saying that the boys didn't believe in God and weren't religious. They just

sometimes didn't do things outside the ring that way. And I don't mean they

terrorizing the population. They were damaging themselves more than anybody

else. But because they were so closely identified as not only being Texas All

-Americans, but God -fearing Texas All -Americans, when things came out

car wrecks or suicides or is there drugs involved in these things or whatever.

Every move was covered by the newspapers, the Dallas Times, Herald,

television stations. And you could tell when you watch a television show, you're

seeing more empty seats.

You know, like, look, they were huge in 86 and by 88, 89, they were pretty bad

off.

After so much tragedy and with a family legacy in jeopardy, Fritz's youngest

son, Chris, steps into the ring attempting to pick up where his brothers

off. I think Chris felt bad. He wanted to try to fulfill the shoes that it was

almost impossible to fill based on his size.

The first I remember of Chris was, you know, just being like a little

The goal was to hopefully find a way to get Chris involved into the matches.

If he was going to wrestle, I wanted to have him a really good ground game, know

all the scapes and counters, and to be a technician.

Physically, in no way should he have been involved in wrestling. Because of

size, I think he had asthma. He had brittle bones because of the asthma

medication that he took.

Really hard for him.

Wanted to have the big muscles and all that, but...

The muscles are just looks.

You've got to have agility, explosive, balance, snap, all these things that

didn't happen for him.

And then all of a sudden, Chris broke his arm.

He couldn't work out.

It was a big, big setback.

Kevin was down there.

They were down at the house in Edom, and Chris was just all upset and depressed

and this and that.

He loaned me his VCR.

And so he called me at like 12 .30 that night.

I want my VCR back right now. I said, Chris, come on, wait for me in the

morning, okay?

I'll give it to you in the morning.

And I hear his four -wheeler drive around my house a couple of times and

off. I knew he had a spot up on the hill he used to go to.

So I drove up there, you know, and he was sitting there by himself. I said,

Chris, what are you doing up here by yourself like this?

He said, well, did you read my note?

I said, oh, what are you going to do, kill yourself or something, Chris? Come

now, bud.

I said, Chris, don't do anything crazy, okay? He said, I won't, Kev, I promise.

I said, I'll believe that, you know.

Went back to my parents' house to check his bedroom and said, does Chris ever

write suicide notes?

Dad said, I think you better get up there.

So I did get back up there and wish I'd never left because I got there right

after it must have happened.

I saw him laying there on the ground choking.

I said, Chris, what did you do? I thought he might have took some pills.

I hooked his arm and put my hand under his head to lift him up and my thumb,

know, found the hole.

I thought I'd realized that he'd shot himself in the head.

Yeah.

With the last vestiges of the Von Erich family torn apart,

Kerry accepts an offer to go mainstream with the WWF.

It's another chance in the spotlight.

You know what? When the crowd started dropping here, Kerry was getting big

offers. Would he come up and work for Vince? Would he make some appearances up

there? Kerry, he took a good offer from Vince, and he went up there.

After enduring several tragedies and the decline of his family's wrestling

promotion,

Kerry takes the Von Erich legacy to wrestling's biggest stage.

However, no one knew he was wrestling with an unthinkable secret.

This is a school picture.

What a cute little kid.

Were you guys like really curious kids?

Like, were you really like active?

Kerry and I just showed off for each other all day long, I think. We just

we took a chance a day. It was like, yeah.

A lucrative offer made to Kerry by the WWF was an opportunity to revive the Von

Erich name.

However, a secret from his past was slowly catching up with him.

Kerry was supposed to be wrestling that night. I want to say Austin or

somewhere. I get the phone call. Kerry's been in an accident. It's not life

-threatening, but he really busted up his leg.

Kerry was riding his motorcycle and ran into the back of a parked police car.

I remember Rick Hazard. I saw him. And he said, holy cow. He said his ankle

looked like an alligator chewed on it. When they made the decision to amputate,

I would have never, ever thought.

It could be kept secret. I guess Fritz thought they didn't want to make Kerry

look weak, especially after the other tragedies, so they tried to hide the

of his foot situation.

He wanted me to promise to hide that, and we all promised.

Anything we said to each other, if we gave our word, that's an oath.

We weren't going to let Kerry down because he was ashamed of it.

In Kerry's mind, I'm a fake.

You know, the injury down on this leg, what about it now?

It was almost to the point where I almost had to have my leg amputated.

Now my leg is back. It's coming on strong.

Everyone was sworn to secrecy over about a five -year period there.

He would do everything that a person with both limbs would do. I think that

would have just been such a testimonial. And I was proud of Kerry to come back

like that and not only just compete, but to impress people.

They could have presented it like that, and maybe he would have been a little

bit more inspirational, maybe it would have made him feel better. But instead,

it was another thing he had to hide, and it was another thing that was probably

weighing on him mentally.

Now I'll never be as good as I could be. I'll never make my dad proud, whatever

the case may be.

With his transition to wrestling's grandest stage, Kerry found himself a

fish in a big pond.

But with a new identity, it was a chance to reboot his career.

Vince brings in Kerry Von Erich, the modern -day warrior.

You know, he was one of the biggest superstars of that period.

I mean, it was like he still had the physique, but introducing him at that

of the game to a national audience when he was physically limited, it just

wasn't the same.

And he quickly drops the Von Erich name, tells him you can't do the claw.

His name is the Texas Tornado. And they just call him the Texas Tornado. They

didn't even call him Kerry Von Erich. All he had going for him was that he was

Kerry Von Erich.

When he was there, things were going down. I mean, it was not a secret things

were going down.

He had, you know, a series of drug -related issues.

He was not happy at all.

Kerry didn't handle the pain. Well, you've seen, you know, he's always out

rock and roll people and all. And I was more of a family man, you know. It

probably saved me. I know it saved me. Kerry was doing drugs. You just knew it.

Once he went through the accident, they immediately fill him up with all these

drugs. They got the painkillers in you, and they got the pills they're giving

him.

That was not a good path for him.

Because of the drugs. He was on probation at the time, and then he got

again.

And, you know, he was afraid because of the probation violation that he was

going to go to jail this time. I remember he went to his wife and said,

to jail if you promise that when I come out of jail you'll take me back. And she

wouldn't promise him that.

He talked about what Chris did in glowing terms. It's like, can you

guts it took to do what Chris did? You know, I was like, that's pretty scary

when you hear people saying that.

He told me he was going to kill himself.

I said, Kerry, you couldn't do that to me.

He said, what are we going to do then? I said, we'll do something, but we sure

as hell ain't going to die.

He said, I'll tell you what, Kerry, let's, you and me, let's go to Alaska.

Let's take our 44s and let's just get charged by a polar bear. We got six

But I thought it would be good for me to get along with Kerry, and there's no

drug dealers up there, so it would be great.

I wish we'd have gone up there with our .44s.

On the morning of February 17, 1993, the same day Kerry was scheduled to be

indicted on drug charges, he took a drive out to his father's ranch.

Called Dad, and he said, can't talk, busy.

Well, he was pouring a driveway.

And I was going to tell him, Carrie's in a bad way. He's headed out to your

place and hold him for me until I get there.

I tried to call that a couple of times. They could not get through.

Fritz was continuing on pouring concrete.

Carrie came, walked up, gave him a big hug and said, Dad, I love you.

I really, really love you.

Carrie got in the Jeep and took off in the Jeep.

And so Dad's sitting in the house wondering why Carrie's been out in the

so long.

He said he went and looked, and his pistol was gone.

A .44 he'd given down for Father's Day.

And when he went down, there was a clear -out area down there, and he saw the

Jeep part.

With one glove laying on the seat.

So he knew then what was happening. He had taken the glove, the shooting hand.

Fred said he walked back. There was a little row of trees.

And there Kerry was.

He seemed dead.

Shot himself in the heart.

When I was beginning to pile up, he just couldn't take it anymore.

Dad found him and he said he'd never seen such a peaceful look on Kerry's

It was to hit him just right.

Kevin said the one thing one time almost made me cry. He said, I used to have

five brothers, and now I'm not even a brother.

Over all of that, Fritz and Doris had split up.

I thought my dad was taking it like a soldier, you know. My mom was really

getting hit, though, and she blamed him.

It was bad.

The last ten years of his life was not a picture of what I would call hell.

You would have never thought that he would have outlived five of his six

Dad, could you tell the story, though, of that day when Granddad pointed that

gun at you?

No, when he got older, he had brain cancer. It was not making sense, some

he said. He was questioning God.

Well, he got that gun out, and he pointed the gun at me, and he said,

yourself, too, if you had the guts.

I said, Dad, it takes guts to live, not guts to die.

And he pointed the gun at me. He said, you're afraid, aren't you? And I said,

no, sir.

You've got to remember, there's brain cancer involved, and I didn't know if he

was going to shoot me or not.

I said, Dad, quit pointing the gun at me.

I said, quit pointing the gun at me.

And I jumped out the door because I could see he's thinking.

I'm not going to let cancer decide if I live or die.

You know what? I was glad he died.

I want him to quit suffering.

He had Sam suffer too much. What a good man he was. Way deserved better than

that.

What a good man.

Not only have I lost a brother, I lost

all of them.

And there's talk about there being a curse on the family, you know.

It was so ridiculous, you know, curse.

What happened is just terrible, just a terrible thing, but no curse.

So what happened with you after this? I mean, obviously you went through a

really difficult period yourself.

I thought I was doing my best, and I was, but I was mad. And there was a time

thought that I wanted to die, you know, I wanted to be dead.

And I knew I wasn't going to kill myself, but I just wanted to fight

And prison felt like the perfect thing for me.

I was going to steal a gun because I knew how much people hate guns. If I

one, that's prison.

Lo and behold, I tried it in a Lubbock gun store with a bunch of good old Texas

men in there.

I went to steal that gun, and that old man on the stop was looking right at me,

put it down my pants, and a stiff leg walked out of there.

I stopped and looked at him like, you got something to say?

That's when he just looked at me like an old man. Didn't say anything for a long

time. Just looked at me.

And I looked right into his eyes.

He said, love you, Kev.

Oh, man.

I said, thank you, sir.

And I went out to my car.

And I just thought about the magnitude of what just happened.

And I came back in that store.

Gave him his rifle and hugged him. I said, I love you, too, sir.

And all those other men were in there. Man, it was a great day for Texas.

Great day for Von Erich.

I needed that so bad.

I wanted life to get as bad as it could be.

Anyway, I'm so glad it's over.

Saved me.

You want to see the story I was telling you about? Yeah.

This is my desk, my office.

My lazy boy lounger here.

How often are you here?

Every day?

I try to.

If I can, I get here every day. I do try to do that.

I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. The peace I've ever had before.

The more alone...

You get, the more close you feel to God, it seems like to me. If I'm scuba

diving at night on the bottom of the ocean, I love to turn my light off and

lay on the bottom. I feel like, I think you're far away. You know, you're never,

oh, God is right with me. I feel it. I do love it.

Hey, baby.

Hey, you.

Kevin's kids, I've met them all.

and they have beautiful kids now.

What I sought for all my life was to be peaceful, and here I am.

Thank you, Lord.

I've never been so happy and peaceful.

There's always kids playing here.

It's the highest and best use for the land, for sure.

He's been through so much chaos and stuff, and so for him to end up in this

of just peaceful environment, you know, with the animals and everything, he's

just like so at home and just so, you know.

He loves it.

I'm lucky in a way that I've found that the only thing that lasts is family.

You see Ross, and you see a little bit of Kerry.

And you see Marshall, and you see the athleticism of Kevin, and you see that

body of Dave.

And then in both of them, you see Devon Eric.

And so, hey, who knows?

Maybe the story will continue.

Kevin officially retired on July the 17th, 2017.

Wrestling his last match alongside his two sons in Israel, where the Von Erich

family name is celebrated to this day.

You know, I've seen huge crowds. I've been a guest of honor. I've been, you

know, a celebrity.

I've done what everybody thinks they want.

I've had all that.

It's not satisfying.

Is this all there is?

What is satisfying is dinner with the family, children laughing, real joy.

That's the truth.