Who were your heroes?
Originally published in the Waxahachie Daily Light
Jonathan Blundell
Staff writer
Mention professional wrestling to anyone in the Dallas area and one name will always come to mind — the Von Erichs.
People all over the Metroplex tell tales of tuning in every Saturday night on KVTT Channel 11 to watch three dashing young brothers take on the world, from their home in the squared-circle.
Stories of drama, action and excitement played out weekly on television sets around the world, as people tuned in to the weekly syndicated show featuring Fritz Von Erich (Jack Adkisson) and his sons, Kevin, Kerry and David.
It was the mid-80s and Fritz’s World Class Championship Wrestling was king.
Stories have been told of families across the world gathering on hillsides just so they could get a good reception and tune in to watch championship wrestling from downtown Dallas.
Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, and even Hulk Hogan were still years from becoming household names, but wrestlers like “The Gentleman” Chris Adams, Bruiser Brody, Kabala, The Fabulous Freebirds and even NWA World Heavyweight Ric Flair entertained the world from Dallas’ own Sportatorium.
But along with the rise to success, came the fall of defeat.
Some say it was a Von Erich curse, others say it was Fritz’s stubbornness to change.
Whatever the cause may have been, fans of WCCW began to watch their heroes crumble and fall as tragedy struck the Von Erich family and WCCW over and over again.
Once the brother to five and now the brother to none, Fritz’s eldest son Kevin is all that’s left of the wrestling dynasty.
Former WCCW wrestler and manager Scandor Ackbar said he knows of 18 young men involved with WCCW who have died since the promotion’s prime in 1982.
“At first I thought it was coincidence,” Ackbar said. “But then after a while — what’s going on?”
And as the city of Dallas condemned and began to tear down the famed Sportatorium in 2003, filmmaker Brian Harrison spent three years made it his mission to tell the story of his childhood heroes in “Heroes of World Class: The Story of the Von Erichs and the Rise and Fall of World Class Championship Wrestling.”
The film released June 15 to DVD details the stories of WCCW, starting with the early 1980s when Fritz Von Erich purchased the Dallas-based Big Time Wrestling and transformed it into one of the premiere wrestling promotions in the world.
Footage and photographs from WCCW and the Von Erich family are well used throughout the documentary as Kevin and a number of the remaining WCCW players tell the rise and fall of Texas’ great wrestling promotion.
“What took us eight years to build, took two years to take down,” former WCCW wrestler and manager Gary “Playboy” Hart said.
The stories told on the DVD encompass all sides of the WCCW rise and fall.
Kevin talks greatly about his family’s history, including his grandfather, a Texas sheriff.
According to Kevin, his grandfather would take Fritz to town as a young teen, just to make him fight other boys his age.
Kevin’s grandfather would then take bets on the fights for extra money.
Kevin shares the grief of losing each of his brothers, including three to suicide.
“The thing about grief is that it never gets better, it only gets worse,” Kevin said on losing his brothers and friends.
He also shared his father’s grief and rapid transformation when he was diagnosed with brain cancer in the late 1990’s.
“Dad told me I didn’t have the courage to kill myself like my other brothers,” Kevin said. “I know dad loved me but he wasn’t in his right mind. I think he just looked at me and saw all his other sons.”
This two and a half hour documentary does a great job of telling the Von Erich story and the story of WCCW.
And while the Von Erich’s were often the driving force behind the promotion, Harrison makes it a point to tell the entire WCCW story, not just the Von Erich’s.
The video montage in tribute to David Von Erich, who died while on a wrestling tour of Japan in 1984, was well edited and set to the song “Life by the Drop” by another Texas legend, Stevie Ray Vaughan.
The entire documentary, with its vintage video and honest interviews, is a great to watch for the avid fan who watched every week on Channel 11, or just the casual observer wanting to know more about Texas’ first family of wrestling.
After watching the documentary, my only wish was that there were complete matches added to the DVD, especially the famous championship battle between Kerry Von Erich and NWA Champion Ric Flair at Texas Stadium after David Von Erich’s death.
We’ll now have to wait now for Vince McMahon Jr. and WWE to release the old footage after McMahon’s company purchased the WCCW video library from Kevin in early June.
“Heroes of World Class: The Story of the Von Erichs and the Rise and Fall of World Class Championship Wrestling” can be purchased online directly from the documentary’s producers, Right Here Pictures, at www.rightherepictures.com or from Amazon.com.
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