In “The Iron Claw,” four Texas brothers become wrestling superstars. Then, after a run of accidents and personal tragedies, all but one of them die before the age of 35.
“Ever since I was a child, people have said my family was cursed,” Kevin Von Erich, the sole surviving brother, says in the movie. “Pop tried to protect us with wrestling. He said if we were the toughest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt us. I believed him. We all did.”
Was the Von Erich family actually cursed? Some people buy into the superstition, while others call it exactly that. But one thing is certain: The Von Erichs suffered an almost unbelievable amount of tragedy — and it was even worse than the movie shows.
The sad saga began with Fritz Von Erich, the family patriarch. Born Jack Adkisson, he played football at Southern Methodist University before hitting the wrestling circuit in the 1950s. Adkisson took on a German moniker to suit his character, a villain with a dark backstory that is glossed over in the film.
Fritz Von Erich was a Nazi “heel” — a deliberate wrestling villain — often billed in newspapers as a “Storm Trooper” from Stuttgart who subdued his rivals with his trademark move, the Iron Claw. Spreading and clenching his fingers over his opponent’s face, Von Erich would squeeze until blood flowed.
As the sports journalist David Shoemaker writes in his book “The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling,” evil Germans were still fairly common cultural villains in the 1950s. But some accounts suggest that fans felt “anger that the wrestlers would seek to monetize and commercialize those fresh wounds.”
One legend, retold in Shoemaker’s book, claims that a man appeared at Von Erich’s dressing room after a match in Chicago, chiding him for his offensive act. The man rolled up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo, inked by actual Nazis at a World War II concentration camp, and said that he had lost all seven of his sons in death camps. “He said ominously that he sincerely hoped that nothing like that would ever happen to Fritz,” Shoemaker writes.
It may be a tall tale, but it followed Adkisson even after he retired from the ring and turned to born-again Christianity. Adkisson had six sons with his wife, Doris, and ultimately lost five of them to suicide, medical emergencies or bizarre accidents.
The eldest, Jack Jr., died in 1959, when his father was still touring as Fritz Von Erich. The 6-year-old was found in a watery trench in Niagara Falls, dead by drowning after an electric shock.
“After you lose the first one, there is that nagging fear you’ll lose another,” Doris later told Texas Monthly. “You not only believe it can happen to you, you know it’s going to almost.”
Adkisson continued to wrestle as Fritz Von Erich into the ’80s, but he moved increasingly into promotion. He eventually became the owner of World Class Championship Wrestling, which broadcast televised matches from the 6,300-seat Sportatorium in Dallas.
He also began molding his sons into WCCW stars. Kevin Von Erich made his wrestling debut in 1976 and, despite the surname’s unsavory origins, he projected a wholesome, heroic image in his golden shorts and feathered blond hair. So would his brothers David and Kerry, who quickly followed him into the ring.
All three of them had fans, but David was seen as the standout. Known as the “Yellow Rose of Texas,” he issued threats to his rivals with conviction and often a cowboy hat, scraping the edges of the camera frame at 6-foot-8. In 1984, he was on his way to achieving something even his father had not: an NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship belt. But after he arrived in Tokyo for a tour, tragedy struck. David was found dead in his hotel room at the age of 25.
Although initial reports suggested that he had died of a heart attack, the official cause was later ruled to be acute enteritis, an inflammation of the intestines. Other wrestlers have suggested this was a cover story to hide the true nature of David’s demise. “Everybody in wrestling believes that he overdosed,” Ric Flair wrote in his 2004 autobiography, suggesting that the brawler Bruiser Brody “flushed the pills down the toilet before the police arrived.”
Several of the Adkisson siblings struggled publicly with substance abuse. Mike, who began wrestling just months before David’s death, died in 1987 of a sedative overdose. He had been “in poor health and pain continually” after barely surviving a bout of toxic shock syndrome brought on by shoulder surgery, his family told UPI in a statement. They had reported him missing shortly after he posted bail on charges of DUI and drug possession.
Kerry also had run-ins with the law. The “Texas Tornado” had the best wrestling record of the bunch, as the only brother to win the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship (a title he earned at a 1984 tribute match to David). But his success was cut short by a 1986 motorcycle accident. It claimed his right foot and, his family said, sent him into deep despair.
“To Kerry, losing …his foot made him half a man,” Kevin said in an ESPN “30 for 30 Shorts” episode. “He really took it hard. We had to swear an oath that we would not let anyone know.”
On Feb. 18, 1993, Kerry died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on his father’s ranch. He had been indicted on a charge of cocaine possession earlier that week.
These tragedies are dramatized or at least referred to in “The Iron Claw,” but one Adkisson brother is strangely absent. Chris, the youngest of the brothers, also mounted a wrestling career under the Von Erich name. Like Mike, he suffered from unfavorable comparisons to his older siblings from the start. At 5-foot-5 and 175 pounds, he was the smallest Von Erich, and he was limited by asthma and other health problems. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the family ranch in 1991. He was 21.
A curse? That’s up for debate, but the Von Erich saga was undeniably a tragedy — and an even deeper one than portrayed in the film.
If you or someone you know needs help, visit 988lifeline.org or call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Kristin Hunt is a senior staff writer at PhillyVoice and a freelance reporter specializing in history and pop culture. Follow her on X.
