02.03.2007, 01:33
Oh, yes. Wrestling made the Von Erichs famous. It made them rich. It invested them with great expanses of land. It made them household names from the U.S. to Israel to Africa to South America. But if wrestling didn't kill Jack's boys, it sure as hell didn't help them stay alive.
Kevin believes the Von Erich family story would make one hell of a movie. "You put wrestling as the backdrop, but the human story is...It's funny, and it's sad, and it's an emotional roller. I would think it's what a movie producer would be looking for. Why the heck aren't they knocking on my door?" He says this as though forgetting for the moment that it is his story he's retelling, his loss.
He already has the opening scenes of a film sketched out in his head. Before the opening credits roll, there's nothing but absolute darkness; the setting is the moment when nighttime black turns to early-morning dawn. The only you can hear is the sound of duck wings flapping and whistling in the breeze.
Then, a gruff, booming voice explodes in the foreground: Let's get 'em!. In an instant, the whistling of wings and the pitch black gives way to the crash and flash of shotgun blasts.
"There's gunfire all over," Kevin says, his voice rising in excitement. "Then The Von Erich Story pops up. I thought that sounded like a cool opening. The movie would start off with us as little kids -- we had some crazy stories -- and then go on with our lives."
It's odd to hear Adkisson use that phrase -- and then go on with our lives-- if only because his brothers really never had a chance to go on with their lives. They were all dead well before the age of 35, most dyingin their 20s.
The deaths began as accidental tragedies. Jack might have said they were the acts of God, if he truly believed in such things. He became born-again only when his sons began dying. Jack needed to believe the deaths had meaning, that this boys weren't disappearing pointlessly.
Jackie Adkisson, born September 21, 1952, at Baylor University Hospital, was the first to be born -- and the first to die. His death occurred when he was only seven years old, when his father was on his way back from a wrestling match in Cleveland. Jack and Doris were living in Niagara Falls at the time. Their place of residence was a mobile home, a sign of how transient their lives had been while Fritz Von Erich looked for his legend.
A man in the mobile-home park had been rewiring his trailer, and he left a wire exposed that night -- a wire still full of juice. Jackie had been staying at a friend's when, on his way home, he put his hand on the trailer. He was electrocuted -- then fell to the ground unconscious. There, he died in a puddle of melting snow.
Jack blamed himself -- blamed his long trips on the road, the lifestyle of a professional wrestler always looking for a better show in a bigger town. He was convinced that had he been there that night, his son would have lived. He tried to find God, but only found that he, too, wanted to die.
"I can't imagine what it'd be like to lose a baby at that age," says Kevin,was two when his older brother died. "Any radical behavior on my fathers' part would have to be excused after that kind of grief."
Jack, by his own admission, became "pretty mean." He turned into a strict disciplinarian, quick to take the switch to the boys when they misbehaved, broke windows, didn't do their work around the house. Jackie's death nearly killed him until he took the family back to Texas in 1960; it was time to settle down, to give up the nomadic life. He still traveled, but his family now had a proper home in Dallas -- the town where Fritz Von Erich would, finally, become a star.
Jackie's death also changed the way his father approached his career. Fritz Von Erich suddenly became a dangerous wrestler. The man who had lost his first 18 matches -- not all were staged back then, especially for some guy who was just slumming it to pay the rent -- became a nightmare in the squared circle.
"He didn't fear anything. He was just ferocious, and it showed," says Kevin. "He projected it because it was there."
Jack began appearing on a Channel 4 Saturday wrestling show, then at the, a low-rent operation that Jack transformed on the strength of his reputation as a local hero. Fritz was still a young man, in fighting trim and killer shape, and he had learned much from his eight years spent driving from one hellhole to another in search of a few hundred bucks. He founded the WCCW and brought in name wrestlers from all over the country, outstanding favorites such as Verne Gagne, Wladek "Killer" Kowalski, Antonio Rocca, Bruno Sammartino. He then televised their performances from Dallas up to Chicago, Minnesota, New York, and dozens of other Northern and Eastern markets.
Back then, in the early 1960s, wrestling was for adults and still something of a sport, the outcome not always scripted in advance. It had yet to become a show peopled by fat men sporting costumes and freaks who weighed nearly 500. The days of Hulk Hogan making children's movies and Captain Lou appearing in music videos was still a long way off. Ted Turner did yet own World Class Wrestling (WCW).
Yet as much as Jack revered the traditions of wrestling, he helped end the business as well. When his boys began wrestling on Channel 39, young kids began coming up to the Sportatorium. Beer sales turned to soft drinks; the kids wanted autographed pictures of their heroes, wanted to jump in the ring and have the Von Erich boys feel how strong their muscles were.
Almost in an instant, the grown-up world of wrestling became children's play -- and a huge business. Television created thousands of markets, where there had only been hundreds. Promoters no longer cared about making money through ticket sales; they had to put on productions, gaudy shows, in order to attract ratings and advertisers. The new breed of fan needed superheroes and supervillains, Batman and the Joker duking it out in front of the cameras.
When television became big, Kevin says, "wrestling didn't depend on the gate. We got in there and just rocked. We gave it all we had, so that in the mornings after the match, we were sore and felt like we had done our best. So we would get in the ring and break teeth and bones."
The boys began paying the price for their hard work. Kevin started shooting up with painkillers while in his late teens; his knees, ruined by football, used drugs almost non-stop. David and Kerry also began using drugs to numb the paint.
"We were taking shots of deadener in our knees every Monday night before the matches, and that would last a few days," Kevin says. "It was just a fact of life. If you make athletics your business, it's a tough business, and you want to have your body as your vehicle. You have to have it in good working order, and if it doesn't work, you've got to put deadener in there and make it work. We abused our bodies."
Whenever the phone rings early in the morning, Kevin will, in an instant,from a deep sleep and answer the phone. He will, as he says, simply"freak out," so sure someone is calling to deliver the worst of news.
At dawn on February 10, 1984, Kevin received the call that his brother David had died in Japan. The family knew he was sick when he left to wrestle in January, but Jack and Doris never imagined a small flu would evolve so quickly into an intestinal inflammation that would, in a painful instant, take their-year-old son's life.
Just like that, another son was dead -- and part of the business was now gone, the Von Erich who was perhaps the best wrestler in the family. The 6-foot-7 David -- who had cultivated the image of the cowboy, never was without his black hat and leather vest -- he was the son who had come out most like his old man. David, who was at once goofy-looking with mangy red hair and imposing physique, had mastered Fritz's Iron Claw...and did it with a smile. Most thought David would become the Von Erich while his other brothers came into their own. In May of 1984, David was scheduled to beat Ric Flair for the National Wrestling Alliance heavyweight championship. He never got the chance to take the title from Flair; instead, Kerry won the title in front of more than 40,000 at Texas Stadium.
"I'm still not over Dave's death yet," Kevin says, the first signs of dawn peeking through the curtain. "That was the worst one. In 1984, when I got that phone call in the morning..."
He pauses, then looks down at the table. He reaches for a tortilla chip. "All the other deaths were terrible; they were bad, but nothing was like the first one. It was like something in me, like...I don't know."
Kevin looks up and flashes a sad sort of smile. "It hurt to the point where it just couldn't hurt anymore. I didn't shut down or anything. It's not like I lost my ability to love or be soft or enjoy music or art or anything. But somewhere in there just...like...I don't know how to put it. Maybe it was a defense mechanism or something."
David's death was, in one sense, bad for business. But it did allow Mike -- an average-looking kid who didn't have his brothers' rough good looks or, athletic style -- a chance to step up, to fill the void as the third brother in the act. But in 1985, during a match in Israel, he dislocated his shoulder. During surgery to correct the injury, he contracted toxic-shock, which sent his temperature soaring to 107.
Somehow Mike survived -- his parents referred to his recovery as a miracle -- but he struggled for months to regain his strength. His body, once so resilient, rejected the workouts. He was in constant pain -- and galled by his failure. His falling apart became public: He stumbled when in the ring and turned against his family, once attacking his own father. Then, he was arrested in Fort Worth when he got into a fight with another motorist at a stop light.
Addicted to painkillers and tranquilizers, he was arrested for driving while under the influence of drugs on April 12, 1987. He was released on bond, then disappeared two days later.
On April 17, his family found the 23-year-old in a sleeping bag near Lake. He had killed himself with Placidyl, tranquilizers prescribed to him by a Fort Worth doctor who had been treating Mike. Beside the corpse was a note in which Mike said he was going to meet David in a better place. In the end, Mike also wrote that he was "a fuck-up."
At the funeral, Kerry issued a statement. "I am so glad Mike is with David. Mike never really liked to be alone." Not long after Mike died, Kerry left the family business and went under contract to the WWF -- much against the wishes of the family. The Adkissons abhorred the WWF's "style," as Kevin put it, the all-spectacle-no-sport wrestling practiced by Vince McMahon's stable of cartoon characters. Kerry became The Texas Tornado, another silly-ass name. It wasn't good enough just to be a Von Erich.
Kevin, exhausted now by the toll the sport had taken on his family, began to look for a way out. "After Mike had died, we pretty much -- well, I-- had lost my zest for wrestling," he says. "It just wasn't fun. Too many was bad memories."
Of course, they would only get worse.
Kevin believes the Von Erich family story would make one hell of a movie. "You put wrestling as the backdrop, but the human story is...It's funny, and it's sad, and it's an emotional roller. I would think it's what a movie producer would be looking for. Why the heck aren't they knocking on my door?" He says this as though forgetting for the moment that it is his story he's retelling, his loss.
He already has the opening scenes of a film sketched out in his head. Before the opening credits roll, there's nothing but absolute darkness; the setting is the moment when nighttime black turns to early-morning dawn. The only you can hear is the sound of duck wings flapping and whistling in the breeze.
Then, a gruff, booming voice explodes in the foreground: Let's get 'em!. In an instant, the whistling of wings and the pitch black gives way to the crash and flash of shotgun blasts.
"There's gunfire all over," Kevin says, his voice rising in excitement. "Then The Von Erich Story pops up. I thought that sounded like a cool opening. The movie would start off with us as little kids -- we had some crazy stories -- and then go on with our lives."
It's odd to hear Adkisson use that phrase -- and then go on with our lives-- if only because his brothers really never had a chance to go on with their lives. They were all dead well before the age of 35, most dyingin their 20s.
The deaths began as accidental tragedies. Jack might have said they were the acts of God, if he truly believed in such things. He became born-again only when his sons began dying. Jack needed to believe the deaths had meaning, that this boys weren't disappearing pointlessly.
Jackie Adkisson, born September 21, 1952, at Baylor University Hospital, was the first to be born -- and the first to die. His death occurred when he was only seven years old, when his father was on his way back from a wrestling match in Cleveland. Jack and Doris were living in Niagara Falls at the time. Their place of residence was a mobile home, a sign of how transient their lives had been while Fritz Von Erich looked for his legend.
A man in the mobile-home park had been rewiring his trailer, and he left a wire exposed that night -- a wire still full of juice. Jackie had been staying at a friend's when, on his way home, he put his hand on the trailer. He was electrocuted -- then fell to the ground unconscious. There, he died in a puddle of melting snow.
Jack blamed himself -- blamed his long trips on the road, the lifestyle of a professional wrestler always looking for a better show in a bigger town. He was convinced that had he been there that night, his son would have lived. He tried to find God, but only found that he, too, wanted to die.
"I can't imagine what it'd be like to lose a baby at that age," says Kevin,was two when his older brother died. "Any radical behavior on my fathers' part would have to be excused after that kind of grief."
Jack, by his own admission, became "pretty mean." He turned into a strict disciplinarian, quick to take the switch to the boys when they misbehaved, broke windows, didn't do their work around the house. Jackie's death nearly killed him until he took the family back to Texas in 1960; it was time to settle down, to give up the nomadic life. He still traveled, but his family now had a proper home in Dallas -- the town where Fritz Von Erich would, finally, become a star.
Jackie's death also changed the way his father approached his career. Fritz Von Erich suddenly became a dangerous wrestler. The man who had lost his first 18 matches -- not all were staged back then, especially for some guy who was just slumming it to pay the rent -- became a nightmare in the squared circle.
"He didn't fear anything. He was just ferocious, and it showed," says Kevin. "He projected it because it was there."
Jack began appearing on a Channel 4 Saturday wrestling show, then at the, a low-rent operation that Jack transformed on the strength of his reputation as a local hero. Fritz was still a young man, in fighting trim and killer shape, and he had learned much from his eight years spent driving from one hellhole to another in search of a few hundred bucks. He founded the WCCW and brought in name wrestlers from all over the country, outstanding favorites such as Verne Gagne, Wladek "Killer" Kowalski, Antonio Rocca, Bruno Sammartino. He then televised their performances from Dallas up to Chicago, Minnesota, New York, and dozens of other Northern and Eastern markets.
Back then, in the early 1960s, wrestling was for adults and still something of a sport, the outcome not always scripted in advance. It had yet to become a show peopled by fat men sporting costumes and freaks who weighed nearly 500. The days of Hulk Hogan making children's movies and Captain Lou appearing in music videos was still a long way off. Ted Turner did yet own World Class Wrestling (WCW).
Yet as much as Jack revered the traditions of wrestling, he helped end the business as well. When his boys began wrestling on Channel 39, young kids began coming up to the Sportatorium. Beer sales turned to soft drinks; the kids wanted autographed pictures of their heroes, wanted to jump in the ring and have the Von Erich boys feel how strong their muscles were.
Almost in an instant, the grown-up world of wrestling became children's play -- and a huge business. Television created thousands of markets, where there had only been hundreds. Promoters no longer cared about making money through ticket sales; they had to put on productions, gaudy shows, in order to attract ratings and advertisers. The new breed of fan needed superheroes and supervillains, Batman and the Joker duking it out in front of the cameras.
When television became big, Kevin says, "wrestling didn't depend on the gate. We got in there and just rocked. We gave it all we had, so that in the mornings after the match, we were sore and felt like we had done our best. So we would get in the ring and break teeth and bones."
The boys began paying the price for their hard work. Kevin started shooting up with painkillers while in his late teens; his knees, ruined by football, used drugs almost non-stop. David and Kerry also began using drugs to numb the paint.
"We were taking shots of deadener in our knees every Monday night before the matches, and that would last a few days," Kevin says. "It was just a fact of life. If you make athletics your business, it's a tough business, and you want to have your body as your vehicle. You have to have it in good working order, and if it doesn't work, you've got to put deadener in there and make it work. We abused our bodies."
Whenever the phone rings early in the morning, Kevin will, in an instant,from a deep sleep and answer the phone. He will, as he says, simply"freak out," so sure someone is calling to deliver the worst of news.
At dawn on February 10, 1984, Kevin received the call that his brother David had died in Japan. The family knew he was sick when he left to wrestle in January, but Jack and Doris never imagined a small flu would evolve so quickly into an intestinal inflammation that would, in a painful instant, take their-year-old son's life.
Just like that, another son was dead -- and part of the business was now gone, the Von Erich who was perhaps the best wrestler in the family. The 6-foot-7 David -- who had cultivated the image of the cowboy, never was without his black hat and leather vest -- he was the son who had come out most like his old man. David, who was at once goofy-looking with mangy red hair and imposing physique, had mastered Fritz's Iron Claw...and did it with a smile. Most thought David would become the Von Erich while his other brothers came into their own. In May of 1984, David was scheduled to beat Ric Flair for the National Wrestling Alliance heavyweight championship. He never got the chance to take the title from Flair; instead, Kerry won the title in front of more than 40,000 at Texas Stadium.
"I'm still not over Dave's death yet," Kevin says, the first signs of dawn peeking through the curtain. "That was the worst one. In 1984, when I got that phone call in the morning..."
He pauses, then looks down at the table. He reaches for a tortilla chip. "All the other deaths were terrible; they were bad, but nothing was like the first one. It was like something in me, like...I don't know."
Kevin looks up and flashes a sad sort of smile. "It hurt to the point where it just couldn't hurt anymore. I didn't shut down or anything. It's not like I lost my ability to love or be soft or enjoy music or art or anything. But somewhere in there just...like...I don't know how to put it. Maybe it was a defense mechanism or something."
David's death was, in one sense, bad for business. But it did allow Mike -- an average-looking kid who didn't have his brothers' rough good looks or, athletic style -- a chance to step up, to fill the void as the third brother in the act. But in 1985, during a match in Israel, he dislocated his shoulder. During surgery to correct the injury, he contracted toxic-shock, which sent his temperature soaring to 107.
Somehow Mike survived -- his parents referred to his recovery as a miracle -- but he struggled for months to regain his strength. His body, once so resilient, rejected the workouts. He was in constant pain -- and galled by his failure. His falling apart became public: He stumbled when in the ring and turned against his family, once attacking his own father. Then, he was arrested in Fort Worth when he got into a fight with another motorist at a stop light.
Addicted to painkillers and tranquilizers, he was arrested for driving while under the influence of drugs on April 12, 1987. He was released on bond, then disappeared two days later.
On April 17, his family found the 23-year-old in a sleeping bag near Lake. He had killed himself with Placidyl, tranquilizers prescribed to him by a Fort Worth doctor who had been treating Mike. Beside the corpse was a note in which Mike said he was going to meet David in a better place. In the end, Mike also wrote that he was "a fuck-up."
At the funeral, Kerry issued a statement. "I am so glad Mike is with David. Mike never really liked to be alone." Not long after Mike died, Kerry left the family business and went under contract to the WWF -- much against the wishes of the family. The Adkissons abhorred the WWF's "style," as Kevin put it, the all-spectacle-no-sport wrestling practiced by Vince McMahon's stable of cartoon characters. Kerry became The Texas Tornado, another silly-ass name. It wasn't good enough just to be a Von Erich.
Kevin, exhausted now by the toll the sport had taken on his family, began to look for a way out. "After Mike had died, we pretty much -- well, I-- had lost my zest for wrestling," he says. "It just wasn't fun. Too many was bad memories."
Of course, they would only get worse.