The Complicated True Story Behind The Iron Claw Villain Fritz Von Erich
The Stone Cold Stunner. The People's Elbow. Sweet Chin Music. The Figure Four. 619. There are some moves in the world of professional wrestling that are so well-known they can be identified by non-wrestling fans outside of the squared circle. And now, one of the most compelling submission moves in wrestling history — the Iron Claw — is the title of Sean Durkin's heartbreaking drama about the Von Erich family. During an Iron Claw, the wrestler places all five fingers over the face of their opponent and squeezes as hard as they can into the temples. It's one of the most evocative moves in a wrestler's arsenal because there's no way to "fake" it. The audience can see a bare hand over an agonized face, giving the impression that if the wrestler didn't stop ... they could crush a skull like an empty soda can.
And no one could do it like Fritz Von Erich.
Born Jack Barton Adkisson, Fritz Von Erich was an internationally renowned wrestler and the owner/promoter of the World Class Championship Wrestling territory in Dallas, Texas. He had six sons; Jack Jr., Kevin, David, Kerry, Mike, and Chris. The Von Erich name comes from Fritz's famous gimmick — an "evil German" heel, which was the polite way of saying "a nazi villain." This made him one of the most easily hateable figures in all of professional wrestling, and after the real-life tragedies that befell the Von Erich family, he quickly became the scapegoat — the definitive reason why his son Kevin Von Erich is colloquially known as "The Last of the Von Erichs." But was Fritz Von Erich really the monster that wrestling fans remember him being? I spoke with Holt McCallany who portrayed Fritz in "The Iron Claw," and he explained to me why he chose not to play him like a villain.
The complicated legacy of Fritz Von Erich
In talking with Holt McCallany, I noted that a majority of wrestling fans view Fritz as almost the devil incarnate. Still, when listening to how people who worked in the territories at the time talk about him — and especially, how his son Kevin talks about him — there's a great deal of reverence for him. How does a person even begin to approach playing a character that the world views as an abusive bastard but that his own son still speaks highly about?
"It's really a great question because if you read the so-called 'Wrestling Experts' and you listen to the podcasts, and watch the documentaries, you hear people say a lot of very disparaging things about Fritz Von Erich," McCallany tells me. "That he was controlling, that he exploited family tragedy for commercial gain ... it's almost like an endless litany of offenses." But through his own research, McCallany says he didn't see Fritz as a wholly bad person. Complicated, yes, but not the cartoonish brute he's often painted as.
This decision to play him as such has also been controversial for some viewers who feel "The Iron Claw" might have been too kind to Fritz. "Look, some of the decisions that he made were questionable, there's no doubt about it, but in terms of who is the guy at his essence, I did not see him as a villain at all," McCallany says. "And neither does his son, Kevin Von Erich."
The episode of "Dark Side of the Ring" centered on the Von Erichs echoes the sentiment. There's a nuance and a complexity that fans often struggle to accept. Fritz Von Erich was rumored to use a leather strap as a form of discipline on his sons, which through our 2023 lens sounds barbaric — but punitive, physical punishment was tragically commonplace in the '60s and '70s. Is that a reflection of Fritz, or the toxic culture of masculinity that encouraged this sort of behavior ... or both?
The pride and prejudice of Fritz Von Erich
As the promoter of World Class Championship Wrestling, Fritz had a say in who the top stars were going to be. Call it nepotism if you must, but there was no way that the Von Erich boys weren't going to be the superstars of the promotion. There was no denying, however, that they were the rightful heirs to the throne. During their heyday, Texas Monthly estimated that "on any given sold-out night, of the 3,700 people who'd fill a sold-out Sportatorium, fully 70% were female." The Von Erich boys might as well have been The Beatles if they could do body slams. And Fritz took great pride in their achievements.
"So many things that I read about other wrestlers, of people who knew Fritz, of when he would sit ringside and he would watch Kevin and Kerry and David in the ring and he would say, 'Did you see what Kerry just did right there? Did you see what Kevin just did right there?' He was proud, he was proud of his sons," McCallany says.
But that pride often clouded his judgment. When David Von Erich tragically died in Japan, the official reports (and Kevin Von Erich) claimed it was gastroenteritis. However, according to Ric Flair's biography, "To Be The Man," he believes David had a drug overdose and that the evidence was hidden by wrestler Frank "Bruiser Brody" Goodish upon finding his body. And we can't ask Bruiser Brody about the situation, because he was tragically stabbed to death in Puerto Rico just four years later.
As Texas Monthly confirmed, "Everybody who knew the Von Erichs says they all were good boys but there's always an addendum: They did have their demons, and when it came time to address them, the Von Erichs concentrated on what the world saw outside the curtain."
Fritz Von Erich, family man
Fritz Von Erich is viewed as the ultimate example of a father living vicariously through his sons, rumored to have forced his boys to wrestle whether they wanted to or not. They followed a strict diet and workout regimen to maintain their Adonis-like figures, with Kerry Von Erich becoming such a jacked heartthrob that even Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to be photographed shirtless near him out of fear of looking inadequate. (For the record, Kerry also had a tragic drug problem.) But it's difficult to tell whether this was an overreach of paternal power or the result of "the family business." Kevin Von Erich has continued to speak positively about his father, and we can speculate as much as we'd like about whether or not his testimony is biased or reliable, but ultimately, it's not anyone's place to determine how a son should feel about their dad.
"I think all his boys really looked up to him and admired him and respected him. And I'm grateful to the fabulous young cast — the guys who played my sons and obviously, that includes Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, and Stanley Simons — that really made me feel that," says McCallany. "They understood that was the family dynamic." And that dynamic makes assessing Fritz Von Erich even more complicated, because in the world of wrestling, kayfabe is king. For those unaware, "kayfabe" is the reality in which wrestling storylines exist. It's a blurring of lines between fact and fiction, and why the man the world knows as Hulk Hogan had to go on record during a trial and explain that Hulk Hogan has a 10-inch penis, but Terry Bollea, the real man who plays the character, does not.
Fritz Von Erich lived the gimmick of kayfabe any time he was in public, so he was of course going to be a dastardly hardass in the public eye. How much of that carried into his parenting outside of the spotlight is something none of us will ever know. "As I said in an interview the other day, fatherhood is an imperfect science," McCallany says. "In my own case, I had an absent father and I can tell you honestly that I would've much preferred to have a father like Fritz."
Fritz Von Erich, husband
But Fritz was not a single parent, and his wife Doris is often left out of the conversation. "He was a gentle giant and she was tiny and angelic," wrote the Dallas News upon her passing in 2015. The two married while he was on a football scholarship in college, which ultimately got him kicked off the team as it was against the rules and inspired his pivot toward the world of professional wrestling. They were married for over 40 years but after years of unimaginable tragedy, Doris eventually left Fritz. McCallany tells me that of all the heartbreak in Durkin's script for "The Iron Claw," it was the moment when Doris finally leaves that hit him the hardest. He describes "a very, very beautiful scene with a lovely talented actress named Maura Tierney, who plays my wife in which she kind of indicates to Fritz that she's going to leave him."
The moment didn't make the final cut of the film, but McCallany was overcome by how Fritz must have processed that. I think it caught Fritz by surprise and I just remember feeling as I was playing it, how devastating it must have been for Fritz to lose Doris," he explains. "I understand her perspective on it, but I think it left him bereft, and he died a few years later." Doris left Fritz after Chris Von Erich (a brother not mentioned in "The Iron Claw" film) had died by suicide. They grew even further apart after the suicide of Kerry Von Erich.
Fritz would eventually have a stroke in 1997, and it was discovered his body was filled with cancer. Doris would visit him before he passed, but all accounts point to her having no regrets for leaving him when she did. In "My Life In Wrestling" by Gary Hart, he said that whenever Doris would visit him in his office, she would run her fingers across the photos of her sons on display and fight tears, usually leaving when the emotion became too much. She lived in Hawaii with Kevin and his family on their 27-acre homestead in Kauai until her death in 2015.
Fritz Von Erich, business mogul
Wrestling was the family business, which meant there were also countless, questionable decisions made in favor of keeping the business alive. It has been alleged that David Von Erich expressed feeling ill before his matches in Japan, but that his father demanded he fulfill his bookings, where he would eventually die. It was only a week after his funeral when Fritz and the rest of the Von Erich boys would record a memorial special of World Class Championship Wrestling where it was also announced that Kerry would be replacing David in a title match and that Mike was joining the family business.
"That was an ugly part," Kevin told Texas Monthly in 2005. "Kerry and I did not want to get in the ring. We were mourning David's death. But it was a family business, and Dad was the business manager." Later that year, Vince McMahon came calling about a possible merger with (at the time) WWF, and while details are swirling with the half-truths of most wrestling legends, it's rumored that Fritz turned McMahon down because he knew that this was a man coming in to scoop up the territories and put all of the other promoters out of business. Looking at the juggernaut of WWE as it is today — he was right. Fritz was also convinced that World Class Championship Wrestling would outlast McMahon's promotion. Had David not passed ... it's difficult to tell whether or not he would have been right about that as well.
"Had David not died in Tokyo, I think it would've been a completely different outcome for that whole family," agrees McCallany. "These were the kinds of things that although he tried to remain stoic about them, I think were personally very devastating for Fritz." And yet, he believed in kayfabe until the very end. If Fritz did feel some kind of way about the constant tragedies in his life, he never let anyone see it. "I really believed that with all of the death and drugs and suicide, the rumors and untrue stories were going to become fact," Gary Hart told Texas Monthly.
Can we even break the kayfabe of Fritz Von Erich?
McCallany tells me that another scene that didn't make the final cut of "The Iron Claw" saw Fritz in a hospital chapel as his son Mike fought for his life in a coma, asking God, "Why have you chosen to visit such tragedy on my family? What did my family ever do that we deserve so many hardships?" It's a sensitive side to Fritz that some people believe didn't exist, but one that McCallany felt was behind the curtain.
"I don't think Fritz could figure it out," he says. "I think he had that side of him, and it wasn't necessarily a part of his public persona. He always tried to be strong, and be the rock and the patriarch of the family. But internally, did he have a lot of pain, and I think in certain instances a lot of regret? I think he did."
"To me, he was the greatest man to ever live," Kevin said in a July 2023 interview with PW Insider Elite. "This movie's coming out, and I just can't tolerate what people say [...] the stuff they say about my dad and Kerry just infuriates me," he explained. He even denied the claims that Fritz ever forced the boys to do anything they didn't want to do. "He loved us so much," he said. "They talk about [how] he made us wrestle and it was all about the bottom line. No, never. He didn't even want us to wrestle. I just want people to know my dad was a good, honorable man who I admire. I'd never say anything about him, and I won't tolerate anybody doing it around me, either."
This piece is not a defense of Fritz Von Erich (who has been accused of countless other abuses), nor is it to say that "The Iron Claw" is the definitive portrayal of wrestling's most notorious patriarch. But given the blurred lines of kayfabe, it is an impossibility for any of us to know what has been embellished over the years to support the villainous narrative and what has been watered-down for the psychological survival of those who knew the Von Erichs ... or are a Von Erich. Fritz took pride in being wrestling's greatest bad guy, and our inability to determine fact from fiction has made this reputation his legacy.
"The Iron Claw" is now playing in theaters.