411’s A&E Biography: WWE Legends Report: The Curse of The Von Erichs – Part 2

-Source: A&E
-Run Time: 1:26:19

-Plug: Part One

-“The following program contains discussions of substance abuse and suicide. Viewer discretion is advised.”

-We start back at the Ranch and Kevin tells us life throws a lot at you, but he loves getting out in nature with his kids and grandkids. He sees a little of Dave, Kerry, Mike, and Chris in his grandkids. “To me family is everything.”

-Show opening!

-Kevin is looking at the pictures in the house as his dad documented everything. He shows the photos to the grandkids as they seemed enthralled by the stories they are being told. Kevin takes a large photo off the wall above the fireplace and it was from a pizza commercial the boys did together. We cut to the actual commercial and even get outtakes. That’s kind of cool they were able to get this footage. They are three brothers just having fun. Kevin says he won’t say he was ripped off as he had a lot of fun with his brothers.

-Scott Murray was a sports anchor in Dallas and got to cover the family. We are told a young Karl Malone showed up while working out for Dallas and asked to meet The Von Erichs. They have Karl Malone here and we know his wrestling history with WCW. Malone also has a very checkered past and you can google that story. Malone remembers how nice the boys were. We see fans meeting them at a shoe store in Dallas and people having them hold their babies. Ricky Bobby joke can be inserted here!

-Cathy, Kerry’s ex wife, says the boys took the responsibility of the image very seriously. They had to be on all the time for the fans and that led to Kerry relying on drugs more. Chris idolized Mike and Kerry and it hurt Chris when Mike went to wrestle as he was left alone.

-They discuss The Von Erichs being very popular in Israel, so they had a show over there. Mike suffered a shoulder injury in Israel so they flew him home and he had surgery. His wife called Kevin and told him something was wrong. Kevin drove over and MIke had a scary high temperature so he rushed him to the hospital. On the way a cop recognized him and gave him an escort down the median of the highway.

-Sept 1985: We get broadcast news footage of Mike having toxic shock syndrome. The incision of his shoulder got infected. Doris was staring at the thought of losing another child. They were able to get Dr. Bill Sutker, who was the best infectious doctor in the country. We have him as a talking head and he says Mike was one of the sickest patients he has had in his 40 year career. His temperature was as high as 106 degrees. They had to ice him down to get the temp under control. He developed kidney failure. The operators were receiving 100 calls a day from fans and many were calling to donate organs if needed. That’s wild! We see interviews from fans and older ladies mention they look at Mike as their own kid. The show goes on so the boys wrestled and Kerry told the crowd that Mike would come out of this. Dr. Bill says the sense was that if “Mike dies, the whole world is going to hate you.”

-Shoemaker talks about the idea of a curse and how it is impossible to wrap your head around what one family had to go through. Dr. Bill had to tell the family there is a good chance Mike could die. They told the family they did all they could and Mike could pass within the next 20 minutes. The family refused to say goodbye and they all prayed together with a preacher. The Preacher slammed down a Bible and told The Lord, “There’s your word. Deliver.” Manning says 30 seconds later Dr Bill came out and said he wasn’t sure what happened but Mike was turning around for the better.

-We see the interview with a scary looking Mike in the hospital. Man, that is haunting. Dr. Bill thinks him being an athlete was part of the reason he was able to survive. Mike is talking about getting back in the ring and by October was in The Cotton Bowl being hyped as a living miracle.

-Lance Von Erich! Oh man! They were short a Von Erich and Fritz came up with the idea of adding a cousin. Kevin says he hated the idea and we are at a point where WWE is starting to take over. They were on MTV and NBC. Fritz was trying to find band-aids to hold things together. Then Kerry gets in a motorcycle accident and his leg look like an alligator chewed on it. Well, for any Lance fans out there, this was all the space that ordeal was given.

-Brian Adias says everyone drank and smoked weed and if you got pulled over doing something really bad, the cops would let the Von Erichs go. Kerry was on a boat on Lake Dallas and was drinking. He was in shorts, a tank top and flip-flops and hits a cop car from behind on his motorcycle going 50 MPH. He had a compound fracture of his ankle. Brian saw him in the emergency room and the yellow paint from the road was on Kerry’s foot. The foot was the only injury he sustained somehow. Dr. Bill is back again by Kerry’s side in the hospital and they say they saved his foot.

-Mike returns to the ring as the fans were pushing to see him back. Kevin talks about feeling like you owe it to the fans. Fritz’s idea was Mike would know when he was ready, but didn’t push him to come back. Mike was the one pushing to come back. Manning doesn’t think Mike was ever ready and we see him trip over his words cutting a promo.

-Kevin was the one trying to keep things going as Kerry was out and fans weren’t paying to see Mike. He was working 2-3 times a day and if there was no Von Erich on the card the fans felt they deserved their money back. Kerry felt the responsibility to take care of his fans and return as soon as possible. We see Kerry pushing it in the gym to make sure he maintains the image. If he had followed rehab and therapy he would have been fine, but he pushed and came back before the leg was ready. “He went too early and it cost him.”

-Feb. 2, 1987: Kerry makes his return. His ankle wasn’t getting blood and it broke again walking down the steps. The decision was made to amputate the foot and Cathy says that was emotionally hard on Kerry. He didn’t want anyone to know and Dr. Bill says he was fitted with a prosthetic. Cathy says it was not Kerry’s decision, but his dad’s decision because there was an image to uphold. Bruce says Fritz needed Kerry whole and “people aren’t going to see a one legged guy wrestle.” Shots fired at ZACK GOWAN. The doctors give Kerry IV meds for pain and all this led to Kerry using cocaine. They family intervened and Kerry went to rehab, but Fritz pulled him out as he was afraid the press would get hold of it. That crushed Cathy. No kidding! Fritz loved the kids so much, he didn’t want them to suffer so he kept them out of rehab and jail.

-WCCW is trying to tread water and just months later WWF is doing WrestleMania III in front of 93.173 (it’s still real to me) with Hogan/Andre and it breaks the record that Kerry/Flair did in Dallas. Fritz is trying to balance the business and his family.

-Mike felt like he would be a failure if he didn’t become a great Von Erich. Cathy saw a lot of depression in him. Kevin notes Mike was in a bad way and would have fits of rage like getting out of his car attacking a traffic light. “The brain is so complicated with how it dealt with heat.” Dr. Bill isn’t sure Mike ever realized how sick he was and never saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He was taking pharmaceutical drugs and was wrecking cars. Fritz told him he was a grown man and not to comeback with that stuff anymore.

-Kevin says they were starting a new company that would sponsor World Tours, but Mike got caught with marijuana. In his mind he thought he let Kevin down and shamed the family. We see the news story with police searching for Mike after he went missing two days after his arrest. They found a note in his car: “Mom and Dad, I am in a better place and will be watching.” They found him on the other side of the lake dead from an overdose of Placidyls. He took the pills and covered himself with a sleeping bag and that’s how he was found.

-Kevin says Mike was a good guy, but didn’t know Mike was that into the drug scene. “He was too smart to kill himself. That’s not Mike.” Fritz tells the media that Mike was sick and never recovered from toxic shock. He continues that Mike loved people and can’t believe he is gone.

-Doris started to fall apart by this point and it crushed her. For Kerry things just got deeper and darker, but he always pushed through to keep the image of The Von Erich family. We see him doing an interview talking about turning to the Lord and The Von Erichs being strong. We learn that Mike had been paying rent for people he knew and those people actually asked the family if that could still happen. Oh wow!

-After Mike passed, Kristen (Kevin’s daughter) says her dad was coming back after a show. Her and her sister ran outside to meet their dad. Kristen was six and her sister was two. Jill pulled away from Kristen and walked behind the car to get to the door. The instant she got there, Kevin backed up and the car went over her. Kristen screamed and Kevin pulled forward. She remembers the black tire mark on Jill’s nightgown. Kevin breaks down talking about it. Her liver was ruptured and the lining was the only thing keeping it intact. She survived though and Kristen gives credit to the prayers from both her parents. Jill says she remembers bits and pieces. She remembers the hospital visits and her dad never leaving her side in the hospital, even to go get something to eat.

-Shoemaker always looks at Kevin and wonders, “how much can one man handle?” Kevin says he lost 35 lbs that month, but he was so grateful that his kids were healthy. All the grief and stress came up and he started screaming “Let me fight the devil. I hate the devil.” Inside he thought he shouldn’t have said that.

-The next day he was washing his dog at the lake and smelt blood and gun powder. He saw movement on the shoreline and saw black things coming at him. Pam didn’t see it, but he told her to get into the car. Kevin says he had a seizure and when he woke up he was bleeding on his feet. He talks about demons and how it strengthened his relationship with God.

-Shoemaker brings up the family has gotten lucky with Mike not dying from toxic shock, Jill surviving the car and Kerry surviving his motorcycle accident. We see footage of Kerry working out back in the ring after the amputation and he makes his return on Thanksgiving in 1987 against Brian Adias. Hayes isn’t sure how Kerry was able to come back and wrestle. They did the same stuff they always did and he couldn’t tell he was wrestling on half a foot.

-The glory days were over by this time. Fritz was done and sold his shares of WCCW by the end of 1987. The boys helped build the dynasty and man, we get Hogan (from 2024) talking about the family falling from their run. Kevin: “World Class was over as we knew it.”

-The grandkids and kids are roller skating and we flashback to the boys doing the same. Kristen says when she was small, wrestling was taking off and they had a beautiful home and comfortable life. Then as the brothers started dying and business started going down, things changed. Kevin thinks the fans got tired of being sad. Kristen says the water had been shut off and one Christmas their names were on a tree for people to buy them gifts. Kerry’s house was being foreclosed as well. Kevin and his family moved to the guest house on their parents’ property and Chris got pushed back to living with his parents. She thinks that took a toll on Chris. Chris was like a big kid and wanted to be a wrestler like Kerry. He was always protective of his nephews and nieces.

-Ross was born around this time. Kevin was still working in the ring, but “fame doesn’t put food on the table.” Kevin says he could have gone other places, but had injuries and couldn’t get in the ring. He wasn’t going to use the pain pills, so he quit. He sold real estate and insurance and “there was a lot of prayer.” He would look at his wife sleeping and knew she had all the faith he would pull this out even when he didn’t believe he could. Jill says she was oblivious and never noticed anything different. Dinner was on the table every night and they had school the next day. “We never went without and were always taken care of.” Kevin: “they love you and need you. It kept me going.”

-Over to Kerry who has his daughters and Hollie mentions he loved being outside and riding horses. He loved photography and could have done so many other things, but loved wrestling. She loved going to the shows and admits she shouldn’t have been up that late, but it was her special time with her dad. She thinks wrestling ended up becoming more of a job than a love. He made the transition to WWE, where it was more money even if he wanted to be with his family.

-Hogan says the women loved Kerry (my mom was one of those who thought he was a good looking man) and he had a great fan following. He talks about the Tornado Punch and says Kerry was a good worker with unlimited potential. “If he could have walked the straight and narrow he would have been a great Champion for the WWE.” Cathy says it was great for a few months, but something just grabbed him and took him down another hole in his addiction.

-Over to home video of Chris on his hills where a teepee was built. He and Mike built a lot of what was on the hill and it was a sacred place for them. We see Chris taking care of baby rabbits that were born in the teepee. He was secluded a lot and Jill notes that he seemed sad. He was disappointed in life and Kristen always had a sympathy for him. Chris felt he was not like his older brothers. Cathy mentions Chris was sick with asthma and prednisone stunted his growth so he would never be the size of his brothers. Fritz would try to explain that, and told Chris he could try to be a wrestler. He trained and worked out like Kerry, but it didn’t happen for him like it did for Kerry. As he got older he had to take higher doses of prednisone and it changed his mood and focus.

-Hayes says Chris tried really hard to be a wrestler and we see him attack a young Percy Pringle (Paul Bearer) inside a cage match. Chris had brittle bones and they would break easy. He broke his arm and had to start over and he could not deal with it. He lost his passion for life and Kristen says even as a 10-year-old she could see depression and was worried about suicide in the family. That’s rough to think of at that age.

-Sept 12, 1991: Chris goes into the woods like Mike did and took his life. Kevin says he got there just as Chris shot himself. He thought he was choking on pills and sat him up and found the bullet hole where he was bleeding out. That was the fourth of six brothers to be gone.

-Kevin says Doris changed after this one. We have heard that a lot and I just can’t even imagine. Kristen remembers her saying she was going to divorce Fritz and find happiness for herself. Kevin says Doris blamed Fritz due to the pressure he put on the boys and for not being home. Kevin defends his dad and says that wasn’t the case. He says Fritz just let her vent and it should not have been like that. “She hated him.” He says he hates telling this story as the Bible says honor thy mother and father. “I want you to know my dad was a good man, and don’t blame him for that stuff. My mom was weak. God bless her.” Man! I don’t know what to do with that.

-We move back to Kerry in the WWF and things are going well as he is making a lot of money and becomes Intercontinental Champion. Hollie loved seeing him on TV and getting to go to the shows. She talks about Kerry’s love for music and brings up the Elton John song, “Skyline Pigeon,” and starts to break down. She thinks Kerry wanted to be free and shows the notes and postcards she got from her dad over the years. They are her most prized possession. He would often end the notes with “I am fighting to get home to you.” Sigh!

-Kevin says Kerry just wanted to make people laugh. He knew it was painful when Kerry would step with his bad leg. JBL puts over Kerry being an incredible athlete working on basically one leg. Shawn calls it amazing and JBL notes it was crazy. Bruce says Kerry dressed separate to hide the prosthetic. Vince wanted to see it and was shocked that Kerry was moving as well as he did. Vince called him a miracle and wanted to tell the story. Kerry was on board with it, but Fritz said no and Kerry followed his father’s wishes.

-Hogan says they were in Japan and stopped in Hawaii on the way back. They were going diving together and Kerry kept his jeans on to hide the prosthetic. Cathy says he thought it was a sign of weakness and he would take pills to make him feel better. Hayes talks about the rationale addicts tell themselves to justify taking more pills. Lacey Von Erich talks about Kerry doing some dangerous things like going 100 MPH while she was sitting on his lap. Looking back she realized he wasn’t sober. Hollie says the police raided his car and took him to jail and had Lacey and her put in another police car. He would do things like see spiders and asks Hollie if she saw them, and she just pretended to see them. This is rough! Cathy says Kerry threatened to plant drugs on her to make her look like an unfit mom. She knew the police would believe Kerry because he was a Von Erich. She tried to get him back into rehab, but it wasn’t going to happen again, so she left the marriage. It crushed her because her faith but she could not handle adultery. She knows Kerry loved her, but he wanted both lives. WWE wanted him to go to Betty Ford and he did, but it was a struggle. He had a hard time going from Texas Tornado to Kerry at home.

-Bruce says everyone liked Kerry and wanted to help him. It became a problem and WWE let him go due to the substance abuse. Kevin says Kerry was a great guy for 30 of his 32 years and the drugs did things to him. He just wanted to get Kerry to Alaska to go bear hunting but they never made it. Kerry was arrested again and being a Von Erich didn’t help this time as he was going to prison. He was on probation and was busted with cocaine. Kerry asked Cathy to go to lunch with him and she could tell he was on a binge. He wanted her to put the family back together that day. He told her, “today I will walk with my brothers in heaven.” She reminded him of their girls and how they needed him. He responded: “They will be better off without me.” One hour later she got a call that he had taken his life. This is just brutal!

-This time we get the news coverage and the family is in tears including Fritz. We see the helicopter footage of them covering the body on a stretcher. Kevin notes he shot himself in the heart with a 44 Magnum. Cathy says in the family dynamic if one commits suicide it gives permission to others. “If my brother did it, so can I.” Kevin says everyone loved him, but “weak mind. Drugs.”

-Hollie says Kerry had a deep love and a selfless loves. She knows how strange that sounds, but the suicide was the drugs and mental disease. Cathy and her daughters looks through a phot album and it’s a relief seeing them smiling. Lacey says she was in denial for a long time and couldn’t hear his name or smell his cologne. Then she went and became a pro-wrestler and we get Impact footage. She didn’t do it long and says she got the closure she needed. Good for her!

-Fritz developed lung cancer that became brain cancer and he was told he didn’t have long to live. It seems we are skipping over the heart attack angle that ticked off a lot of their loyal viewers.

-We cut back to Hollie and Lacey playing in the yard as they recreate their childhood with their mom watching. They discuss memories of Kerry and memories of being at The Ranch with their cousins. Lacey has a lot of good memories of Fritz. Having them around was like having his kids back. Jill says Fritz was her best friend and she could not spend enough time with him.

-Kristen says she was 17 and Fritz started losing his words and would dig holes for hours for no reason. That’s when he learned about the lung and brain cancer. Fritz passes on Sept. 10, 1997. Kevin was glad as his dad’s suffering was over and Fritz was welcomes home by Jesus.

-Kevin grieved but was okay as he had Ross and Marshall. They wanted to play football and for Kevin it was like he got his brothers back. The kids were all a big reason for Kevin to keep going. They stayed in Texas as long as they could, but Kevin said everything reminded him of his brothers. It became a tight spot and he could see his mom was so sad being there. They decided to move to Hawaii and it gave Doris a place to live out her days. They always talked about moving there as it was on the ocean and a slow pace to life. They were able to start over without the cloud of pity. They lived their twenty years and came back to Texas as Kevins says he got what he needed from Hawaii. He could not be happier to be back in Texas.

–The Iron Claw: I loved the movie! Hollie says her problem was people think it was based on a true story, but her dad’s character and grandad’s character were not the people she knew. Kristen says it was a beautiful movie, but it wasn’t as accurate. Kevin told her that someone may see the movie and look up the family and learn what really got him through was his father. Kevin thanks all the fans for praying and he knows he would not be here without His hand.

-The producer asks Kevin what this interview was like for him. Kevin says he feels safe with the walls he built. He says if there was a weak way he probably would have taken it, but he didn’t find it. “Life is good and I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me as I am happy as can be.”

-We get the wrap up with hopeful music and the talking heads putting over the family and what they meant to each person. The family members talk about their bond and how tragedy brings them closer. Kevin is surrounded by love and values family more than anyone because he has lost it and found it. Kevin says the only thing left is to love your family and God. “I am just so grateful.”

-This was a tremendous piece of business. How much access they had and how much the family shared was incredible. It was touching, sad, heartbreaking, cautionary, and in parts horrific, but sadly, that seems to be life. I know some have strong opinions on Fritz but he was defended by the family here and Kevin defending him while calling his mother weak was the one big thing for me. I am not picking a side because not my place, but I just found that noteworthy. These two episodes are definitely worth watching and I found this to be the best A&E Bio they have done of the ones I have seen. The talking heads they got were very good and all added something. The footage they found and used from the library was top notch and helps when they have projects like this. Everyone will watch and come to their own conclusions about the family and judge what happened to the boys. They were massive stars and being in the public eye comes with the territory. Some handle it better than others and I am happy that Kevin has handled it as it could have been easy to go down a different path.

-Please remember if you are struggling there is help out there. Please call 988 if you need help.

-Thanks for reading!