All About the Wrestling Siblings Who Inspired ‘The Iron Claw’

For a long time, the Von Erich family was synonymous with Texas wrestling.

Patriarch Fritz Von Erich led five of his sons — Kevin, David, Kerry, Mike and Chris — into the ring in the Lonestar state, with only one surviving. The brothers competed in their show, World Class Championship Wrestling, which was syndicated worldwide. The Von Erichs (whose real last name is Adkisson) became born-again Christians and often spoke in ministries, but wrestling in itself became almost their religion.

“At first, we went into wrestling because it was fun. But when all the attention hit, we realized just how important this could be, not just for our family, but for other people,” Kevin told Texas Monthly in 2005. “It didn’t become a performance anymore. It wasn’t an act. We became the Von Erichs, we began to think we were everything they represented, and that is what we are now.”

What the Von Erichs represented at their peak was family values, sportsmanship and dedication. What they represent today, as seen in the A24 film The Iron Claw starring Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White, is more tragedy than athleticism. Between 1959 and 1993, five of Fritz’s six sons died suddenly, and the family became known for the “Von Erich curse,” though surviving brother Kevin called the speculation “ridiculous.”

“What happened was just a terrible terrible thing, but no curse,” he said in The Last of the Von Erichs.

Amid the “painful spots,” however, there was a lot of love between the siblings, as Kevin told PEOPLE at the Dallas premiere of The Iron Claw in November, something he’s glad to see come across in the film adaptation of their lives.

So who are the brothers behind the Von Erich wrestling dynasty? Here’s everything to know about Kevin, David, Kerry, Mike and Chris, from their rise in the wrestling world to the tragedies that plagued them and the legacy they left behind.

Fritz and Doris Von Erich were high school sweethearts before starting a family dynasty

Fritz met Doris J. Smith when they each attended Crozier Technical High School, and they married on June 23, 1950, when he was 20 and she was 17. They welcomed their first child, son Jack, on Sept. 21, 1952.

Kevin (played by Efron in The Iron Claw) was born on May 15, 1957, followed by David (played by Harris Dickinson) on July 22, 1958. White stars as Kerry, born Feb. 3, 1960, and Stanley Simons as Mike, whom Fritz and Doris welcomed on March 2, 1964. Their youngest child, Chris, was born on Sept. 30, 1969, and isn’t featured in The Iron Claw.

The eldest Von Erich brother died at age 6 in a freak accident

On March 7, 1959, while Fritz was in Cleveland for a wrestling event, his and Doris’ eldest son, Jack, 6, died in a freak accident. According to Dallas magazine, while walking back to the Von Erichs’ trailer home in Niagara Falls, New York, Jackie ran his hand along a neighbor’s trailer, not knowing a wire underneath the structure was shorted out. The electric shock knocked Jackie unconscious and face down into a puddle of melting snow, where he drowned.

The tragedy changed the way Fritz approached his career.

“I just started blaming the entire wrestling business for the death of my oldest boy,” Fritz told Texas Monthly. “I started to look forward to climbing back into that squared circle and going after one of the guys who I held personally responsible for all my bad luck. I got such a bad reputation for being overly aggressive in the ring that some wrestlers even turned down matches with me.”

Doris said that the experience made her “very protective” of the rest of her sons.

“After you lose the first one, there is that nagging fear you’ll lose another,” she said. “You not only believe it can happen to you, you know it’s going to almost.”

Fritz trained his sons for wrestling when they were young

Fritz created his own weight room in a barn on his Texas ranch, where he’d begin training his sons as soon as they each hit puberty, Texas Monthly reported. Most of Fritz’s sons were high school athletes (playing basketball and football, running track and throwing discus), and would work out with Fritz for more than three hours daily, even during their respective sports seasons. In addition to standard exercises and weight lifting, a friend of Kerry’s told the magazine that “Fritz would tie [his sons] together by their feet, hang them from a beam and have them fight upside down.”

The three oldest Von Erich brothers (Kevin, David and Kerry) each got full athletic scholarships to Texas colleges, Texas Monthly noted, but all opted to wrestle for Fritz instead of pursuing any other career avenues.

While they encouraged each other to follow in Fritz’s footsteps, Kevin — who only went into wrestling after a knee injury ended his college football career — told the magazine that Fritz never actually pressured his sons to become wrestlers himself, but that they simply wanted to be like their dad.

Each of the Von Erich brothers had their own wrestling strengths

The Von Erichs each had their own unique talents and gimmicks in the ring.

Eldest Von Erich brother Kevin’s main trademarks were his acrobatics and always wrestling barefoot.

At a towering 6 feet, seven inches, David rocked cowboy gear and was considered the most likely to be a wrestling icon, according to Texas Monthly, possessing the most technical skill of his brothers. He was slated to beat Ric Flair in a May 1984 National Wrestling Alliance heavyweight championship, but died three months before the match. Kerry took his place to win the belt in front of 40,000 fans watching live at Texas Stadium.

Kerry’s good looks made him a fan favorite, and he was so muscular that Arnold Schwarzenegger reportedly refused to appear next to him shirtless in photos. (Incidentally, White has joked that he didn’t want to stand near Efron during filming for The Iron Claw for the same reason.) Because Kevin wrestled barefoot, Fritz didn’t want the others to cop his trademark, leading Kerry to paint his own feet black with shoe polish in hopes that Fritz (and audiences) might not notice that he too was shoeless in the ring.

Mike bore the closest resemblance to David, and Texas Monthly reported that Fritz handpicked Mike to fill the void David left behind in the family’s wrestling empire.

The brothers began abusing drugs when they were young

Kevin told The Dallas Observer that he and his brothers began injecting themselves with painkillers when they were young so that they could keep working in spite of injuries they’d sustained in and out of the ring.

“We were taking shots of deadener in our knees every Monday night before wrestling, and that would last a few days. It was just a fact of life,” Kevin explained. “If you make athletics your business, it’s a tough business, and you have 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.”

David died of acute enteritis — though his cause of death has been debated

David was the first Von Erich brother to die after Jack’s tragic childhood death. He died in a hotel room in Tokyo, Japan, on Feb. 10, 1984, when he was just 25 years old. His official cause of death was acute enteritis, which the Cleveland Clinic defines as a form of inflammation of the small intestine.

At the time, Fritz told The Dallas Morning News that David had been ill for more than a month before he died.

“Nobody knew what it was. He had a flu-type condition for about six weeks,” Fritz said. “But in our business, if you can walk, you go out there. You’re expected to go out there. People have paid to see you. At least in our family it’s that way.”

He added, “David was in no condition [to wrestle]. I feel very guilty about it.”

However, not everyone in David’s life believed that the condition was what really killed him.

In his memoir Ric Flair: To Be The Man, Flair wrote that many in the wrestling industry believed David died from a drug overdose and that David’s longtime friend, Frank Donald “Bruiser Brody” Goodish, flushed pills down the toilet to hide any evidence.

Fellow wrestler Bill “The Goon” Irwin revealed on the Stories With Brisco and Bradshaw podcast that he was the last person to see David alive in his hotel room, sitting down to call his wife. Irwin believed David over-ate and drank too much on the trip to Japan, leading him to purge some of his food and choke on it. Irwin was with paramedics when they found David’s body and said that when EMTs moved David, some food fell out of his mouth, but that he was already dead and had turned blue.

In the documentary The Triumph and Tragedy of WCCW, Kevin Von Erich said he believed David died from a heart attack.

Kevin told Texas Monthly that David’s death hit him the hardest, as he was too young to really process the death of his older brother Jack, whom he called Jackie.

“I don’t remember being told anything when Jackie died, just that he was in heaven. It’s almost like God protects children from grief. I’m sure I did plenty of playing that day, even though my brother was gone,” he said. “With David, it was like a really low kick, terrible. To this day I’m not over that. Every death after it was just, ‘Oh, this again.’ Losing David — that one kind of burned down the mission, you know?”

Mike never wanted to be a wrestler, but stepped into the ring after David’s death

Mike was more interested in music than wrestling growing up, opting to play guitar after a shoulder injury curbed his athletic endeavors when he was a sophomore in high school. He only took up the sport after David’s death, Texas Monthly reported.

In the summer of 1985, Mike dislocated his shoulder during a match in Israel and required surgery. Mike contracted toxic shock syndrome after the surgery and nearly died with a temperature of 107 degrees, major organ failure and losing 40 pounds.

Those close to Mike said he was never the same physically or psychologically following his illness. He tried to wrestle again but lacked coordination and balance, and once he realized he’d have to stop wrestling, he sunk into a deep depression and began drinking excessively and abusing prescription drugs. He also was prone to rages, publicly fighting Fritz and once getting into a physical altercation at a red light.

On April 12, 1987, Mike was arrested for DUI for a second time, this time while in possession of prescription pills. He was released on bond and two days later, The Dallas Observer reported, went missing. His family found his body on April 17, 1987; he had overdosed on a tranquilizer prescribed to him after his shoulder surgery and toxic shock syndrome.

After Mike’s death, Kerry said in a statement, “I am so glad Mike is with David now. Mike never really liked to be alone.”

Kerry lost his foot — and kept it a secret

In April 1986, Kerry, reportedly wearing only silk track shorts, went for a motorcycle ride and collided with the back of a police cruiser. The accident injured his foot so badly that doctors almost had to amputate it at the time. Kerry got back into the ring too soon after his injury, and when he wrestled on Christmas 1986, he re-injured his foot so badly that doctors ended up amputating it.

Kerry and the Von Erich family kept his amputated foot a secret. He wore a prosthetic foot that gave him a limp and kept his boots on at all times. There was only one match where his prosthetic was revealed: While wrestling Ed “Colonel DeBeers” Wiskowski on Nov. 12, 1988, DeBeers accidentally pulled off Kerry’s boot, exposing his man-made foot to audience members sitting ringside. Kerry quickly exited the ring and stuck his leg under the ring apron to put his boot back on before resuming the match. No videos of the incident ever emerged.

Kerry died by suicide after his health struggles and legal troubles

Kerry’s injuries contributed to his addiction to painkillers, but didn’t stop him from wrestling. He signed with the then-World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) in 1990 as the Texas Tornado, winning the outfit’s Intercontinental Championship belt.

Kevin said that Kerry’s addictions went beyond painkillers, telling Texas Monthly, “Kerry wasn’t addicted to any one drug. He liked drugs. It wasn’t that he liked coke or ice or meth. He just liked that life of parties and drugs.”

Despite becoming a WWE star, Kerry still struggled privately: His wife, Catherine, divorced him in 1991 and took their two daughters with her. In September 1992, Kerry was reportedly arrested for prescription forgery, after which he checked into rehab and was sentenced to 10 years of probation. In January 1993, despite insisting he was sober, Kerry was pulled over and arrested for cocaine possession, Texas Monthly reported.

Despondent at the thought of going to prison, Kerry died by suicide on Feb. 17, 1993, at age 33.

Chris died by suicide after getting injured in the ring

Chris, who isn’t featured in the film The Iron Claw, was the smallest of the Von Erichs at just 5 feet, five inches and 175 pounds. He loved wrestling more than any of his brothers, The Dallas Observer reported, but because he had asthma, his bones were brittle from years of being on prednisone. His family didn’t discourage him from pursuing the sport, but Kevin says they also didn’t pressure him into it.

After Kerry left for the then-WWF, Chris tried his hand at the family business, working out and taking growth hormones in hopes of getting bigger and healthier enough to wrestle. It wasn’t enough, and he broke both of his arms in a tag-team match with Kevin. “It was too bad that it just wasn’t to be for Chris,” Kevin said. “He had heart, though.”

In September 1991, Fritz and Doris found a suicide note in Chris’ room, and after sending Kevin to go look for his brother, Kevin discovered that Chris had died by suicide at age 21.

Kevin only wrestled for financial reasons and was banned from the sport in Texas

After Kerry left for what later became the WWE, Kevin said he began using more and more painkillers to be able to wrestle to provide for his family.

“Money was the only thing I got out of it. But money was enough, because it was money for the family. The family was hurtin,’ ” he told The Dallas Observer. “With the brothers going down, the family needed me. So you just dig down and get it, pull it out.”

Kevin was banned from wrestling in Texas after suffering a bad concussion, and instead of retiring from the sport entirely, he worked overseas in Japan.

“Over there, there are all those kickboxers, and they like to kick you in the ribs and in the head,” he said of his time wrestling abroad. He got kicked in the ear in his very first match in Japan, giving him another “terrible concussion,” which led him to finally quit wrestling for good. “I had headaches, I was throwing up all the time,” he explained, “So the injuries are what made me get out of it.”

Kevin is the last surviving brother of the original Von Erichs

Fritz died of brain cancer in 1997 at age 68 and left his $3.5 million fortune to Kevin, Texas Monthly reported. Doris died from emphysema on Oct. 23, 2015, when she was 82 years old. Kevin said in a statement after her death, “I will always love her, but today she is with my brothers. It’s a good day.”

Kevin has been married to his wife Pamela J. May since 1980, and they’re parents to two daughters (Kristen and Jill) and two sons named Ross and Marshall, both of whom are athletes.

Though he’s coped with a copious amount of grief throughout his life, Kevin doesn’t feel sorry for himself. “I have a good life, and I’m planning on having a lot more,” he told Texas Monthly. “When people say, ‘How do you do it?’ the answer is pretty simple, really. If you don’t have any choice, then it’s easy to deal with. What else are you going to do? Just drop dead and sink into the ground like rain?”

Kevin has also done his part to keep the family legacy alive. He represented the entire Von Erich family as they were collectively inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2009, and saw his brothers’ story come to life on the big screen at the world premiere of The Iron Claw ahead of the film’s release.

In a featurette from the movie, Kevin discussed his hope for what will resonate with audiences. “I hope this movie has a message like, ‘Life is worth it. Don’t quit, don’t give up, don’t lay down — fight for it,'” he said.

There’s a new generation of Von Erich wrestlers

Kerry’s daughter, Lacey Adkisson, is a retired professional wrestler. As Lacey Von Erich, she became a Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling Knockouts Team Champion. She was briefly under contract with WWE in 2007, a move that came as a surprise even to herself.

“Seeing as how everyone in my family died that wrestled, it was a very sore subject in my family. He flew me out so I could check out a show and I cried a lot,” Lacey told USA Today in 2017.

Lacey left WWE after less than a year in part due to scheduling being difficult to manage as a young mom. In 2009, appeared at WrestleMania XXV, where her father and the rest of the original Von Erichs were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

Kevin’s sons Ross and Marshall have also embarked on wrestling careers. Ross told My San Antonio in November 2023 that at first, he saw wrestling as his “duty,” but then grew to love the sport.

“Ross and I both feel like we’re on a mission,” Marshall added. “The beautiful thing about wrestling is that the longer we’re in it, the more we understand it and love it … We’re watching destiny unfold.”

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.