Crime in Sports - #176 - Footloose & Fancy-Free - The Unfortunateness of Kerry Adkisson AKA "Kerry Von Erich"

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

This week, we look at some good ol' Texas style tragedy! He was royalty in the world of wrestling, along with his father & brothers. They were worshipped by the locals, and idolized by fa...ns, all over the world... For a while. Drugs, arrests, tragedy, a nasty motorcycle accident, and the loss of his brothers were just more than he could handle, as he slipped further down a path of destruction! This one is deep with crazy! Fight off adoring women as you walk to the ring, wrap a large bag of painkillers around your genitals, and always pass in the left lane with Kerry Von Erich!! Check us out, every Tuesday! We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!! Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsportscrimeinsports@gmail.comfacebook.com/Crimeinsportsinstagram.com/smalltownmurder  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Looking for inspiration? Craving something new? When you visit Audible, there are endless ways to ignite your imagination. With over 750,000 titles, including bestsellers, there's a listen for every type of listener. Discover all the best in audiobooks, podcasts, and originals featuring authentic Canadian voices and celebrity talent like Brendan Fraser and Luke Kirby's latest sci-fi adventure, The Downloaded.
Starting point is 00:00:34 A first listen is waiting for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. The Queen of the Courtroom is back. How did I know that? i have crystal ball in my head new cases leave her a long so uh this is not a so this is a period classic judy it's streaming you can say anything it's an all-new season judy justice only on freebie Hello and welcome to Crime and Sports! Yay! Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host.
Starting point is 00:01:29 I am Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today. We are excited. Another wild, crazy edition of Crime and Sports. Excellent. Hope you enjoyed last week's Dennis Rodman edition. Wow. We have the next few weeks just insane stories insane stories by the way stay tuned this is wild
Starting point is 00:01:46 this week we have a wrestler yeah which is always a popular thing on our show and one of my favorite things to talk about it's my favorite to learn about it's so much fun and i've been a kind of a popular wrestler next week you're gonna have a boxer that you've probably never heard of unless you're a boxing fan yeah trust me do not skip that episode because it is insane the story is bonkers it's wild uh but today we have one of the just weirdest twistiest most tragic stories all together just the whole kind of encompassing thing here uh as we talk about this but we'll get into that in a second first have to thank everyone for the reviews this week on apple podcast yeah they do mean the world we don't know They do mean the world.
Starting point is 00:02:27 We don't know why they mean the world, but they do. For some reason, it helps drive you up the charts. It's a weird algorithm that they put together, how their charts work. So, I don't know. It helps drive us up the charts. It helps business. So, if you haven't done it, please get on there. Give us five stars.
Starting point is 00:02:39 It doesn't matter what you say. Say you're following instructions, following directions. That's not really the purpose. You can't fix us with words. So, yeah, it helps on the business end. Also, go to shutupandgivememurder.com. Do that for all of your crime and sports and small-town murder needs. Listen to small-town murder.
Starting point is 00:02:58 If you're not listening to small-town murder, it's instead of making fun of a criminal athlete, we're taking a town apart and making fun of a murder. So it's good times. You need to check that out if you have not yet. Get tickets for all your small town murder live shows, of course, on there.
Starting point is 00:03:11 Crime and Sports, that one live show this year, is sold out, of course. But next year we have, we should tell them where it is. We don't have to tell them when it is. They don't know.
Starting point is 00:03:19 We're going to be in Nashville with Crime and Sports next year. We've booked that for the spring of next year in 2020. The Zanies. The Zanies, so uh we're gonna be we're gonna book a couple more but that's gonna be probably our east coast one and then we're gonna work it from there we're gonna couple it with a small town murder the next day so you can spend a couple days in nashville and hang out with us there that's gonna be a lot of fun do that uh if you want to be a hero of ours
Starting point is 00:03:44 an absolute hero who we're going to talk about at the end of the show, these producers, we gush over them. You have no idea. And we have a special gushing today, as a matter of fact. They have special big news to tell you in the shout-out. So that'll be good for that. But if you want to do that, be one of our people, one of our producers. Very easy to do.
Starting point is 00:03:59 Just go over to patreon.com slash crime and sports or head over to PayPal and use our email address, which is crime and sports at gmail.com or they can get to both of those places where shut up and give me murder.com. You know what? That is right. That's that's enough of that stuff. Let's let's get right into this. Great.
Starting point is 00:04:18 It's a thick story. And you can it's one of those stories where we could spend we could spend two days talking about it. So we're going to cram it into two hours and uh let's do it and this is a story that if if there are people who are a wrestling fan they know this story because it's been told through and through we're going to try to find some stuff maybe that hasn't been kind of told all in order or whatever but it's been told through and through and it's just a wild story because i know the story yet i've i've seen things about it and read about it over and over again because it's very interesting but for a non-wrestling fan for someone who knows nothing about it this is just crazy a giant pile of crazy is about to happen you have no idea here let's talk about kerry von
Starting point is 00:05:02 eric shall we oh the whole family yes you've heard of the von eric family and everybody kind of it just follows von eric family and then tragedy comes after that just follows it von eric tragedy is like that's the that's the mad lib there it's that's what it is no other thing good so it's it's tragic the whole deal here uh we're going to talk about kerry uh kerry gene atkinson is his real name. Their last name isn't even Von Erich? Fuck no, it's Atkinson.
Starting point is 00:05:29 You bastard. Yeah, we'll talk about that. What a shit last name. Well, we'll talk about why. It's a wrestling thing and then their kids ended up taking it and it becomes...
Starting point is 00:05:38 That's the weird thing about these wrestlers is like if a patriarch takes a wrestling name, next thing you know, that's their family's name. Their wife is Mrs. Von Erich, and then the kids are so-and-so Von Erich. It's the weirdest shit in the world.
Starting point is 00:05:52 It's so strange. You just say, but we're that now. Shut up. It's fine. It's so weird. And they would just go along with it. All right, I guess that's fine. That's true.
Starting point is 00:06:00 Now, that would never fly. No one would do that now. But back then, you had to keep up the charade. Well, and they kept going with... That happened with Hulk Hogan, right? All the fucking kids' last names were Hogan. Did they just use B'Leah? I mean, his daughter was a fucking music act with Hogan as her last name.
Starting point is 00:06:20 Yeah, but that's showbiz. That's her stage name. But on all court documents, whenever he sued or does any suing, which happens quite frequently, it's always B'Leah on the court documents. So I assume the family name is just B'Leah and they all go by Hogan publicly. Maybe. They just say, hi, I'm Linda Hogan, but on paperwork. You're Linda B'Leah.
Starting point is 00:06:37 It doesn't matter what your license says. That's a stupid name. So Kerry Jean Atkison. He's born back February 3rd, 1960. So here now we'll talk about a little bit of how they became that Niagara Falls, New York. He's born in and doesn't spend much time there as we'll talk about these guys. This is Texas through and through all Texas all the time. Everything.
Starting point is 00:06:59 Every one of these people's ever said has been said with the slowish drawl of uh they're weird because there's there's different texas they're the texas where it seems like and it's a very small percentage of texas this is not a shot at texas i'll take many shots at texas but this isn't one of them where it seems like while the person's talking that they right before you turn the corner and and and came face to face with them and they started speaking they got a concussion right then just right someone just whacked them with a brick then you turn the corner and then they started talking a little slow with some stops and so i'll tell you like what the fuck are you doing but but not going anywhere thinking but the wheels
Starting point is 00:07:43 are turning and nothing's happening that That's all of these kids. All the Von Erich boys are like that. So we'll talk about Fritz first. He's the patriarch of the family. That's the one that'll put you in the hold, right? Yeah, Fritz. Yeah, he's the iron claw guy there. Now, Fritz, he's born Jack Atkinson.
Starting point is 00:07:57 That's his real name. Yeah, Jack Atkinson. Sounds like you got a stutter. Yeah, Atkinson. Atkinson. So there's a D in there. Yeah, Atkinson and uh sounds like you got a stutter yeah adkisson jack adkisson there's there's a d in there yeah adkisson yeah a-d-k-i-s-s-o-n that's horrible yeah it's not the best name so anyway he comes back he's a football player football player in college i think he played for smu uh ends up a little bit uh catches on with the I believe it was 1952 for a second, the Dallas Texans were in Texas. It was a brief NFL experiment there that then went away, and then they were the Dallas Texans again in, what was it, 1960?
Starting point is 00:08:35 And then they moved to Kansas City, and then you get the Cowboys. Is that how they went? Yeah. Well, the Cowboys and Texans fought it out for a year in the same city, and then they went to Kansas City. Got it. Because that's Lamar Hunt's team down there. So, yeah, because he's an oil guy. Got it.
Starting point is 00:08:47 Yeah, that doesn't come from Kansas City. No, it's very rare. Yeah, it's not there. They're Texas oil people. Yeah. So, anyway, he ended up playing, I think he was, I don't know if he even made the team, but he was at least in the training camp or something for the Dallas Texans back then. Fritz is a big guy.
Starting point is 00:09:04 He's a big son of a bitch jack atkinson we're talking a big you know six five six six six seven kind of guy oh he's a big son of a bitch wide okay long lanky wide his head's huge he just looks like a guy that would rip your arms off and beat you with them just one of that kind of guy just a giant man and then he gets into wrestling a little bit and he decides to take on a persona as you did jack adkisson isn't really all that special no he's not a real handsome guy or anything like that sounds like though you could do something like that but he took a different gimmick he said i'm gonna be a nazi yeah so well back then thoughtful in the early 50s
Starting point is 00:09:43 that was that was the other villains were were Japanese and Nazis because we just got out of World War II. So he'd come in the ring. He changed his name to Fritz von Erich. He had a big robe with an, or a big, you know, cape with an iron cross on the back and shit. He was a fucking Nazi. He's goose stepping around the ring. That was normal back.
Starting point is 00:09:59 There was a bunch of Nazi characters back then. That was. Oh boy. Totally normal. They're from Germany. They just came here. And they're, you know, screw you, America. And that's like the Iron Sheik.
Starting point is 00:10:10 Or, you know, Nikolai Volkov, Ivan Koloff, those guys. It's the same shtick. That's amazing, though. Yeah. And then people just, you know, would boo the shit out of them. And the weird thing is, eventually, somehow, he becomes a good guy. The weird thing is, all the Nazis eventually become good guys. That's the weird...
Starting point is 00:10:27 Baron Von Raschke became a good guy. And even when he was a good guy, he was goose-stepping around the ring. And people are cheering him. That's ridiculous. What is happening, Minneapolis? You're nice. He had the shit together. Because that was up in Minneapolis.
Starting point is 00:10:40 But down here, same thing. He became the hero. I think it's people are around long enough. That's how it works in wrestling. If a bad guy's a bad guy long enough, and he's good, and he evokes emotion, the people want him to be a good guy then. They want to cheer for him. It's weird.
Starting point is 00:10:54 Happened with Roddy Piper. Happened with The Undertaker. It happens with everybody. That's how it works. And then you can go back and forth after that. But you start a guy off as a bad guy, and if he becomes beloved, becomes hated enough he'll become beloved that's fascinating it's a weird thing yeah it's totally strange like that guy's a bastard but boy if he was on my side but he's so much fun to be a dick that's what i mean now he's on my side so it's okay that he's a bastard it's that sort of
Starting point is 00:11:18 thing it's so anyway uh now fritz married uh doris his sweetheart, here on June 23, 1950. And they start this whole thing out. And he starts wrestling. And this is, they're traveling. Oh, yeah. This is back then. Most of these guys lived in a fucking camp. And they would just take their family around because they'd go from small territory to small territory.
Starting point is 00:11:40 We're going to be in Oklahoma for a month. And then they were there. And then we're moving on to Arkansas. Awful. And that's what it was like. Yeah. they were there. And then we're moving on to Arkansas. Awful. And that's what it was like. Yeah. Brutal times back then. I couldn't do that today.
Starting point is 00:11:49 You know what I mean? Oh, my God. That'd be horrible. That'd be disgusting. Yeah. So they have their first son. First of six sons. Oh, they're fucking.
Starting point is 00:11:58 Jesus. She fucked Fritz. They have their first son named Jack Jr. here. So Jr. right away. You know it. Right away. It's a bad start. Yahtzee. Right out of the Jr. here. So Jr. right away. You know it. Right away. It's a bad start. Yahtzee.
Starting point is 00:12:08 Right out of the gate. This is 1952. It starts going all awry. Grace, right there. Right before Kerry's even born. Now, next born is, they don't have any other kids for five years. And then next is Kevin Von Erich, Kevin Atkinson. Now, Kevin will become a big star yeah
Starting point is 00:12:26 wrestler as well kevin's the one that wrestled barefoot oh and uh was dressed like a psychopath basically like he he the crowds loved him and shit he never went further because he was just insane he would he would he's very what they call stiff in the ring where he would just kick the shit out of people you can't do that you can't be kicking people and punching people there's an art to wrestling yeah not just and it's not just real fighting back then yeah the von eric's were all known like that though they were and their dad was like their dad wanted texas wrestling was a different style of wrestling back then texas wrestling for 30 40 years was that's tough bad guy badass wrestling like they would everything else is for sissies you know they would have barbed wire match and you know things like that
Starting point is 00:13:11 like the crazy matches barefoot yeah texas death matches back in the day and shit like that that people wanted blood they want violence the you know guys come in cowboys don't want to see guys pretend to hit each other when they see a punch they want to hear the smack and that's why in texas that's what it would be stop slapping pussy that's what it that's what it was it would look fake otherwise so the way they would do it is guys would come in from other territories and they wouldn't like it so much or they'd you know get right into it whatever but the guys like the von eric boys who grew up in it they always fought like that so they can't go it's hard to go anywhere else and do that because people are like, hey, calm the fuck down, dude. You just punched me in the face.
Starting point is 00:13:50 Hey, bro, this is wrestling. Stop it. Chill. Now, everybody said the Von Erichs were fine to take it, too. You could nail them in the face and they wouldn't flinch or say shit about it. There was no, hey, you're hitting me hard. But they didn't do that. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:14:04 It was weird. They just wanted to so uh kevin's born here and kevin was like the real athletic one all the top rope shit and stuff like that uh that's 1957 1958 man fritz is plowing away it really is jesus christ fritz with your nazi seed banging hard in each of these towns calm down yeah uh he uh uh next is born is dav Von Erich, who might have been the best wrestler of the group here. David's a real tall ginger guy, kind of like his dad a lot in the height department. He's a little lankier than Kevin and then Kerry, but he's a really good wrestler. Ugly as sin. That's the other thing I have to tell you about these guys jack
Starting point is 00:14:45 akison who was not a handsome man didn't didn't didn't birth could play a great seed no he didn't but the thing is when they came out to the ring yeah it was a shriek from the crowd like the beatles came out in 1962 like it was because of their face because the the girls in texas went 1962. But it was because of their face? Because the girls in Texas went batshit for these guys. When you watch some old footage of them, they can't even get to the fucking ring. There's teenage girls hanging.
Starting point is 00:15:17 I'm talking hanging, grabbing them by the hair, kissing them. Wow. I mean, there's security guards peeling fucking teenage girls off these guys. And these are hideous men. And they're shrieking and crying and holding their... It's insane mean you've never seen anything like i've never in wrestling i've never seen anything like it before really nothing like this before they come out they are rock stars there's not even a a hint of anything but the weird thing is and like besides david like kerry and kevin are chiseled they look like fucking statues sure kerry looks like you carved him out of clay basically the problem is his face looks like what's left well his face looks like you picked up the clay bust of him and it looked
Starting point is 00:15:54 great and you know this is a handsome man and then you put it in the back seat of your car and it's a hot day in phoenix it's like august and on the way home you're like i'm just gonna stop in the grocery store for two so i don't want to come back out you run in it takes a little longer you come back out and it's just a little melty and a little warped and a little yeah a little distorted a little you're like ah what happened to the bust it looks a little off now it's close enough yeah it's all right i guess vaguely resembles a man it's sort of him that's how they all look they all look like oh they're from a distance they're handsome and then you get a little closer and you're like no they're not they're all fucking weird looking very strange but uh david probably the weirdest looking of the three main von eric's kevin kerry
Starting point is 00:16:34 and david now uh jack here march 7th 1959 family experiences their first uh bout with tragedy here. Little Jack at the time, who's seven years old. Jack Jr. Jack is there in, I guess they still lived in Niagara Falls. They would go, a couple of the kids are born in Texas and a couple of them are, like Kevin's born in Illinois. David's born in Texas. Jack's born in. Road babies.
Starting point is 00:17:03 Yeah, they're road babies. That's what it is. It's wherever territory they're in. Good Lord. Yeah. She's going around probably in a camper. Yeah. Jack's born in... Road babies. Yeah, they're road babies. That's what it is. It's wherever territory they're in. Good Lord. Yeah, she's going around probably in a camper. Yeah. All pregnant with all these kids. Just cranking them out in a fucking holiday rambler.
Starting point is 00:17:14 Another boy? Great. Fucking great. Take him out of me. I don't care. Pull him out. Tired of this shit. That poor lady, too.
Starting point is 00:17:24 Everyone's a boy everyone she's she's traveling through the hardest parts of america fucking fight in the 50s no shit air conditioning there wasn't even motels back then this was just slept in your car man this if you weren't in a city there was nowhere to stay gross this is a bad place to it was rough cranking out boys she's got to sit for nine months with that baby in there and then going good christ i just hope for once you son of a bitch give me a girl to baby please so apparently it's just a girl never she'll never get a girl spoiler alert six boys and no girls jesus fritz has got dominant man seed. Good God, that's awful. I'm going to impregnate you and it'll all be girls. Or it'll all be boys, you understand?
Starting point is 00:18:10 I'm going to put more sperm in you than you know what to do with. Good Lord. You're going to have to put them into young boys. That's the only way to get rid of that. He calls her the IV. She's on like a slow drip. Yeah, it's a slow boy drip. Hold on.
Starting point is 00:18:23 Doris, wait. I'm going to put some in you for later. I'm going to be gone for two weeks, but I want to get you pregnant with a boy. So, no, it'll last in there. Don't worry. Whenever you ovulate, it'll hang in. It'll go ahead and fertilize it when it happens. Let me just put it in you now.
Starting point is 00:18:38 But hold it tight. Squeeze. You're going to have to squeeze for a couple weeks. Getting the gaggles going. Come on now. So, that's kind of how Jack talks. Is that for real? That's really how he talks now.
Starting point is 00:18:50 Let me tell you something. Oh, no. Here's a little, he's got a deep voice. He's rough. He smokes about four packs a day. Smokes like four packs a day. And that's how he talks. He's a huge Texan.
Starting point is 00:19:01 So charming. Huge, big old Texan. He's a huge Texan. Huge, big old Texan. So Jack, on March 7, 1959, is apparently walking on somewhere near the property that they had in Niagara Falls. And he apparently is shocked by an exposed ground wire of some kind. There's different. I've heard stories that he was struck by lightning.
Starting point is 00:19:20 But that doesn't. Then there's more. The most stories I hear is about a ground wire of some sort that was for a fence. There's some sort of, I don't know, some sort of. The ground wire was energized somehow? I don't know if it was the ground wire. There was some kind of exposed wire. Okay.
Starting point is 00:19:35 I don't know how it happened. One way or another, kid's electrocuted. Either way, kid gets zapped, doesn't die from the zapping. Oh, so not electrocuted. But knocks him out. Uh-huh. Causes him to be unconscious and causes him to fall into a puddle and drown oh my whoa that's six years worse yeah that's worse yeah that's worse that's
Starting point is 00:19:51 certainly yeah i think that's worse yeah drowning in a puddle or being in fact actually electrocuted they had to go find their six-year-old oh god drowned in a puddle it's it zapped him knocked him unconscious fell into a puddle that's like face down in a puddle and drown oh it's like passing out drowning in your own vomit. Exactly. That's what this is. That's the... This is the child equivalent.
Starting point is 00:20:09 That's the six-year-old equivalent. Yeah. It's the child... First grader equivalent to the Jimi Hendrix death. First grade Jimi Hendrix. God, I felt terrible for laughing at that. Rock and roll, Jack! Sorry.
Starting point is 00:20:20 That's awful. I know. It's a six-year-old. Jack, you're the coolest! It happened literally... I know you feel bad. You're like, it happened 60 years ago, so it's fine now. He would have been dead by now.
Starting point is 00:20:29 He might have been dead anyway by now. He would have definitely been dead then. Yeah, you're right. 66? Do you think he's living that long? Yeah, no, he's not going to live that long. Fuck no. He's going to have some sort of tragic ending by now.
Starting point is 00:20:41 I'm sure bad things would have happened. So, Kerry comes along in 1960 in the midst of all this so there's three boys now kerry kevin and uh and kerry kevin and david uh jack is gone yeah so also he was a junior he's lucky he lived that's the thing he's a junior so you think right away maybe there's hope for this family because of the junior thing uh if you're a new listener, we have just an inordinate amount of athletes either name their kids junior or juniors themselves. It's mathematically beyond the point of coincidence at this point. That's the issue.
Starting point is 00:21:15 There's no way that this is just happening. No, this is episode 176. It's been like 300 episodes, our juniors. It's ridiculous. There's so many juniors. Sometimes they are junior, then they name their kid junior. It's ridiculous. There's so many juniors. Sometimes they are juniors and they name their kid junior. They've named their kids
Starting point is 00:21:28 middle name junior. They've named their kids junior junior. Right. Sometimes there's episodes with several juniors. Several juniors. So any kind of
Starting point is 00:21:37 anytime a junior comes up we're like oh boy that's the end of the story here. So there's a lot of stuff here. Just throughout this there's some kind of tidbits from a D magazine article from like 1988 like Dallas magazine. here so there's a lot of stuff here uh just throughout this there's some kind of tidbits from a d magazine article from like 1988 like dallas magazine in 1988 that i just got some
Starting point is 00:21:51 kind of inside stuff interviews that weren't anywhere else so give them credit for that but uh so fritz at this point uh the whole family they go they go back to dallas okay they got their alive kids and they're going they're going back to taking the Okay? They got their alive kids. They're going back to Dallas. Taking the survivors. Yeah, that's it, man. And he buys a 115-acre lot near Lake Dallas. So wrestling's been very good to him. It's been pretty good to him.
Starting point is 00:22:18 And this was, by the way, this was in the middle of nowhere. Okay, so it was worth nothing. This was worth nothing. He brought just a bunch of brush. A bunch of scrub brush and dirt. He traded his dead kid for it. For some dirt. And they were like, alright, that's fine. What about the
Starting point is 00:22:33 laughless body of a six year old? How about that? He was drowned. Does that mean anything to you? That's terrible. We understand. Little Joe, I don't know why this is so bad. Sorry, Little Jack. It's terrible. I think the fact that it happened 60 years ago. Because if it happened in 1989, we would make no jokes about this whatsoever.
Starting point is 00:22:51 But the fact that it happened in black and white. It didn't even happen in color. He got zapped. It all just went white. There was no blue, no red, nothing. And then he fell. It was all black and white. It was a great smoke.
Starting point is 00:23:04 It was weird. That mean when something happens in black and white it's like it never happened it's strange i'm laughing so hard though because you say that is how i saw it that's how everyone saw it everyone saw a little blonde kid with a crew cut and black and white face down in a fucking bottle didn't you you? Black and white striped shirt. Yeah, you all saw the same thing. We all saw it. We're all, you know, everybody's brains work the same. 1959, boom.
Starting point is 00:23:35 Some books and a leather strap. Everything's looking like Lucy's going to walk out of the kitchen any minute. Drowned in black and white. It's the worst way to drown in black and white. So anyway, yeah, Fritz buys this spread and this is it's out there. This is out there, especially in the fifth in the 1961 or something. This was way out there. I mean, Dallas has really become a major metropolitan area, but it was not back then. The outskirts of Dallas were not like big suburbs back then.
Starting point is 00:24:09 It was just nothingness. 151 acres for sale. 115 acres for sale. 115, sorry. Yeah. Kevin, one of the brothers here, he said, quote, we grew up alone, just ourselves. I guess one of the first lessons we learned was that the only people you had to count on was your family because there's literally nobody else around it's like for these kids they're lucky they have each other as brothers because they only really hang out with each other because
Starting point is 00:24:34 they're on a huge the next neighbor's two miles away yeah so and you know it's kind of hard to hang out as kids so they have brothers they all play sports together they're imagined they're fighting beating the shit out of each other. It's got to be a goddamn mess. Michael is born. Little Mike Von Erich. Michael Brett Atkison is born on March 2nd, 1964 in Dallas. And then they also have Chris, another son, in 1969, September 30th, 1969 in Dallas.
Starting point is 00:25:03 So, yeah, Doris is spreading them out, spreading them out here. But September 30th, 1969, he was born. Fritz actually impregnated her in late July, like we said. So that's what happens. Well, I mean, of the previous year. He said, you got to hold it for a while. She held it for a few months and then had it. And then she went ahead and fertilized.
Starting point is 00:25:24 Yeah, she knew. He said, for a few months and then had it. And then she went ahead and fertilized. Yeah. Yeah. She knew. He said, I'd like to have a September baby. And she was like, all right, I'll hold it. She knew. On to this till December 29. All right.
Starting point is 00:25:34 So they lived in the country. They they grew up. I mean, this is like a different kind of life. They grew up in the in the 60s in the country in Texas. And like, you know, this is like you. Most people didn't grow up like this. We'll put it that way on a ranch. It's just a totally different thing here.
Starting point is 00:25:52 It's very much an old school, you know, little house on the prairie or, you know, Bonanza type of situation going on here. They like to do. The kids were all over the place. They just basically go out and run around the property all they're also close in age that's the thing they're close especially the three of them they're all very close they're close in age they do everything together they compete with each other all the time you know that sort of shit uh they'd run around the woods they had eight lab labrador retrievers when they were a kid because there's so much property more than one for each
Starting point is 00:26:21 kid that's what i mean there's so much property uh they than one for each kid. That's what I mean. There's so much property. The mother, Doris, said they drank, the boys all together at their peak here, drank about 32 gallons of milk a week. What? First of all, that's gross. That's disgusting. In the Texas heat? Yeah. Mom, it's hot out. It's 105 out.
Starting point is 00:26:41 Well, drink a gallon of milk, sweetie. All right. I want to get me some thick spit. That's what I'm looking for. None of it was cold. None of it. Oh, my God. 32 gallons a week.
Starting point is 00:26:50 That's a lot. The milkman had to, because back then, I'm sure this was a milkman. Yeah. You actually, on a ranch, you'd probably have to go get it yourself or milk the cows or something. They went through more milk than gas. Yeah. That's bananas.
Starting point is 00:27:02 That's the thing. Yeah. 32 gallons a week. about that that's so much milk so much milk you'd have to just chugging it oh boy at that back then too in the 60s growing boys drink your milk oh that's how it was a very common thing to say just drink your milk with every meal the more milk you drank the better yeah that you would be healthier not more constipated right and full of hormones now you'd be like jesus kid you're gonna lord you're gonna grow tits and never shit again stop drinking milk the fuck is happening but on the
Starting point is 00:27:32 plus side you're gonna be making milk that's amazing uh there's a story about the boys once setting fire to a field because they were trying to kill a mouse. One mouse, they burned an entire field down by accident trying to kill one mouse. They were trying to pen him in with fire somehow. The original meme where they burned the house down because they found a spider. And they did that to a field for a mouse. It was probably 30 acres of shore.
Starting point is 00:27:58 Something just burned to the ground. They probably got a whole bunch of innocent mice, too. You know what I mean? Yeah. Shit like that. They were talking. I'm sure they got. A whole bunch. They killed something yeah i mean yeah shit like that they were talking i'm sure they got a whole bunch they killed something yeah yeah i hope this was the one did we get him i don't know fuck i was running i had smoke in my eyes i don't know we got his whole family and i'm
Starting point is 00:28:15 got all of them and i'm fried too did we get him i don't know every last one of them i think they're extinct they're all extinct no more mice in texas uh they talked about they would play gags like they would cover up speed limit signs like country road speed limit signs with mud hell of a guy you can't see yeah shit like that how about i guess it's 65 oh shit that's a sharp turn yeah it's not great how fast is this turn this reminds me of funny farm it's automatically a whole bunch for this one that's what i feel like there uh now when the boys were bad though they didn't they weren't allowed to run amok that's the thing when fritz would come home from wrestling he would beat the
Starting point is 00:28:57 shit out of these kids boy i mean it was uh ass whooping time yeah we're talking back then there was that corporal punishment was so that was common it's the thing especially back then if you had five boys running around the house you'd be like well you gotta beat him jesus how else you're gonna keep him in line oh boy you gotta be you're doing him a disservice if you don't beat the shit out of them on even if they don't do nothing just let them know an ass kicking could be around any corner like just you meet a man who's the father of five children in 1972 you go jesus boy your hand must be just constantly sore to say he's got no knuckles they're just all
Starting point is 00:29:30 broken to nothing from beating his children and uh and especially in texas yeah that was considered double right you know you i'm gonna beat you because it's 1968 and i'm gonna beat you double hard because we're in texas boy that's how it works everything's bigger even the ass even the ass whoopings uh apparently he had leather straps that he would do this with too he'd beat them with his hands he'd be one with leather straps oh my god uh yeah uh on this article in that d magazine that the person asked the reporter asked fritz quote do you ever think you were too hard on your kids? And he says, absolutely. Hell no. He says, quote, one time, Kerry yelled at me that he shouldn't get a beaten.
Starting point is 00:30:11 So I tore his butt off even harder. Oh, my God. That's what he said in public to a magazine in 1988. What did he say? Behind closed doors. That's what I mean. Oh, boy. To a magazine.
Starting point is 00:30:23 And that made him like, like well he's a good dad right everybody that was like that's a good christian father right there that damn fritz all right that uh he i apparently i mean he also he like i said he beat them tried to keep them in line and all that type of shit but he also would uh you know help them with he always he taught them how to hunt he taught him how to ride motorcycles and do all that sort of shit he was a well-rounded texas father hunting beating all that sort of shit all in one so uh they had a wrestling ring at the house when they were all kids because fritz started to fritz bought into the texas territory in the early 60s so that's when he moved to dallas he bought into the
Starting point is 00:31:00 territory bonafide so yeah he's a he's a stakeholder in this territory so he's not going anywhere so they'd have the ring and he would you know people would train in the ring at the house and shit like that and of course the kids would get in the ring as well as how do you not get in the ring if you're a kid when i was a kid my stepmother's father was a boxing trainer and he had a boxing ring and i fucking went crazy in that goddamn thing not only with boxing shit but i jumped off the top rope i learned how to run the ropes which is not as easy as you would fucking i'm sure it's not you have to lean your weight a certain way once you do it's fucking fun as shit oh i'll bet but yeah all that stuff it's it's it's fun so if you're a kid and if you have three brothers that also want to dick
Starting point is 00:31:36 around you're gonna be in that ring wrestling are boxing ropes the same as no there's four there's four i mean are they made the same shit yeah it's it's all elevator rope yeah most of the time it's cable yeah steel cable like wwe forever used actual rope yeah which they were the only wrestling company on earth that used actual rope everybody else used steel cables they should be uh so much elastic yeah they should not be ropes uh well yeah they've they've broken before the ropes really yeah the steel cables don't break no but the ropes. Really? Yeah. Cables? Still cables don't break. No. But the ropes, WWE, there's been several incidents of broken ropes. There's been incidents of guys in training who were, one dude I remember back years ago here, and he was like a 400-pound guy. The ropes in training, they were training him, he fucking broke and he fell out of the
Starting point is 00:32:17 ring on his fucking head. On himself, yeah. Yeah, this 400-pound guy fell on his head out of the ring. Oh, you can't stop that guy. Because you have to lean all your weight into those ropes. If they break, you're fucking falling out of the ring you can't stop that guy you have to lean all your weight into those ropes if they break you're gonna fucking falling out of the ring oh god so there's been many times in like you know matches where it broke and they couldn't air the match because the rope broke fucking injuries yeah well they had to fix the rope because it broke and
Starting point is 00:32:35 shit like that so uh yeah but he said that uh uh he told fritz encouraged his kids to fight other children other kids other children uh it was just a way he did his business you do something wrong i beat the crap out of you you go fight other boys it's just that's what we do here you better go whip his ass that's what it was he said if anyone was bullying or picking on them at all he wanted him to fight which that's a different thing you teach your kids to fight back but he would teach them to start it to be aggressive yeah uh yeah he said uh uh quote this is what he would tell his kids quote i'll hurt it'll hurt if you get your nose bloodied but your self-respect will never go away so that's a good lesson to teach children i suppose you don't want your kids to be
Starting point is 00:33:16 you know yeah victims victims yeah exactly uh but kevin in this article said that they would all the brothers would go up to other boys their age and politely ask them if they wanted to fight. Just for like, How you doing, young man? Hey, I'm Kevin. How you doing? You want to fight?
Starting point is 00:33:33 They'd be like, Why? I don't even know you. Like, literally. That's the point. And he'd be like, Well, yeah, we just fought. They were like,
Starting point is 00:33:39 No, that's not fun. You're the only psychopath weirdo family that thinks that's fun. You're the only one enjoying that yeah so that's kind of what it was he says quote not because we were picking on them but because we thought that was the natural thing to do he just thought that's how you socialized you walk up and see if someone wants to punch you in the face no that's that's not it it's super weird shit man uh they would of course watch their father wrestle uh dallas had the local territory that he bought into was at the sportatorium which was basically a tin shed uh where they held wrestling
Starting point is 00:34:10 events and rodeos and shit for 100 years and eventually they it like burned and then they rebuilt it and then they uh they eventually tore it down but it looked like nothing it looked like just a shed that you would store hay in or some shit but it's actually inside on camera the place was a really good venue for wrestling like it was uh everything was close the seats are close to the ring it worked aesthetically for some reason it was loud in there they just they lit it right there was something about it that it seemed like a big arena where good shit was happening it was a tin shed with a thousand people in it so it's really weird it's strange shit here uh so they would watch him he said they would he would make the kids work out stuff like that for sports so we gotta you know he's got them now lifting weights lifting weights working out oh yeah carrie yeah we're gonna our guy here carrie
Starting point is 00:35:00 carrie's jacked in the 10th grade really in the 10 10th grade. He's yoked. He's he's he's, you know, got chest. Yeah. You shouldn't have pecs. No, no, no. That's no. That's weird. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:13 You had you knew a kid in 10th grade that had him. And I always I always worried about that. That kid's. Yeah, he's got problems. Yeah, there's it's not just I feel like he's had a heart
Starting point is 00:35:22 attack by now. Yeah, there's a problem at home. Yeah. Yeah, it's not just... I feel like he's had a heart attack by now. Yeah, there's a problem at home. Yeah. Hey, everybody.
Starting point is 00:35:29 Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit more about SimpliSafe. Oh, SimpliSafe. S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E dot com. You know it. On average, a burglary happens once every 23 seconds in the U.S., but only one in five homes have home security. That's probably because most companies make it really difficult. And they do.
Starting point is 00:35:47 They're confusing. We looked into it after we were selling a house and we had somebody break in and we looked into it. And some of these, they want to come over and they want to wire all this stuff. It's thousands of dollars. And then they want an exorbitant amount every month to monitor. It's ridiculous, but not SimpliSafe. This is not including them. They are really good. SimpliSafe
Starting point is 00:36:06 makes it easy on you with no contract, no hidden fees, no fine print. SimpliSafe protects every door, window, and room with 24-7 professional monitoring for just $15 a month. That's really so inexpensive. You're not going to find it that inexpensive.
Starting point is 00:36:21 It's won a ton of awards from CNET to the New York Times Wirecutters. One thing that truly makes SimpliSafe stand out is their video verification technology. When other home security systems are triggered, police assume it's a false alarm. Call goes to the bottom of the list. It takes forever. Not with SimpliSafe. They use video verification technology so they can visually confirm that the break-in is happening, allowing the police to get there three and a half times faster.
Starting point is 00:36:45 So good for you and all of your things. We really love SimpliSafe. I have a SimpliSafe system for my home. Super easy to install. It works fantastic. Honestly, there's no reason not to do this. If you have anything in your house, unless you have an empty house with no children or things or anything
Starting point is 00:37:01 and you don't mind people just hanging out in there that you don't know, you need to get SimpliSafe. There's no reason not to do it. Just visit simplisafe.com slash sportscrime, and you'll get free shipping and a 60-day risk-free trial. You've got nothing to lose here. Go now. Be sure you go to simplisafe.com slash sportscrime
Starting point is 00:37:19 so they know that our show sent you. That's simplisafe.com slash sportscrime. And now back to the show. Now, Kerry gets into discus throwing at a young age. And Fritz is the former record holder around here for the discus throw. Really? So, yeah, he's very excited about that. He builds him a discus ring in the pasture out there so he can practice his discus
Starting point is 00:37:45 and all that kind of shit uh he got carry all these films of discus throwers in the olympics and how they do it and their technique so he can do it like he fritz would really like be you want to do this you're going to do it like this and really train the kids up which i guess is good if you're going to do it yeah but they didn't really they were doing something it was one of those things like he wasn't good no one was going to sit around and be like i don't know i kind of like art he's going to be like get out there and punch somebody in the face damn it what the hell are you doing go throw something go throw something boy yeah how far you can throw it and we will get you a whole pasture for you to throw that absolutely whole whole pasture and carrie is state and junior
Starting point is 00:38:23 national champion as a senior in high school at Discus. Really? Yeah, he's really good. If you see the guy, I mean, he's a, like I said, he's a specimen. I mean, fuck, man. That's pretty smart. What is it, like seven people in the world that throw discus? That's the other thing. If you're an amazing athlete and you decide to do something that's not that, you know, yeah,
Starting point is 00:38:39 it'd be like if you want to be a football player, you're this great athlete, but you're like, I'm only going to work on my long snap. You'd be like, okay, you you're gonna be an amazing long snapper i guess so whatever but yeah he he's doing this but discus isn't like a no one's a pro discus thrower no there's no league for there's no league there's no money in it beyond it's once every four years yeah olympics and you can get a college scholarship for it also that's the other thing so that's what i think they're more interested in and he also played football gary was an all-around athlete and uh he ends up getting a football and a track scholarship to the university of houston so yeah which is a big college that's a big school uh but
Starting point is 00:39:15 we'll talk about that he doesn't last very long in college he only lasts about a year and uh all his other brothers are the same thing uh david to school. I think he went to college to play basketball. David's like 6'6". And Kevin is a football player. I think he was a fullback. And he ends up getting a bunch of concussions and knee injuries and shit. And all these guys feel like they're very concussed, to put it that way. So apparently, all three brothers were very successful here.
Starting point is 00:39:48 All three were all-state athletes at this high school. Really? And their respective sports and shit like that. So, yeah, this was an athletic family, sports family, and the father's an athlete, wrestlers, and everybody knows who he is in Dallas there. And this is the thing, too. Fritz has been around Dallas for so long, everybody
Starting point is 00:40:08 kind of watches the boys grow up. If he does a charity thing or something, the boys are standing right there. They all know, oh, look at them. They look so much bigger now, and this one's getting tall. And so they all watch these kids grow up. So when they go to wrestle later, it's like they're all family already. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, it's like
Starting point is 00:40:24 my nephews are wrestling. That's, I feel like, how everybody thought about it here. So, yeah, they end up going to college. Kevin said about the wrestling and whether they were forced to do it. Because a lot of people said Fritz forced them into wrestling. And that's an open question. I don't think Fritz so much forced them into wrestling. I think he opened the door and stood and held it.
Starting point is 00:40:42 It's an open door. And also, I think he looked at it and said, hmm, I'm not going to last forever. I'm getting up in years. I would be better if my sons took over, you know, the actual wrestling part and keep my name in this. And, you know, they'll be real popular. So I think he wanted them to wrestle, but we don't know if he forced them. Kevin says, quote, Dad never, ever said we had to wrestle or that we even ought to. Now, he says, to be honest, we didn't even know if we'd like wrestling that much.
Starting point is 00:41:09 I mean, wrestling was wrestling was filled with these old out of shape men going from one small town to another looking miserable. That's comedy. Yeah. If someone said comedy is filled with these old out of shape men going from one small town to another looking miserable, you go. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Right. That's that's comedy. That's why I say it's so he just described the b circuit he just described some dude that's been doing comedy for 28 years yeah you know fucking had a pilot deal in 1994 that didn't work out he was on evening at the improv in 1988 and
Starting point is 00:41:42 now he is going around from b roomroom to cruise ship to B-room with a gun with one fucking bullet in the chamber just waiting for the night. Just waiting for that one audience that doesn't laugh. And he's going to paint the fucking back of the stage with his brains. That's what he's talking about, and I feel like that's what's going on here. Kevin also said, quote,
Starting point is 00:42:02 but we all know what was going to happen in the end it was inevitable we were going to go into wrestling because we all wanted to be just like our dad so and that's what happens and it's an easy it's a career path where it has there's no resistance if you're if you're 21 you don't know what to do with yourself and someone goes well you just come here and make a bunch of money right away and everyone will cheer for you like i'll just do that i mean the other career path is like you going to have to go learn a trade or some shit. I mean, we're already here. You guys have been working out for how long?
Starting point is 00:42:29 You guys are looking great. Get the ring. Basically, just did your four-year degree. That's what it is. You're already in. So Kevin begins wrestling in 1976. He breaks in. Kevin, he's the first one.
Starting point is 00:42:42 And from what I understand, he started wrestling a bit when he was still in college and then uh kind of uh decided well i'm getting injured in football and i'm not making any money and i'm making money and not being injured in wrestling so i think i'll just do wrestling which made more sense for him it's you know dead end for him for football if you're getting a bunch of concussions and you're 19 also you can't really do that when you drink that's yeah it's hard to drink and play football that's the other thing also i mean a lot of other things uh david rest starts wrestling in 1977 right after that so uh you know that right away there's two von eric boys in you know in the mid 70s here and so carrie
Starting point is 00:43:20 is still in school at this point university University of Houston. Apparently, he held the Southwest Conference discus record in his year at Houston. Awesome discus thrower. Like, they were talking about him possibly going to the Olympics, like legitimately, not just, you know, wrestling wasn't saying that. That's crazy. Yeah, he was legitimately an Olympic contender for 1980, but we boycotted the 1980 Olympics. Oh, no. And so he would have never got the chance it wouldn't have mattered anyway uh can you imagine oh fuck yeah put all your whole life together yeah for this one fucking event incredible and it's gone it doesn't happen it
Starting point is 00:43:56 doesn't happen based on shit out of your control wild right how crazy is he huh yeah this is the best i got shit in four years this is not gonna be like i'll be doing got. In four years, this is not going to be like this. Hopefully, I'll be doing something else in four years. I'm going to throw this discus for another four years now, waiting for you. Fuck you out of here. This is the most boring game of Frisbee ever. Ever. For my entire life.
Starting point is 00:44:15 Throw it. I go chase it and bring it back. Throw it. Chase it. Bring it back. Now. Fuck you. That's the worst sport on earth.
Starting point is 00:44:24 That is terrible. That and that goddamn shot put that goddamn shot put yeah the javelin those three throwing things at least the disc sails through the air you can look at the shot puts like oh there it goes and there it comes okay and it's down pretty impressive all right then what's the one where they fucking spin around with the like rope thing you know i'm talking about with the weighted thing oh yeah i don't know what that one's called all the throwing ones suck yeah that's what i'm saying yeah they're pretty boring because it's all just measuring distance and it's not like the humans just spinning they're not jumping or flying or spinning circles and throw the shit it's weird got it so uh jack jack his father was the previous record holder that carrie broke by the way oh really jack was thrilled about that broke his
Starting point is 00:45:02 dad's record his dad's record so yeah he's uh it's obviously a genetically uh thing they throw well shit yeah so uh later on they asked carrie if he ever wanted to rebel at anything you know that sort of shit he said you ever wanted to do anything else and rebel and whatever and he said quote this is carrie quote well when i started setting the discus records i wanted to be known as carrie atkinson not just fritz von eric's son but then i felt sort of bad about that so i let people call me carrie von eric that's how that's carrie in a nutshell right there i don't want to be called this but i felt bad if they called me and you know they want to say that so i just let them do it that's him that's not great no you know what i mean he's a nice guy meek he's meek That's not great. No. You know what I mean? He's a nice guy. He's meek.
Starting point is 00:45:45 He's meek. And everybody says this about him. He's like a child. He's sweet. He's nice. He's kind. Won't stand up for himself. He's just sort of in his own world, and he's too easily go with the flow.
Starting point is 00:45:58 Because in this family, it's you go with the flow. You go with the flow. My other two brothers are wrestling, and they're making my dad money. I guess I'll just do that, because I feel kind of bad if I don't. And, you know, like this, I feel sort of bad about, you say what you want your name to be.
Starting point is 00:46:12 But my name is not this. It's this. That's my dad's wrestling name. It's silly. You call me by my real name. Instead, he's just like, I just let him call me it. And Fritz, that's not even his real name. No.
Starting point is 00:46:21 But these boys just went by their real name and then dad's last name. Dad's last name. That's all it is. They're all real first name. Dad's last name. Now, August 14th, 1978 is the first match I can find for Carrie. Might have been something before that, but that's the first one I can find there. Now, 1979, he wanted to train to do the discus in the Olympics.
Starting point is 00:46:43 But like we said, that didn't work because we ended up boycotting the games now he wrestles at first for his dad's company which is at the time big time wrestling it's called which is a terrible name it doesn't sound like the name of a company no big time wrestling and then like a circus act
Starting point is 00:46:59 yeah big time wrestling and they're gonna fly off the trapeze yeah and whoever loses gets eaten by a tiger. All right, come on down. I'd watch. I'd watch that. That's pretty impressive. They turned it into world-class championship wrestling in about 81, I believe, here.
Starting point is 00:47:13 He wins his first belts here, the NWA Texas Tag Team titles with Bruiser Brody here as his partner. Bruiser Brody, Frank Goodish, if you know. There's a good, that Viceland documentary on him is pretty good actually it's a lot of a lot of detail he was killed in puerto rico 1987 he was stabbed by jesus another wrestler who was basically the promoter uh over a you know money beef or whatever guy stabbed him in the shower and then basically they withheld medical help from him we've talked about let him bleed to death in the shower real pieces of shit yeah yeah this is uh go wrestle in third world countries yeah no it's not it's america actually but it's still a little crazy down there and especially was in the 80s a little more lawless there's a great story in that viceland about tony atlas who is this giant just
Starting point is 00:48:00 enormous black dude he was like mr uh mr usa i think at one point just jacked muscles just huge dude and uh he went to the hospital with bruiser brody and he said the doctors were taking it slow like oh we can't get to him we'll get to him in a minute while he was bleeding to death right so he picked a doctor up over his shoulder and took him in there and put him down next to him it's like fix him there he is i'm like that's. You have to be a gigantic, huge individual to think that as an option. I'll just pick him up and bring him there. If you were trying to get a doctor to go over
Starting point is 00:48:33 and he wouldn't do it, would you think, I'll just pick him up and carry him there? That would never cross my mind to do that ever in a million years. It's the first thing he did. Hold his white coat tail with my feet standing still and dragging me on the on the tile his thing was i'll ask him and if he says no i'll pick him up
Starting point is 00:48:48 that's my plan that's the plan so uh march 24th 1980 he goes up to madison square garden and has his first match at madison square garden awesome back then this is when all the territories would exchange talent all the time so you'd see the von eric boys would come up and work for vince mcmahon senior once in a while up in new york and just to come through and they would do that they'd send guys down there and everybody would kind of trade talent and keep everybody fresh type of thing here so uh yeah he comes in and beats jose estrada who uh i think i want to say that was kevin's first match too we beat him but that's a it's a deep cut doesn't matter anyway uh he also wins the world-class American heavyweight title.
Starting point is 00:49:29 This is in 1980 on December 28th, beating Gino Hernandez. There's another guy we've talked about a lot. He died in very, very shady circumstances of a pretty massive cocaine overdose. And people think that was a shady subject as well and there's a lot on him uh so then he continues here wins a lot of belts he teams with bruiser brody they beat uh gino hernandez and a partner here he wins the american heavyweight title from ernie ladd who ernie ladd is a big old nfl player you remember him big giant six foot eleven black dude jesus played for the chiefs i think and then was a wrestler for a long time. Really awesome, awesome
Starting point is 00:50:06 wrestler, and he helped a lot of guys out. He was kind of a mentor to a lot of dudes type of thing here. Yeah, wins the NWA World Tag Team titles. A lot of Tag Team title wins and shit like that. Going through like 81, 82. Teams with Al Madrill
Starting point is 00:50:22 who looked like, I don't even know how to describe him, but he didn't look like a professional wrestler. We'll put it that way. 6'11 must have been hard to be back then. Oh boy. It's hard to be that today. Hard to be 6'4 now. I can't imagine when, shit's bigger now. I can't imagine what it was like to be 6'11 in the 70s? In the 60s
Starting point is 00:50:38 and the 50s coming up. That must have been a nightmare. The cars were so small. The cars, anywhere you went, the seats, the beds, houses, door. The cars were so small. The cars, anywhere you went, the seats, the beds, houses, door frames. Everything was so small. Everything. We go back east, and I hit my head everywhere because shit's old. And it's just all over the place.
Starting point is 00:50:53 Yeah. You're always like, watch your head, watch your head. Every time there's like in the bowels of a venue where the green room is, there's always a concrete ledge I can whack my head on, which is fun. If I was 6'11", it'd be even worse. Oh, fuck. Holy shit. So, yeah, he wins the American Tag Team titles with his brother, Kevin, in 1982, beating
Starting point is 00:51:13 King Kong Bundy and Bugsy McGraw. You know, King Kong Bundy from WWF days. Giant fat man with a bald head. Died recently. Absolutely. He didn't die recently. He was doing stand-up. No kidding?
Starting point is 00:51:24 Yeah. No, he didn't die on stage. No, he didn't die on stage. No, he didn't die on stage, but he was doing stand-up for like the last 15 years. And yeah, sad, fat man. Right. Out of shape man going from town to town looking miserable. Yeah. Bingo.
Starting point is 00:51:37 There he is. One right to the other. It's an easy transition. It is. That's why all these guys now. That's why they're falling right into it. They all go around doing these, you know, I don't know know i don't want to call them shows but they're doing basically storytelling events events yeah kind of like a just on stage talk or whatever and it's just they
Starting point is 00:51:54 fall right into it oftentimes humorous yeah yeah yeah they're sort of hilarious they do them at comedy clubs and they all have mostly unbelievable yeah they all have wild stories and you know a lot of them are entertaining there's guys like mcfoley and the guy doesn't have to wild stories and you know a lot of them are entertaining there's guys like mcfoley and the guy doesn't have to tell a story you know people like that uh now this is uh december 1982 is when a giant feud starts and this is what this blows wrestling up for world class this makes them nationally big uh makes the boys national stars. This is a huge deal. They have a feud with the Fabulous Freebirds.
Starting point is 00:52:30 Do you know who they are? No. Fabulous Freebirds, Terry Gordy, Buddy Roberts, Michael Hayes. And the Von Eriks have a feud with them? They have a feud with them. It's a three-man group. They were really kind of a revolutionary group. They came in in big, giant robe capes that are just confederate flags shit like that yeah down south that would make them heroes if they wanted them to be heroes
Starting point is 00:52:50 confederate flags versus nazis versus nazis yeah so it's like they kind of high five today yeah i was gonna say i think they're the same thing at this point they'd go to wrestle and be like hold on a minute wait a minute here friends what are we arguing about we all want the same thing. Let's all get tiki torches and call it a day. We're all white, aren't we? Everybody, we're all white here. I don't know what the problem is.
Starting point is 00:53:13 So this really blew them up, though. They were friends. The Freebirds came in as good guys. They were friends with the Von Erics. Kerry Von Erick, this is why he's the main center of this. Kerry, at the time, had a world title match with Ric Flair, who was the NWA world champion. They're in a steel cage. Okay.
Starting point is 00:53:30 And this is the regular steel cage, like a fence you'd put at your house. Right. Chain link. Chain link. There you go. So, it's one of those. And it has a door in it that you get in and out of. Like a door in a fence.
Starting point is 00:53:40 Right. Like any other fence. Like at a prison. Like a swing gate. Swing gate. One of those doors. Which are good weight to them. Yeah coping is pretty heavy those bars are thick they're thick that goes over the supports around the side so during the cage match michael hayes
Starting point is 00:53:53 is a special referee and him and carrier are supposed to be buddies yeah so he's michael hayes is arguing with rick flair during the match and it's like rick flair's kind of all beat up from the match it's 20 minutes into the match michael hayes gets pissed off and knocks him out and he's on the ground laying there so uh carrie is like what the fuck and michael hayes is like shut up and fucking pin him i'll fucking count you go ahead and he's trying to throw him on there and carrie's like no he's too good of a guy he's hurt he's going no no i didn't do that i can't do that now literally that's how back then that was a good guy now they'd be like get on him pussy what the fuck he's blowing it what a fucking asshole
Starting point is 00:54:28 I hate this fucking guy boo right that's how it would be but back then it was like oh he's a gentleman who are the guys so he's like no no so Michael Hayes gets all pissed off and he starts pushing Carrie he's like what the fuck I'm trying to fucking help you you're not doing shit blah blah blah and he just you know throws his hands up and walks out of the cage and so
Starting point is 00:54:43 Carrie's like following him with his arms out like dude what's going on i'm just bro hey what's up hey come back and he like goes to follow michael hayes out of the cage and like ducks his head in through the ropes into the cage door and terry gordy michael hayes's partner fucking slams the door on carrie's head bro it's loud yeah it's one of those where uh there's a lot of things in wrestling where certain things you can't fake right you can fake certain shit you can help a guy you can help him fall he knows how to fall but like when they would hit each other with chairs you can't fake you can't fake that there's no way to if you could put your hand up but if you don't then there's no way to fake it's all face that indentation is your head in the chair so when
Starting point is 00:55:22 you're slamming a cage door on someone's head and it's got a sound like that in an arena oh boy you're slamming the fucking cage door on dude's head and back then you think fritz would go take it easy on my boy he'd go you fucking slam that shit make sure everybody hears it kerry can take it he's tough i beat him worse than that as a child don't worry that ain't shit when he was seven i beat him with a cage door for an hour and a half straight that's why his face looks like that that's why he looks a little melty but he's a champion damn it so yeah this set them up as uh this blew this i mean the crowd went they went they loved it no they wanted to kill the free birds okay the von erics were heroes got it and they're supposed to be buddies and this guy just
Starting point is 00:56:02 fucking racked his head in the cage door and he carrie went down and you know went crazy probably had a skull fracture probably did have a skull fracture that's the thing but didn't do anything about it but yeah so the crowd went nuts the freebirds were the most hated people in the world and this sets up for like a year-long feud where i mean it was on fire just money money everywhere they went printing fucking money i mean sold out sold out sold out sold out everywhere all over the country they were going different spots it was they weren't even just staying in texas they were venturing outside a little bit yeah it was pretty crazy uh dave melzer here from the wrestling observer and he's got a lot of stuff in here too
Starting point is 00:56:36 because he's he's the guy who does like the what they call the dirt sheet it's called the wrestling observer it's been since the early 80s where he does like it's like a newspaper it's behind the behind the scenes for the fans that order it it's you know it's the program no no no it's not further it's not like it's mail order it's mail order it was always a mail order thing and it's not like you know oh this is the feud and it's not like their official release it's like this guy's gonna quit this territory and move here this guy got suspended for he tested positive for cocaine on a drug test this is great it's gossip and shit like tmz for wrestling it's exactly what it is it's amazing yeah you have wrestling is so crazy yeah you could just read a wrestling observer and
Starting point is 00:57:14 be like this is the greatest tabloid you don't even have to like wrestling it doesn't matter it's all crazy personal shit it's awesome awesome all this gossip good yeah and you know dudes would like leak shit to him and call him ups because they don't like this guy. That guy's a dick, and he said that, so I'm going to tell on him, and it's fucking hilarious. So good. It's awesome. Meltzer said, quote, there had never been a rivalry like that before in professional wrestling. It was beautifully set up, and it made the Von Erichs national celebrities long before other wrestlers like Hulk Hogan became celebrities.
Starting point is 00:57:44 That's the thing. celebrities long before other wrestlers like hulk hogan became celebrities that's the thing this was going on while hulk hogan was simultaneously catching fire in in minneapolis but this was huge man this was already going this was as big and like rumor has it when vince mcmahon wanted to expand his empire he said uh that he either wanted hulk hogan dusty roads or carrie von eric those were one of his three. And that's the rumor. We don't know if that's true, but it was always said that if Hulk Hogan didn't come,
Starting point is 00:58:10 it was going to be Cary. So he could have been that Hulk Hogan guy. But he doesn't have the charisma of Hulk Hogan. He speaks like he just was concussed five seconds ago. He's just Fritz's son. Yeah, that's the thing. He beats Harley Race in 1983. January 23, 1983, wins the Missouri heavyweight title, beating Harley Race.
Starting point is 00:58:29 This was a big deal. This was like the NWA announcing that to allow him to win that was a big proclamation to all the other territories that this guy is one of our next. He could be a heavyweight champ someday. Because Harley back then was a top guy and he would be nwa champion after this and lose it later on to rick flair at starrcade this year but harley do you know who he is no the most badass guy you'll ever see in your life he just just died that's why just died okay like recently got it toughest like two weeks ago. He had a voice like this, and it was all real. That's how it's not put on.
Starting point is 00:59:07 No, he was a son of a bitch. He was the toughest bastard ever. Everybody in wrestling, everybody talks shit about everybody. It's like comedy. He's the one guy I've never heard anybody say a bad word about ever. It's just like, he's just amazing. He's a really great wrestler, a great guy. Toughest son.
Starting point is 00:59:25 They're all afraid of him, too. Everyone's like, that's the toughest guy in the world. They all said his left hook, he could knock anybody out. He has a famous quote where he says, if I hit somebody with my left hand and they're still standing, I will go behind them to see what is holding them up. That's how he talks. I will go behind them to see what is holding them up. That's how he is. That's all. I will go behind them to see what is holding them up. That's how he is. He's a bad motherfucker.
Starting point is 00:59:47 There's a story from Kayfabe Commentaries there where Sean Oliver, the guy who hosts that, talks about they had Harley Race do this interview that they do. And they were like in a hotel room with him, you know, for hours doing this interview. And Harley just says, you you know can you do this and the guy says before you do anything when when any when that's the opening usually no is the answer to that question he took a beer cap a cap a fucking beer bottle put it between his ring finger and his pinky finger okay which you can't you can barely fold a piece of paper with that and folded the fucking beer cap in half at 70 years old yeah and this was i have to really give all my muscles to thumb and forefinger he said he just went like that like you would like make a cutting motion with your fingers like and he but he did it with those
Starting point is 01:00:34 two fingers and fucking made a clamshell out of it he said the guy was like i've never seen that's the strongest thing i've ever seen literally ever it's like i could hurt you with his weak fingers it's like that's scary shit but yeah so beating him is a big deal in the business it means you've earned a lot of respect if they're going to let you beat harley race it's one of those things and if harley's going to let you win right that's a lot of respect and it gives a if he hey if harley laid down form what the fuck's your problem if you don't want to lose to carry that's one of those things so that's why they do that uh sort of thing uh in this year there's a mall opening or a mall in in a town uh it's the town east mall in mesquite and 15 000 people come to see them make an appearance and wave at the mall in mesquite
Starting point is 01:01:20 texas in mesquite texas wow 15 000 people come people say hi yeah literally for them to come wave they're not even wrestling anybody nobody's they're not gonna fight anybody nothing i'm gonna slut that's it grace oh this is grace the mall opening this is great let's say this is grace right here everything's going well that he's as hot as it could be the territory's hot his family's making money he's making money everybody's happy everybody's alive everything's going wonderful at this point except for jack jr grace well jack jr but that happened in black and white we all forgot about that that's the thing it's a black and white sad memory that we're we're we're fine with here yeah uh yeah so that's that's grace so june 18th 1983 carrie is going to do something very festive
Starting point is 01:02:02 here he's going to get married So he marries a woman here. Catherine Murray is her name. Kathy, she goes by on June 18th, 1983. So he's 23 years old. Young, famous. Just did a mall opening. Peeling girls off of him. He needs armed security to defend him from women.
Starting point is 01:02:24 And he's going to get married right now at 23. So he does that. I'm sure that's going to go very well. He'll never cheat once. Sure, that's going to be fine. So he gets married. They go on their honeymoon down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Very nice.
Starting point is 01:02:40 He's going to take a break from the road because these guys are on the road every night. And especially the Von Erichic boys they are in demand so if even if there's nothing going on in their territory then they're going to go to oklahoma or they're going to go somewhere else they're going to go to another territory and work because they're in demand and their father gets a hefty fee for them in addition to them getting a lot of money so that's how it works but they go down they take a little vacation little honeymoon uh on the way back uh they come back he's at dfw airport in dallas there as we know yeah nobody likes it nobody likes that airport that airport and he's coming back from mexico so yeah they have to go through customs
Starting point is 01:03:15 of course and customs agents find him with uh 18 unmarked tablets in his right front pocket yeah and then they found out he was hiding about 300 assorted pills uh in a plastic bag in tablets in his right front pocket yeah and then they found out he was hiding about 300 assorted pills uh in a plastic bag in the in his crotch oh god so once they took him in with those pills in his pocket they pulled him in to see what else he had and oh here comes a big bag of pill 300 pills that's a lot of pills that's your whole crotch that's like he must have looked like he had a two foot long cock in his pants. It's one of those big gallons that block. Yeah, you got a lot of a lot of pills. You wrap that around your package a couple of times and put where the baggiest jeans
Starting point is 01:03:51 you can. I don't know how you do that. So you got to fill those like Amazon bubble pouches for to get that many. Yeah, that's a lot of pills. That's a shitload of pills. He had it in his balls. In addition to that, he also had 10 grams of weed, over a quarter of weed. So he's got that in his balls.
Starting point is 01:04:09 Six and a half. Also, the pills were Percodan, codeine, downers, shit like that. Painkillers. Painkillers, sleeping shit, because that's the other thing. These guys, they all take something to sleep because they have to be able to get to sleep or they have to be able to sleep on a plane because that's the only sleep they're going to get going to the next city. Boy, do I know.
Starting point is 01:04:28 I got a four-hour flight. I need to sleep for four hours. And so they got to take a pill to do it. And then they need some Coke to wake up because they took a sleeping pill and only got to sleep for four hours. Pills and booze to sleep on the plane. And now we need Coke. Now we need Coke.
Starting point is 01:04:40 And also six and a half grams of undetermined blue and white powder. And also six and a half grams of undetermined blue and white powder. So, yeah, either some pure shit. I don't know if you got some uncut shit down there or what the fuck you did. Mix some of that blue raspberry Kool-Aid with sugar. Put some of that in there. Yeah. It was delicious.
Starting point is 01:04:56 If you put Windex in it, it's better. Sprays it on there. So this whole thing hits the newspapers because it happens at the airport. And this is like, these guys are all American boys. I mean, they talk about constantly how Christian they are. The television station, that's the other thing. The television station, their main station in Dallas that turned into a, they ended up syndicating their show throughout and all this, is a Christian television station. Unbelievable.
Starting point is 01:05:24 So it's all very religious. So this is not. They're about to find out about their their drug use this is not good publicity this is the opposite of what they want the total texas early 80s fucking reagan this is not the time to get busted with a shitload of drugs at the airport uh so uh now kerry goes on tv to try to do damage control what What are you going to say? He said to not believe everything you read in the newspapers. He said, don't believe everything you read in the newspapers. Sometimes you got to wrap things around your balls. I don't know what he said.
Starting point is 01:05:55 It was cold that day. Yeah. I needed insulation. Yeah, exactly. And some people, the funny thing is, like, back then there was people who still thought wrestling was real in 1983. So they were like, I bet it was the Freebirds. Like, literally, people were like, the Freebirds planted it on him.
Starting point is 01:06:10 What the fuck? That's how dumb people are. That's how stupid people are. Back then, they were like, I know it. I knew it, them bastards. Unbelievable. Well, back then, they used to, like, wrestlers would get stabbed back then. That's a good point.
Starting point is 01:06:23 You bastard, doing that to that guy. And he'd be like, whoa, what the fuck? They were crazy. It was in the script, you moron. All these guys carried guns around because they were going out of some town, and they'd go drive away to the next town. Who knows if three carloads of people are going to follow you and try to take you out of your car and kill you. Unbelievable.
Starting point is 01:06:39 Yeah, Jim Cornette has a million stories of the Midnight Express that he was manager of, having to pull guns on people to get them the fuck away from him because they were about to attack them, people trying to run them off the road and shit. That's so great. Yeah, having to fire a.44 into the air to get people to fucking leave him alone. It's craziness. This was for wrestling, everybody. This is a totally different world.
Starting point is 01:07:08 But the thing is, he's in some pretty deep shit yeah this is all these drugs oh this is custom yeah all this thing weird thing happens though it's really funny strange odd because i know this would never happen to me somehow these all these drugs it was a federal thing thing. It ended up being a federal thing, but he was taken to state jail first, obviously, to the police station. Somehow, at the police station, they lost all the drugs. They don't have them anymore. They have no evidence. We have no way to... Zero.
Starting point is 01:07:35 Nothing. They had to drop the charges. Weird, right? Isn't that weird? How is someone whose father's an institution there, a major business, and knows everybody and sponsors things, and has a bunch of off-duty cops working at his venue all the time. Somebody maybe possibly tripped and flushed him. Super weird.
Starting point is 01:07:50 Yeah, they were just looking at him. Oh, they fell in the toilet. I better flush them because that toilet water's dirty. They're no good now. Can't take codeine that's been in the toilet. So, yeah, all the charges had to be dropped. Unbelievable. Miraculously, they lost.
Starting point is 01:08:04 That's like 20 years. That's what I mean. That's a sentence there. Yeah, that the charges had to be dropped. Unbelievable. Miraculously, they lost. That's like 20 years. That's what I mean. That's a sentence there. Yeah, that was federal trafficking. And this guy is 300 pills? It's federal controlled substance trafficking. Yes. You're fucked.
Starting point is 01:08:16 You are fucked. You are wrestling Pablo Escobar at that point. That is a lot of drugs. Even in a first offense, they're going to bang you for five years. Fuck yeah. Back then, especially. That many different drugs, too? They're like, ah, he's clearly a dealer. Clearly, he has. But 300 is hard lot of drugs. Even on a first offense, they're going to bang you for five years. Fuck yeah. Back then, especially. That many different drugs, too? They're like, oh, he's clearly a dealer.
Starting point is 01:08:27 Clearly he is. But 300 is hard to go on. I mean, as a wrestler, 300 probably is personal use. That's the thing. Back then, everything they would bust these guys for, they would charge them with intent to distribute. But that was all for personal use. They were taking insane amounts of this shit.
Starting point is 01:08:41 He only had a quarter a week. That's what I mean. That was his chill. It probably was personal shit. That's hysterical. I mean, he might have got a couple extra pills for his bunny or something, but I think it's all probably for himself. Those guys took handfuls, bro.
Starting point is 01:08:56 Sure. I'm talking they take 40 Vicodin in a day. Shit like that. Yeah. Raven, the wrestler, has stories about he almost died when he went to detox because he was on so much they were like wow if you live through the detox that'll be amazing because he was taking like 150 percocets a day oh god that's so much yeah he was i've taken eight vicodin in a day and was so sick i bet i had the worst stomach where you were probably so bad
Starting point is 01:09:20 i i do not like that stuff that's so i can't believe that people get... I mean, I get it. I can believe it, but I just can't believe it. It's gross. You know what I mean? Yeah. To get to that point, how do you get past the stomachache? I don't know. How do you get past your body going, no?
Starting point is 01:09:34 Maybe if you do it for like a month straight like that, you get over that and you go, this just feels good. It doesn't seem worth it to me. I don't know. I mean, either. I can't do it. You know my choices are very slim. I can't do that. I'd rather be drunk very slim i can't do that i'd rather be drunk
Starting point is 01:09:46 as fucking puke yeah because that's a different sick too yeah i'd rather have the alcohol sick than that that dope sick they're both fucked up they're both equally bad to me but they're they're they're different you're right that's a different do that dope sick different fucking thing that's good jimmy i'm glad that you don't want to be addicted to heroin or heroin-related products. Good for you. So that all happens. It doesn't seem to affect business very much because right away, July 4th, 1983, this is a big, giant show.
Starting point is 01:10:17 Kevin, David, and Kerry Von Erich, they beat Buddy Roberts, Terry Gordy, Michael Hayes, the Freebirds to win the six-man titles titles and everybody cheers and it's great and yeah everybody forgot that that uh carrie had a ball full of ball bag full of pills nobody gave a shit remember that yeah that's that so february 84 uh david von eric goes to japan and uh his mother said uh that he that david told her that he didn't feel like going on that tour. And the father, I guess he was talking to Fritz. And he said, Dad, when I get there, I'll be okay. And Fritz said that he told David, that's the way it is. You've got a contract.
Starting point is 01:10:57 The people over there, they bought tickets to see Mon Eric. You've got to go over there and represent. And he said, yeah, yeah, I'm going, I'm going. He got over there. He went out to the steakhouse, the Ribera Steakhouse. It's where all if on Eric, you got to go over there and represent. And he said, yeah, yeah, I'm going. I'm going. He got over there. He went out to the steakhouse. The Rivera Steakhouse is like where all the wrestlers go. It's a very famous wrestling steakhouse in Japan here in Tokyo. And they go there, drink a whole bunch and all that sort of shit.
Starting point is 01:11:17 And they go back to the hotel. And the next morning, he's not downstairs for the bus. And it turns out he's dead in his room. David is. Gary's brother. Oh, my God out he's dead in his room. David is. Gary's brother. Oh, my God. He's dead in his room upstairs. They bust in.
Starting point is 01:11:29 They find him dead. And now there is a lot of different things about what happened here. We don't know how he died, honestly. The autopsy says enteritis, which is an intestinal ailment where your intestines swell and it's a thing like that and they burst eventually. Ew. But that's what the autopsy says. But the autopsy was done over there and over there, the wrestling is even more corruptly
Starting point is 01:11:57 powerful in their thing. So it's a... And Fritz... Who knows? If he does... There's half the people, all the world-class people who like close to the family are like, it's enteritis. Center, right? Look at the goddamn autopsy.
Starting point is 01:12:10 And everybody else is like, oh, he is fucking total OD. Total OD. Bruiser Brody came in and flushed his shit down the toilet before the cops got there. It's 100%. Yeah, this is a total cover up. It's absolutely drug overdose. That's terrible. So we don't know for sure.
Starting point is 01:12:24 The Von Eriks will insist till the end that it was enteritis. And we don't know for sure the von erics will insist till the end that it was enteritis and we don't know it might have been it might have been it seems how many wrestlers have died from enteritis and how many have died from drug overdoses in hotels it's a good point so the odds are just based on that i'm gonna go with probably took a few too many pills and he was drinking like a fish the night before at the steakhouse they said and probably came home took a couple extra things to sleep yeah a little too many pills and he was drinking like a fish the night before at the steakhouse, they said. And probably came home, took a couple extra things to sleep. A little too many and his heart stopped. What we do know for sure is that 33.3% of Von Erich boys are dead at this point.
Starting point is 01:12:54 They're there. Well, yeah. At this point in the story. Two of six. Yeah. You can cross them off if you have a... You know what? Start out, put up little Von Eric boy heads and then cross them off as
Starting point is 01:13:05 they go the black and white one and then the one with the intestines around and then the ginger one i told you about now he's crossed off uh so yeah apparently though uh the the there are wrestlers there who said that brody absolutely flushed placid dills down the toilet and that's what it was and uh there's no doubt about it and other people say the official release is that it was uh you know inflamed intestine and all that shit so nobody nobody really fucking believes yeah then they had they came out with different stories too where they would say oh he might have had a it was a heart attack after a stroke they said that he got they said that he got kicked in the stomach in a match and and that's what caused the intestinal inflammation.
Starting point is 01:13:46 So they would be like, oh, man, that's how it happens, man. You could just get kicked in a match, and then you just die, man. It could just happen. Good Lord. And they use that as how dangerous wrestling is and how real it is. Who was the dude that kicked him? How bad does he feel? It never happened, the kick.
Starting point is 01:13:59 We don't know. That never happened. They get kicked in the stomach all the time, these guys. They're not going to fucking die from enteritis. How many wrestlers have died from this? That's all I have to say. I mean, it's possible, like I said, but who knows? We have no goddamn idea here.
Starting point is 01:14:14 So, you know, they even tried to say, well, maybe he was eating sushi and got food poisoning. Like, people were trying to do whatever. But anyway, they have a big funeral open to the public, as Fritz was wanting to do. 3,500 people show up. My God. Which is a shitload. It is the huge, huge thing here. They made a song about him, and they released it.
Starting point is 01:14:39 There was some country guy who wrote a song and put it on the radio. All this thing. Now, this obviously causes a ripple in the business david was a very prominent guy possibly going to be an nwa champion in the next couple years he was on that list and we don't know if he was but he was on the list of maybe 10 guys to talk about and uh now the von erics are are a brother short they have bookings for long time for three boys for six man tags and shit like that they got only two guys so mike hop in the fucking ring let's go buddy i mean they had
Starting point is 01:15:12 broke him in a little bit before that but now they're like no no you gotta be you gotta be in the main event chief and mike is a smaller than them skinnier than them gingerier than them oh boy mike does not look like a wrestler when you look at mike you go oh god he looks like he's gonna get hurt he's like this pale ginger with this bowl cut howdy doody he's skinny and shit yeah he looks like if bob backlund didn't work out that's a good wrestling deep cut for you that's what he looks like if bob backlund just stop working out and let himself go he'd just be skinny like this and just he's not bob backlund only did cardio that's it they pretty much did but still uh now they they tried to sell him to everyone as like an athletic phenom because they had to because he was obviously you could look at him
Starting point is 01:15:58 and go what the fuck happened there right you know like the genes aren't the same so they had to act like oh no he's actually the best athlete of all of them. He doesn't look it, but he's actually the best. He's a sleeper. Oh, he's a sleeper. They said, oh, he's the best. They said that he was the best amateur wrestler of all of them. He's the best all-around athlete.
Starting point is 01:16:16 But in reality, he was like, they even said at one point that he broke Kevin's track records that he had and all this type of shit. But first of all, Kevin didn't have any track records. That was bullshit. And Mike never competed in anything beyond junior varsity. He did JV track, JV football, and didn't do shit. Realized he had no athletics and quit. That was it. Yeah, he wasn't a great athlete.
Starting point is 01:16:41 Kerry said, quote, but I think he always felt a lot of pressure a lot more pressure on him being a fan in a family of overachievers uh he said here he was with three older brothers who were never happy unless they did their best mike was thrown into that life in an awful hurry and it's true uh now they have a big memorial thing at texas stadium a big memorial david von eric memorial show and, you know, they show up, 45,000 people show up at Texas Stadium for the show, which is bonkers for this back then. That's a huge crowd
Starting point is 01:17:12 to mourn David Von Erich and to watch Kerry go for the title, the NWA title against Ric Flair. That's awesome. So it's pretty cool. Anyway, after a decent little match here, Kerry, I believe it's a small package he rolls him up with,
Starting point is 01:17:24 if I remember the match correctly, and wins the title. Kerry wins the NWA title, which back then, there was a WWF title, there was the AWA title, and there was the NWA title. Those were the three biggies. And the NWA might have been the biggest still at that time. Yeah, in the wrestling business especially, most respected. So he wins this title. The crowd goes, apoplectic would be too
Starting point is 01:17:45 calm of a word they go nuts i saw girls heads explode from their shoulders teenage girls they couldn't even handle it yeah they were so excited and this was rick flair not like later rick flair he was like saggy this is hair oh god he was gleaming white and tan and this is like you know 80s playboy rick it was a totally different rick flair here uh now carrie ends up losing the belt 18 days later back to rick flair in japan oh they do it under the radar in japan so the whole so the texas doesn't see him lose type of shit uh one of those but yeah they just did it as a a favor to the von eric's gave him the belt because there's 45,000 people there to see that. Because that made a lot of money.
Starting point is 01:18:26 Yeah, they give it right back. No big deal. And Flair doesn't care. He doesn't give a shit. So September 19th. He probably fucked all 45,000. That's what I mean. Flair was like, I'll take the runoff.
Starting point is 01:18:35 Right. And then he just, I don't care. There's going to be Von Eric runoff. I'll be there. God damn it. There's a couple of them left. So September 19th, 1984, Kerry and Kathy have a daughter named Holly. So they have a daughter.
Starting point is 01:18:48 On October 29th of that year, 84, he wins the world-class heavyweight title from Gino Hernandez. There, he wins the six-man title again, this time with Kevin and Mike. Now, so see, they threw Mike right in it. Beats Chris Adams, who we know very well from our, I think, episode 40, 41, something like that. Gino Hernandez, who we keep talking about. And Jake Roberts, too. Oh, the snake. Old Jake the Snake in there as well.
Starting point is 01:19:13 Product of rape. Oh, yeah. Product of very disgusting things. Holy hell. And then he beats also, wins the American tag titles with his brother Kevin in 1985, beating Chris Adams and Gino Hernandez. So they went back and forth with all that. Sometime in 1985, Kerry is arrested for a failure to pass safely on the road.
Starting point is 01:19:35 Some kind of weird thing, and he gets arrested for it. Some sort of weird traffic incident. Weaving in and out or some shit. Some kind of reckless something, but he gets arrested for it because he's actually got it. Actually arrested. It's an actual misdemeanor with a court date arrest so it's an actual criminal charge on a traffic charge got it because i found that somewhere now september 1985 uh we don't know how it happened there's a bunch of different rumors they they they did a tour of
Starting point is 01:19:58 israel and the mats were hard they used a lot of times old time wrestling promotions would use boxing rings which are much harder. Sure. They're fucking hard because you're not supposed to fall on them all the time. And so somehow Mike hurt his shoulder. And they said it was an old injury, too. He fell in track one time. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:20:16 He tripped over the hurdles one time and hurt his shoulder, they said, too. That is like the real story. JV. Yeah. But they say that I guess he re-injured it and he has to have a surgery he has a surgery and he goes into toxic shock from the shoulder surgery oh my god young mike right they left the tampon in they left it right in him yeah for way too long they couldn't find it the doctor was like where oh no it'll come out eventually and sewed him back up again i was like sponge and
Starting point is 01:20:42 then i was like i don't have one but but I have this. I have this. Good enough. That'll work. Good enough. So we could just leave it in there? It swells up. All right, cool. They say leave it for a couple hours. It's a fine sponge, I guess.
Starting point is 01:20:55 So he has toxic shock and almost dies. Wow. His fever goes up to 106 degrees. Oh, my God. That's how bad of a fever he has. So basically gave him brain damage from this fever it'll cook you oh and it was for a while he was in a coma he was in a coma he had this fever it was cooking him man cooking him that'll make you deaf they came
Starting point is 01:21:14 out they gave him last rites and the whole deal or whatever the christian equivalent is that uh they told him he's not going to live through the night the whole deal somehow it's funny because when you watch like anything on it if you see kevin an interview with kevin he'll be like we all prayed and we said please god let mike come out of this and then sure enough he did and it was god it's god it's also the fact that he was in an amazing shape and 20 years old which is like these things when when doctors this happens with athletes all the time they break their necks and they're never going to walk again because a normal person that injury you're not going to walk again but a person who's in incredible superman shape and is 24 years old and has great athletic genetics sometimes they bounce back easier their
Starting point is 01:21:53 bodies are more resilient yeah so it's not a shock or it's not an act of god probably or it's just an act of he had really good cardio and had his heart in good shape and his organs were in good shape he's been working every night entire fucking life yeah or who knows not even that old yet or he was touched by the hand of god who knows which one either or i'm gonna say no based on what happens later i'm gonna say i don't i don't think god would have done through all that work to just wash his fucking hands of it afterwards so uh yeah he goes on carrie does with kevin and now that mike is gone they have to find a third Von Ayer. Oh, no.
Starting point is 01:22:26 So they don't have any more Von Ayers. They have Chris at home, but he's still young. Right. He's a teenager at this point. He's like 17 years old. Also, Chris is like 5'6". He's a tiny little fucker. They're not going to do much.
Starting point is 01:22:35 He's got asthma and like stunt growth. Asthma medication stunted his growth. So Chris is not like the other boys. Fritz's jeans are wearing out. Yeah. By 69, they were all worn out. He's got some more semen. I'm all, sorry, Doris, I just can't do it like I used to.
Starting point is 01:22:50 All I got is the asthmatic semen left. I used to pump out state champions, and now I'm pumping out asthma semen. I don't know what to tell you. I got asthma semen as far as I can see, to the end of the ranch. 115 acres of asthma semen. Oh, I can overflow you, but it's not going to be good. You're not going to like the results. So they go out and pick out another wrestler
Starting point is 01:23:11 from the Portland territory who is just some kid, and they call him a Von Erich. Oh, God, Jesus. Some blonde dipshit, and they just, who's been around? It's not like they found a guy who never wrestled before.
Starting point is 01:23:22 That would have been the smart thing to do. Get somebody no one's ever seen before, bring him in. They get a guy who, if you had picked up a wrestling been the smart thing to do. Get somebody no one's ever seen before. Bring him in. They get a guy who, if you had picked up a wrestling magazine in the last two years, you'd know who he was. And they call him Lance Von Erich. He's a cousin. Lance.
Starting point is 01:23:33 They literally say, he's our cousin. And everybody was like, no, he's not. Even their fans who thought Michael Hayes planted fucking codeine in Kerry Von Erich's balls even were like, he's not a fucking von eric but still the dumbest people on earth were snowed by this i don't think so look at him he don't look melted he looks normal goddamn name's lance his he ain't melted at all i understood every word he said nope i don't think so nope so lance vaughn eric here blonde like a little cheesy looking good guy uh they win the six-man titles uh the world-class six-man titles by defeating buddy
Starting point is 01:24:12 roberts terry gordy michael hayes the free birds this is after uh w world-class wrestling has broken away from the nwa they're basically like a big independent they're on espn at this point as well so there's national coverage here i used to see it after school all the time and watch all the shit uh when i was a kid because they'd show it like later on uh in night but wrestling right now is becoming to the point where it's saturated it's like podcasting and only the really good shit gets through because the other shit we'll put it this way in 1986 if you lived in dallas on your tv in your listings you could see 44 hours of televised wrestling a week oh my god 44 a week
Starting point is 01:24:54 you can watch more wrestling than your day job yeah that's too much 44 hours of wrestling was on in one week because you had you had uh you had uh tbs jim crockett on tbs you had TBS, Jim Crockett on TBS. You had them on a bunch of things, world class. You had Vince McMahon on a bunch of national things and also local markets. It was flooded, man. So you had to really stand out. Two years before that, three years before that, it was only your local territory.
Starting point is 01:25:18 And then all of a sudden, they're inundated with all of this different wrestling. Thank you, capitalism. Yeah, it's a complete disaster is what it ended up being and ended up driving all these wrestling companies out of business that we've talked about and left one man behind.
Starting point is 01:25:33 Only one, damn it. Fritz, I'm taking your asthma semen, Fritz. Fritz, I'm coming for your asthma semen too. I'm going to take your territory. I'm going to hire your boys and I'm going to take all of your asthma semen for my own how do you like that pal fucking highlander of wrestling that's right oh yes he's the fucking highlander of wrestling june 4th 1986 uh carrie's driving his motorcycle in argyle texas uh he is by the way driving at unsafe speeds, riding a motorcycle, wearing nothing but gym shorts and flip flops.
Starting point is 01:26:08 Okay. Gym shorts and flip flops. Get out. Unsafe speed. Texas. Oh, boy. Not smart. No.
Starting point is 01:26:14 Gary here. That'll hurt. Yeah. He pulls to his left. Two lane highway, by the way. Oh, no. He tries. Do you know those long Texas where we drove to South by Southwest?
Starting point is 01:26:22 It's scary to pass. That's dangerous shit. Grading hills. You don't know if a car is coming uh what he does is he tries to pass a van on a two-lane highway and he uh jesus christ he skids into the rear of a police car oh my god that had stopped in front of the van to make a left-hand turn so he plows into this police car flies 50 feet through the air yeah uh and lands on the road uh suffering many injuries uh dislocated hip badly damaged right knee and a really really really fucked up ankle yeah really fucked up ankle oh i'm sure uh i mean it was like gross hanging off basically so they uh they do 13 hours of microsurgery,
Starting point is 01:27:08 transplanting muscle and skin tissue from Kerry's back to restore circulation to try to save his foot from having to be lopped off his body. God damn it. That's how bad this is. Also dislocated hip, crushed right ankle, internal injuries. Fucked, basically.
Starting point is 01:27:21 Oh, boy. They told him, you're not wrestling ever again, obviously. They're like, you're going to be lucky if you can fucking walk or get around and live. Right. So, lucky you're alive. Good job. There's that. So, what he ends up doing is like a fucking idiot.
Starting point is 01:27:37 Later on here, we'll talk about, first, we'll talk real quickly, the next month, July 17th, 86, his daughter, another daughter's born for him. So, how'd you like to be his wife be eight months pregnant have this guy fly off nearly lose his foot and then you have to have a baby while he's in the hospital what a fucking mess i'm i'm trying to get my stomach together picturing how bad that must he must have been crowned hamburger oh it was terrible it had to be disgusting uh so his daughter lacy is born and lacy is in wrestling yeah still she's out there now so we'll talk about how that ended up happening uh now what they did is uh uh
Starting point is 01:28:13 they said now carrie was totally fucked on tv they said he's in a he wasn't in an accident not that serious though he'll be back in a month don't worry about it that's what they told the fans to try to you know whatever and uh in a month and it'll be back in a month or two yeah you had an accident no problem here so uh that's an issue what he ends up doing though is he ends up coming back too early because they needed him yeah to you know to pop a crowd i think it was for a thanksgiving show yeah so he comes back early uh it might not have been thanksgiving doesn't matter he comes back way too early uh has a match with his friend here. It's a five-minute match quickly, but completely fucks his ankle again.
Starting point is 01:28:48 Yeah. Completely fucks it. And this time, what they do is they tell the wrestling, they tell everybody in wrestling, we're talking the press, the other wrestlers, everybody thinks this. They told him that he had his ankle fused. So if you see him a little bit stiff in the ring like he doesn't quite have the same whatever it doesn't bend anymore it's it's he had his ankle fused so that's why so that's what's going on so he's going to need
Starting point is 01:29:14 some time to come back from that he's fusing his ankle in reality they had to amputate his foot he has no foot no foot none what the he has one but he has but on the other foot he has no foot no foot he's got a fucking ankle with no foot so he puts a prosthetic foot on jesus puts the boot over it goes out there like it never fucking happened wow he shows up at the arena already dressed so the wrestlers don't see it people don't know about it jimmy i'm talking this is fucked up too because you know behind the scenes yeah like as a comic, you know every wrestler's, or every famous comic's idiosyncrasies in the green room. It's unspoken. You don't talk about it, but you know what scumbag guy is fucking around on his wife
Starting point is 01:29:57 and is an adult. You know who's doing coke. We know all that shit. You know. But you don't know that this guy doesn't have a foot. They don't know that. Oh, my God. They just say it's fused, and they go, oh, man, he's got like scars and shit.
Starting point is 01:30:08 So he wants to keep. That's why he would hobble like that. And that's why he's got a little bit of a limp. And it's amazing, Jimmy, when he gets in the ring, you barely can fucking tell that anything's wrong with him. It's incredible. Like, it's fucking amazing. He's walking around on a stump. When you watch his match, knowing that he doesn't have a foot, you're like, holy shit.
Starting point is 01:30:25 I mean, it's not quite the same as it was before but he's pretty goddamn close they must have done a really nice job at the at the fixing because listen yeah blowing my finger off i they they just i mean they take the skin and just kind of stitch it around whatever's left in there there is a shard of bone that's sharp that if i tap this finger on anything hard i I will zing and I won't talk to you for five minutes. It hurts so bad. Yeah. I can't imagine. And a foot.
Starting point is 01:30:51 There's so many bones in there in the ankle. Oh, my God. You got like 30-something bones or something. I don't know. That's crazy. I don't know numbers of bones. I don't know things. I know you got a shitload of bones in your ankle.
Starting point is 01:31:00 You do. And if one of those is missing somewhere and it's brutal i can't imagine running around like that and he can't tell anybody no uh what he does do is starts really really good i mean before obviously he liked his drugs but now can you imagine how much pain he's into they're so good to him so now he's a fucking space cadet on top everything else and uh yeah this is terrible for him to go out but he has to the family fucking need him the family needs him to go out there and fucking wrestle. So he puts a goddamn fake foot on and goes out there and wrestles.
Starting point is 01:31:30 So this is crazy, man. So April 16th, 1987, Mike Von Eric is he was arrested a couple of days before this. On April 11th, Mike was leaving a bar in Denton, Texas, and was swerving severely while driving. Mike was leaving a bar in Denton, Texas, and was swerving severely while driving. Cop pulled him over, found some weed, found some two prescription bottles incorrectly labeled that contained 78 pills of five different varieties, mainly painkillers. Painkillers and sleeping pills he had on him, basically, here. He apparently, based on what they said, tried to bribe the cop, but the cop did not agree to it. So he so he did. He did a blood test and it showed his blood alcohol level was point oh five. They also could tell that he was on drugs and he had a bunch of drugs.
Starting point is 01:32:15 So they took him in. They found placid dills, Valium's, all that sort of shit in his system later on when they did a blood test on him. So he's arrested for driving under the influence and possessing a controlled substance here it's on highway 377 and uh yeah he's uh uh they said that uh uh he he called his lawyer after that and uh his lawyer said that quote he was concerned about his arrest he said he was appreciative of everything that he's done for him in the past because the year before, Mike got arrested for attacking
Starting point is 01:32:48 an emergency room physician and was acquitted of those charges. Good Lord. So this lawyer had got him off of that. This lawyer said he was very nice and courteous.
Starting point is 01:32:56 He's always courteous. He didn't seem unduly upset. Just a normal reaction. Okay. So then a few days later, he is reported missing. Oh. Mike is reported missing on April 16th by his attorney. His family last saw him the Saturday after he was released on bond from jail there.
Starting point is 01:33:14 So they know he was despondent a bit and now he's missing. So they're worried about him. They cannot find him. They mount a water, air and ground search find him. They mount a water, air, and ground search for him. They do find his abandoned Mercury Marquis near Pilot Knoll Point on Louisville Lake around there, just abandoned. But he's not in there at all. So, you know, they – oh, he also – I'm sorry. When he got arrested, he had two ounces of weed on him, too.
Starting point is 01:33:40 Oh, that's not good. Yeah, that was two ounces. Yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot in Texas back then. So, yeah, 86 Mercury Marquis is on the side of the road on a dirt road there's a note found in the car and all they see when they open it the police officers and they see the note is quote i am in a better place so they don't touch the note they say we're going to wait for a technical team to come in and do this just in case uh they saw that they also said that uh there was a pair of
Starting point is 01:34:06 wrestling boots in the car uh and a jacket so that gave they brought dogs in so they gave the dogs the scent on that uh they they look for a little while they suspend the search at night and bring them back the next day uh they said once the dark once it got dark you know they couldn't find them and the dogs are their big hope the next day uh so they also said they're going to go out on horseback and everything. It's apparently dense brush in this area. So they're worried about this. So they said, quote, as soon as we ran the license plate number, we knew what we had. He apparently drove up, parked, locked the doors, and left.
Starting point is 01:34:40 So, yeah, his lawyer said, quote, it's just not like him to not be heard from. He always communicates with his family. We're scared to death. Something's happened to him. April 17th, the next day, they resume the search officers on horseback. Even Doris shows up at nine o'clock to hang out there in case they find anything. Within about 20 minutes, they notify them that their dog has found something yeah and it is mike uh she found mike here uh mike was found in a navy blue sleeping bag in a really heavy wooded area
Starting point is 01:35:15 uh he took a bunch of pills drank some booze and went to sleep and now there is 50 of the von erichs 50 of the von erichs are dead they said, he was lying very peaceful like you'd go for an overnight to get away from it all. He did. He went and got away from it all. Forever. Everything. He got an overnight forever. They said a small red canvas bag on the ground contained his driver's license, $48 in cash, an asthma inhaler, and other personal possessions.
Starting point is 01:35:41 And that's it. No outside wounds. No foul play suspected. He obviously did this to himself uh left a note behind also saying nobody's fault and he's just they said ever since the accident and the toxic shock he hasn't been the same he's snapping his temper he has brain damage it's a fact yeah uh they said they kevin von eric asked that everybody give his family privacy he said quote we're going to be fine our family has had some tough times it's my mother we're worried about
Starting point is 01:36:09 now she's soft she's a lady and it's hard for her okay i think doris is pretty rugged she spit out six kids and put up with them doris is harder than any of you probably doris takes fritz uh von eric's cock over and over you guys can't do that spit six kids out your twat and tell me how fucking tough you are. Spit six Von Erichs out of her. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Then he told the reporters, the story goes deeper than you realize now.
Starting point is 01:36:33 And that was that. That's all he would say. Very cryptic here. So they found, yeah, very thick trees and underbrush off the trail from there. They said that he was a nice kid. You know, they said that Kerry, one of their neighbors said, quote, Kerry that he was a nice kid uh you know they said that kerry uh one of their neighbors said quote kerry said he was never the same he said he was irritable he would lose his temper more often about mike and that's what it was here uh he had a lot of frustrations
Starting point is 01:36:56 apparently he got a charge with assaulting that doctor he had to pay 900 and settlement on charges that he got lost his temper and kicked somebody's car door. Like, just losing his temper and shit like that. You know, it's one of those things, man. The toxic shock thing was not good for him. And also drugs, because they were all into drugs at this point as well. Here's a quote from a wrestler here. I remember going with Gary Hart. Kevin carried Gino and David on road trips.
Starting point is 01:37:25 We'd go to the hotel. David, Kerry, and Gino would load up on Quaaludes and Placidils. They had a doctor who provided them with anything they wanted, as much as they wanted. I remember once being in Fritz's office when Gino called and needed 400 Quaaludes, and he got them that afternoon. So, yeah, that's how this works, basically. And it's the same thing. All the wrestling companies had their doctor. how this works basically and it's the same thing all the wrestling companies had their doctor wwe had zahorian who ended up going to fucking prison and they tried to charge vince along with
Starting point is 01:37:50 that and everything else too another quote here he says whenever anything came up about kevin and carrie from the lake dallas police department fritz always said it was the police's fault once kevin drove his car into a lake the next day he had a new car and it was like nothing had ever happened uh but the way they were model children around their dad's friends they were the most Once, Kevin drove his car into a lake. The next day, he had a new car, and it was like nothing had ever happened. But the way they were model children around their dad's friends, they were the most polite and friendly kids you can imagine. They had a thing. As long as publicly, they kept up that image, he'd cover up anything on the private. When you go out there, you smile for those fucking cameras.
Starting point is 01:38:18 You call everybody sir and ma'am, and you say how much you like Jesus, and you fucking go. I don't care how much coke you do after the night's over. don't get arrested and if you do i'll fix it so uh thanksgiving 1987 uh this is uh uh this is when he came back and when he comes back when carrie comes back now he comes back by the way with a fucking robe now he's got a big robe before this he had a jacket always that he wore with carrie and rhinestones on the back now he's got this big old fucking robe now he's got a big robe before this he had a jacket always that he wore with carry and rhinestones on the back now he's got this big old fucking robe with carry on the back and it's just this big you know production now and you know it's it's one of those things he's he's coming back and they're trying to be like all right now let's you're you're there's only
Starting point is 01:38:58 going to be one chance to get back in here and explode minus a foot minus your foot jesus so uh speaking of the foot incident there was a uh a tv taping apparently now the the incidents always credited to colonel de beers and everything you read it's always colonel de beers pulled carrie's foot off during a match by accident because they didn't fucking know he had no foot but i saw an interview with pat tanaka who pat tanaka and paul Diamond were tag team forever. Pat Tanaka says he was the one they pulled his foot off by accident. They didn't know. Basically, they grabbed him like tag teams would.
Starting point is 01:39:33 One grabs each leg and they were dragging him to the corner. And his fucking boot came off with his foot in it. They didn't know that he had no foot. So at first they were like, oh, my God. And then it was like, what the fuck? But I guess Kerry very quickly grabbed his boot and put it back on. And like, but fans were like,
Starting point is 01:39:49 what the fuck? Like they saw it. People saw it, but it wasn't, there's no internet. Nobody took a picture with their phone and put it up. Hey, there's Carrie with no foot.
Starting point is 01:39:56 Like it was just a quick thing. Everyone. Did you see that? And you go, you didn't see anything. And they go, I guess I didn't see anything. It was one of those things.
Starting point is 01:40:09 So yeah, he said, none of the guys guys knew said literally none of us knew yeah i heard roddy piper say later on that he was good friends with carrie and like when he was in wwe they would go into a hotel at the end of the night to smoke a joint or something he said carrie would take his foot off and relax but he would never do that really around anybody now uh december 13th 1988 super clash 3 this is awa's ill-fated attempt at pay-per-view uh three years after pay-per-view had started they're like we can do it too yeah and they did it poorly the big show they had like 2 000 people show up for it in a big arena in chicago it was terrible uh it's a goddamn mess this was their way of we're gonna fight off vince mcmahon nope it's already over there was a unification bout kerry was the texas champion world class and uh jerry lawler jerry the king
Starting point is 01:40:50 lawler was the awa champion they're gonna have a unification bout to unify the two companies because texas and memphis were unifying as a company okay so they go through all our i'm sorry they they were unifying and then there was also a deal with AWA in place. Good Lord. So it's a big mess, basically. It's a three-team deal. Yes. Blockbuster trade.
Starting point is 01:41:10 Yes. And so one of these leagues is going to have to lose their, one of these companies is going to have to lose their heavyweight championship belt, basically. And Vern Gagne has been around forever, and he ain't fucking losing it. So he says, Kerry's taking the L here. I don't care what anybody says. And so they go there. They have this match.
Starting point is 01:41:26 Kerry's so spaced out and on whatever the fuck he's on. And God knows how much pain he's in. He's got a razor. Now, we all know that guys cut their heads. That's how they get blood. They cut their heads with a razor blade. Usually they don't have like a whole like a fucking blade on them. They break off a little tiny piece of it and they tape it all up.
Starting point is 01:41:50 Right. And they put it somewhere, usually in your wrist tape or in uh in your tights oh god jesus some of these tights have little pockets in them they'll put them in their tights and then just take it out some guys kept it under their tongue oh so some guys wrestle with a fucking razor blade above the rim but yeah well he wasn't wrestling no he wasn't getting clotheslined by somebody where he could swallow the thing not only that old school way is on your finger tape it on your fingertip yeah so now you have to wrestle this whole match oh god and not fucking cut somebody up slice this guy up that you're wrestling with so you'll see and tons of old old-timers used to do that so you'll see a guy wrestle for 45 minutes never cut the guy once he's got a fucking razor blade on his finger it's insane yeah carrie wasn't paying attention he's an old timey guy kept it on his finger and knew he was gonna have to blade he was sitting
Starting point is 01:42:33 around talking about the match beforehand and scratched his arm oh god jesus and sliced his fucking bicep open i mean he fucking gashed himself with a fucking razor blade laid it open he's like oh shit so they tried to like you know get it to stay closed just long enough to get to the ring and so the right away jerry lawler acted like he like uh attacked him and like acted like he slammed his arm on the turnbuckle like that makes it explode with blood which is i've never seen happen those turnbuckles have sharp edges jimmy you gotta watch out for those but right away his arm's bleeding and the whole rest of the match and carrie keeps looking at it like he's all confused yeah he keeps
Starting point is 01:43:08 looking at like what the fuck man why is my arm bleeding it's like stop looking at it stupid we're wondering too you're making it worse anyway the end of the match is uh uh carrie is bleeding so much that they call the match for jerry lawler yeah and it's fucking gross because as a person who's not a wrestler, basically he's got Jerry Lawler in the claw. So Jerry Lawler's on his back on the mat. Carrie Varnarik has his hand on his forehead like in a claw thing. And he's just bleeding all over him. And he's gushing blood into Lawler's face.
Starting point is 01:43:37 He's raining it down. It's dripping, man, all in his mouth and his face. And he's got to act like he's in pain and screaming and he can't be like avoiding blood. So it's really crazy they call the match lawler wins the belt anyway and that's how they take it away from him uh he goes on and now texas and and memphis end up together jerry jarrett's buys into it and it's a big huge mess they go it's it's just it turns into shit basically a muddled pile of shit. So finally, in 1990, Kerry makes his way to the WWF.
Starting point is 01:44:08 Slash E. There, they don't even call him Kerry Von Erich. They call him the Texas Tornado. Because Vince McMahon has to own your fucking trademark. Your gimmick is his. At first, he's the Texas Tornado Kerry Von Erich. And then they just drop the whole Kerry Von Erich thing. He's just the Texas Tornado.
Starting point is 01:44:25 They have him win on Saturday night's main event when he first gets in. He beats Playboy Buddy Rose. Then, finally, SummerSlam 90, he beats Kurt Hennig, Mr. Perfect, to become Intercontinental Champion. This is Mr. Perfect's first loss. He's been in there for three years, and this is the first time they ever have him lose. It's a big deal that he wins, Kerry. Obviously they obviously they have big plans for carrie and the crowd loves him i mean he comes out and they fucking love him he's got a cheesy like midi sounding country song is his intro and they they love his ass here uh survivor series that year he teams up with uh animal and
Starting point is 01:45:01 hawk you know the road warriors and the ultimate warrior oh to have the warrior team should you because carrie von eric was always the modern day warrior and so it's all the warriors and they defeated uh demolition and mr perfect there uh so he loses the intercontinental title back back to mr perfect at some point here now he carrie claims i don't know how true this is but carrie claims that while he was in new york he worked a show and then saw a guy rob a woman. And then Kerry apparently clotheslined him while he tried to run away. Yeah, he was just standing there like, what happened? Just like stuck his arm out and jacked the guy.
Starting point is 01:45:37 I was like, here's your purse back. They were like, are you a little melty? Yeah. Asthma, sperm, is that what happened to you? Something to your face there, sir. What happened to you? So we don't know if that's true or not. That's what he claimed.
Starting point is 01:45:46 WrestleMania 7, he gets to participate in a WrestleMania, which is pretty awesome here. That's the one in LA that was a complete pile of shit that they had to, they had it booked for the LA Coliseum and they sold 10,000 tickets in a 100,000 seat arena and they went, we're going to the LA Sports Arena. They said it's terroristic threats because it was the Persian Gulf War. They we can't secure that building okay all right sure i'm sure it would be hard but also you need to sell a hundred thousand tickets so uh yeah he beats dino bravo who was eventually shot to death in his own home by gangsters in montreal for real for real yeah he was in with a bunch he was doing a bunch of shady shit. Cigarette smuggling. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The big Montreal mafia there.
Starting point is 01:46:26 And he was shot like 20 times in his living room. Over cigarettes. Yeah. Over money. It was a warehouse full of cigarettes. That's a lot of cigarettes. That got busted and something happened. Oh, no.
Starting point is 01:46:37 And they blamed him for it and he ended up getting murdered. Murdered up pretty good. Now, so yeah, he continues in thewe and is pretty pretty good star while he's there september 12th 1991 chris little brother chris yeah uh calls up kevin and is not feeling very well he's very despondent uh just you know he's sad and everything so kevin talks to him a little bit about 9 p.m that night kevin and doris find ch Chris about 150 yards away from the house. He shot himself in the head with a nine millimeter. Shit.
Starting point is 01:47:09 66.6% of these babies are dead. All dead. And yeah, he was apparently still alive when they found him. Oh, fuck. They rushed him to the hospital and he was pronounced dead an hour and a half later. Damn it. That's brutal. They found a one page handwritten suicide note.
Starting point is 01:47:24 He said his family wasn't to blame for his suicide he apologized and he said he wrote that his three older brothers had died and uh you know he wanted to die too basically uh yeah so that's the two babies yeah that's the two younger ones are going now it's just kevin and carrie now left that's it everybody else is gone uh they said that uh uh uh one of his friends said quote i remember right after chris shot himself that carrie and i went to eat with his two daughters we started talking about chris and he said chris had a lot of balls i asked why do you say that and he said it took a lot of balls to put a gun to your head so it's a weird way to put it though
Starting point is 01:47:59 it's a very weird way to put it things are crumbling right now 91 uh their their tv show got canceled. Basically, everything's falling apart. The business is dead, completely dead. And at this point, Kevin and Kerry, who are now thirty three and thirty one or thirty three and thirty, sue Jerry Jarrett, who's the owner of Tennessee, alleging fraud, conspiracy and breach of contract. Broad conspiracy and breach of contract for all this. They say that Jared took money from there. Basically, he was skimming off the top while they were partners for the last two years,
Starting point is 01:48:33 not leaving the Von Erichs with shit, basically. And Kevin says, quote, first my brother David gets kicked in the stomach and dies, and then Mike, and then Kerry's terrible accident, and now all this. It really galls me that people can try to get away with this kind of trickery and deception. So there's that. Yeah, Kerry continues in Survivor Series. He teams up with Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Sergeant Slaughter, and Tito Santana. That's quite the crew there. To beat the Iron Sheik, Hercules, Skinner, and the Berserker, which was a terrible team.
Starting point is 01:49:03 So, yeah, this is when carrie starts missing wwe events because his drug use is so out of control he starts missing missing his bookings i mean as we know as comedians you can't miss your bookings people buy tickets to see you you have to go that's all there is to it you get there it's actually obligated you fucking get there uh so yeah he's in the royal rumble in 92 he gets eliminated here february 8th 1992 uh carrie is in an eckerd drug store in in texas uh eckerd drugs yeah it's like osco yeah he's arrested there okay for falsifying prescriptions oh no uh yeah he's also not only is he arrested there uh it's not just that one this is apparently they attract him to this one because he had done
Starting point is 01:49:46 it all week long and all different there's charges from basically it's february 5th 6th 7th 8th all different all different stores uh he had been just loading up on prescriptions the last few days going to all different places every day getting as much shit as falsifying prescriptions uh so he's finally busted at this eckerds and he's released on bond and fritz announ shit as he's got falsifying prescriptions so he's finally busted at this Eckerd's and he's released on bond and Fritz announces that he's going to rehab yeah Gary's got a problem it's at this point that Fritz is like look he's
Starting point is 01:50:14 had a drug problem since he got in a terrible car accident has foot mangled infused he's in a lot of pain and he's trying to manage the pain and at this point people are like yeah all right that makes sense and people are you know it makes sense so they're he's trying to play the he can't deny it anymore this is this is on the news this he's out of his control he can't pay you know get the cops to lose the evidence this is a big deal so yeah all they can say is he's going to rehab and so he goes to rehab and
Starting point is 01:50:42 uh he's in rehab and he's sitting there and and he doesn't know what the fuck to do with himself. Can you imagine this? I mean, he's been a blessed golden child his whole life, and now he's sitting in rehab with everybody kind of making fun of him, and he's just sitting there, and he gets up. And the problem with the rehab, too, is you'd think they'd send him to a nice facility, but they don't even send him somewhere nice. I think it's like a tough texas love kind of facility like boy like a maury boot camp
Starting point is 01:51:09 one you're gonna go there and you're gonna you're gonna kick that habit that's how it's gonna go now that's he goes there and uh even the fucking toilets don't work right which is i mean jesus christ you'd think the plumbing would work right they're so glad they have to call a plumber and one comes it's paulhoun, shit pipe enthusiast. And he says. How is it you come to arrive here, guy? I mean, seriously, I've let me tell you something. Look, listen, I'm I'm the shit pipe guy.
Starting point is 01:51:44 All right. I know shit pipes. I've seen shit pipes from here to listen i'm i'm the shit pipe guy all right i know shit pipes i've seen shit pipes from here to kalamazoo okay shit pipes everywhere everywhere is with the shit pipes i don't think i've ever quite seen a shit pipe as clogged as the one you got right now i found a foot in it that's how clogged it was it was clogged with a foot how am i supposed to get that out of there how you expect your shit to go down when there's a goddamn foot in there there's a, a big bag of pills. I can't get anything down there.
Starting point is 01:52:06 What's happening with you? I don't know what's going on. It's a goddamn mess. Straighten out. What's wrong with you? You fucking bastard. Straighten out. Quit being a bum.
Starting point is 01:52:15 You want your mother to be sad? How many kids she got left? You son of a bitch. Get the hell out of here. I'm going to plunge this and I'll be on my way. All right. Have a good one. And poof.
Starting point is 01:52:22 And a puff of shit and pipes. He's gone. Kerry thought he was confused before. Yeah. Now like what did i take exactly maybe i do still have a foot maybe i do still have a foot and i just don't see it because i saw that man so april 22nd 1992 a couple months later carrie and kathy divorce so she's had fucking enough yeah uh let's see you're in the hospital because of a stupid thing you did when i'm having the baby now you're doing this you're getting arrested you're about to lose your job oh and she loses his job because wwe cuts him loose after the arrest yeah uh he gets suspended and then ends up uh being get suspended we think for drugs and then ends up being cut loose for missing dates yeah so he's gone from there july 21st 1992 a couple months
Starting point is 01:53:06 after that fritz and doris get a divorce oh no you know that shit's real when fritz and doris are divorcing that's like it's it's just gotten too much uh october 1st 1992 is court for carry for all this prescription fraud and this is a this is a big one he could get jail time very easily uh he does his whole thing he pleads guilty and all that sort of thing he falls on the sword and they tell him you sir may fuck off 10 year suspended sentence what 10 year suspended sentence yeah 10 years of supervised probation and a six thousand dollar fine. That's actually when you have supervised probation and suspended sentence, that means any fuck ups, you are going to jail right away. That means you have to be drug tested if you're on supervised probation, so you can't fuck
Starting point is 01:53:58 up there. So this is like, let's try to just rein him in a little bit. I feel like the court's saying, let's not put him in jail. Let's rein him in and i think he's going to be okay i think he's good now he's good now right jimmy he's good i think that's that's going to be and fritz said this is it it's he's great thanks to the court for being you know put not putting his son in jail right carrie's good now full steam ahead okay okay january 12 1993 he's arrested for possession of his controlled substance cocaine oh no now he's got coke he's like well i can't get the prescription pills anymore they'll bust me for that i can get coke on the street i'll just get that uh so he
Starting point is 01:54:35 gets arrested for possession of a controlled substance and uh right away he goes in and gets bonded out no problem but the problem is going to be when it goes through the court and it shows on his probation that's when he's fucked that's when they're going to indict him on it and they're going to bring him in and make a big deal out of it january 23rd 1993 though he is at the ecw arena extreme championship wrestling this is the very beginning of ecw it's when they first started being at the arena as a matter of fact they were in sports bars before this there's an incident that todd g, who owned the company at the time, talks about,
Starting point is 01:55:05 and I believe it's this night, where they got Kerry. ECW used to do surprises. Basically, they would have a big star that they wouldn't tell you about. It was an indie federation. You'd see a bunch of guys and they'd have a couple stars on it.
Starting point is 01:55:17 Then they'd have a big star there that they wouldn't tell you was going to be there. So you knew you'd see everybody on the matches and then someone big was going to be there that you don't know about. Kerry is the surprise today because everyone knows Carrie in the wrestling business. So they go, all right, here's what you do. Put this fucking mask on and then run out there in the ring and stand there with the mask on and let the crowd get it and then fucking pop your mask off.
Starting point is 01:55:39 And they're going to go bonkers when they see it's you. And they do this type of shit all the time. So they go, OK, cool. And he's like, all right, cool. All right, cool cool he puts the mask on he's like all right i'm ready and he grabs his robe that says carry on it in giant rhinestones and puts it on and the guy goes okay carry you're a surprise you have a robe on that says carry in giant glittery letters i think they're gonna know it's you what do you think buddy it's the robe you've been wearing since 87 we all seen it we all know it's you so maybe leave the robe back here put the mask on do that okay you got five minutes he's like cool yeah oh yeah i was thinking
Starting point is 01:56:13 duh takes the robe off fucking stupid right yeah i'm sorry i wasn't thinking i'm spacing it out five minutes later it's his time they cue him he runs out fucking robe on carry on the back so he gets there stands in the ring the crowd's like is that what then he takes the mask off they're like it is tim yeah that's what we thought okay like it's just not the reaction they wanted but that's how spaced he was he just was like i go to the ring i put my robe on just didn't even think it wasn't to be a prick it wasn't like don't tell me not to put my robe on it was just i guess i put my robe on. It was just, I guess I put my robe on now. I forgot. Idiot. So January 29th, 1993, he does a show for Global Wrestling, which is a new company out of Dallas.
Starting point is 01:56:51 They were on ESPN in the early 90s, and it just got awful. But they had a lot of guys who became stars later on in there. Not good wrestling, though. It wasn't good. It was very low-budget, shoestring shit. February 12th, 1993, he's in GWF Global He's in GWF global and he tags with Chris Adams. Oh, still fucking around here.
Starting point is 01:57:09 February 16th, 1993. Carrie is indicted on a cocaine possession charge and this will violate his parole. Yeah. And he's fucked. Basically, he's going to praise going to jail. Probably.
Starting point is 01:57:22 Yeah. The district judge, Larry Baraka, signed an arrest warrant for him for this. He was apparently found with 1.3 grams of cocaine on the 13th when he was arrested in Irving, Texas. So 1.3 grams of cocaine. He's going to ruin his fucking life over here. I mean, he's had so much fucking tragedy that it's at this point. It's like, imagine being his fucking life over here i mean and i you know he he's had so much fucking tragedy that it's at this point it's like imagine being his fucking poor mother yeah jesus christ he's got two kids
Starting point is 01:57:50 yeah he's got two kids how much did his wife suffer i feel bad for all these people people who died in black and white i feel bad for all of them not nearly as bad as i feel for kerry atkison uh who's a controller at noel tex llc in laporte texas so he's even in texas and kerry atkison a yield analyst at uh a yield analyst at bp in the houston area those are different people by the way both the same name both texas sorry guys unreal man so uh february 18th 1993 uh kerry comes over to his parents house and this is right after he's got the two days before they said he's going to be indicted and he's going to go back to jail just got fired from the wwe his wife divorced him his parents are divorced a bit of a mess yeah uh shit pipes fucking impacted hard uh he uh hasn't been home for about two weeks at his dad's house and his dad sees him jack there fritz i guess uh carrie showed up and
Starting point is 01:58:53 hugged his father and said uh i love you dad which is not normal uh you know that's he just normally doesn't do that stuff and uh fritz saiditz said something seemed a little weird with him, whatever. But Kerry said he wanted to go out in the pasture. He said, I'm going to take your Jeep out to the pasture. He goes, quote, I'm just going to go back and find a quiet spot. I need to do some thinking. And Jack knows that he's got a lot of issues. So he's like, if anybody needs to do some thinking, it's Kerry.
Starting point is 01:59:22 You know what I mean? So I'll let him go out there. Like, if anybody needs to do something, it's Kerry. You know what I mean? So I'll let him go out there. What Jack doesn't know, what Fritz here does not know, is that before he went out to the pasture, Kerry went into the house and grabbed the.44 Magnum that Kerry bought for Fritz last Christmas that he had in his closet. He grabbed that and took it with him. And so after a while, some time goes by and fritz gets worried because carrie
Starting point is 01:59:46 had to pick his daughters up from school and it was 2 15 and he knew he had about an hour he had to get the kids so he said quote i found the jeep i found the jeep empty oh no is what he said uh then he said he went a little further in and he found carrie uh partially hidden in some blackberry vine thickets oh no on the ranch uh with a self-inflicted 44 caliber gunshot wound to the chest uh they're dead uh obviously uh he was supposed to wrestle that night actually for global and uh not going to show up the wrestler he was wrestling that night yeah angel of death oh no how weird is that that is bizarre that's a weird that's very strange uh so he he was he has ended up he's dead from that um and uh this is i mean at this point they don't even they go to fritz for quotes in the paper and he's just like he just you know what do you say yeah i don't know
Starting point is 02:00:39 i got one left yeah i got one fucking left here he said said, quote, no one knew. It was extremely painful at first. Kerry had had a drug problem since the accident, and nobody was ever about to tell why. Fellas might think he was weaker. They said he didn't want to tell anybody about his leg and his drug problem because he thought people would think he was weak. So apparently he had been despondent recently uh because of everything and his wife kathy apparently had removed all the guns from his residence recently because of his behavior so she knew she was worried about him and uh yeah uh fritz said quote carrie could never uh could never learn to cope with the loss of any of his brothers because when one one in the family does
Starting point is 02:01:24 it it makes it a whole lot easier for another to do it we learned that the hard way they said he was always in pain walking on that foot he just couldn't see over the hill it piled up so high that's what his dad said and that's what it is uh the judge who was you know candling his case he said quote it's very sad i feel sorry for him as well as his family i think it was very selfish of him then he says it's a shame it's sad it's very sad i really sympathize with his family i think it was very selfish of him then he says it's a shame it's sad it's very sad i really sympathize with his family he's obviously a very weak man he took the coward's way out jesus christ he said uh my heart just kind of sank killing yourself over this he said that he may or may not have gone to prison for the drug charge if it was automatic we wouldn't
Starting point is 02:02:01 have had any reason for a hearing so he's like we didn't know we probably would have gone to jail but i mean he might have gone for a year six months or something like that right you can come back from it you're 33 you know fucking you can come back from a lot at 33 you're very resilient nothing needs to shoot yourself with 44 i would say nothing causes that and uh yeah uh uh black bart here who's a wrestler he says quote i wrestled kerry that friday night at the sportatorium in a cage match loser leaves i beat him to the door one of the first times ever and double juiced which means they both got bloody the whole nine yards and he went out with his wife his ex-wife and had two little beautiful daughters and asked him if he and asked him and asked if him and her could get back together. She said there's no way, shape, form, or fashion.
Starting point is 02:02:47 So he wrote on a napkin on the table that, quote, tomorrow I walk with my brothers. That's what he said. He apparently wrote that in the locker room on a napkin. And the next morning he went out to the ranch and shot himself. So he was just very calm about it. He knew what he was doing. He planned it.
Starting point is 02:03:03 It was over. He was just, he knew what he was doing. He planned it. Yeah. It was over. Yeah. He said, uh, yeah. And he said it, uh, the, uh, for a little, uh,
Starting point is 02:03:08 for a little, uh, graphic shit, he shot himself with a 44 and it basically blew out a huge hole in his back. Uh, huge. They said it was, uh,
Starting point is 02:03:17 basically, uh, the size of a basketball, the exit wound, which is fucking horrible. Took all of his insides out. So Carrie's dead. Whole family.
Starting point is 02:03:26 So that one, one, one, one little Indian, one little Indian here. That's all there is to it. The autopsy is done later on. Obviously, the cause of death is no surprise. Giant hole in you. But the toxicology is a different case. They do find cocaine in his system and a blood alcohol level of 0.10 okay so he went out 0.10 got himself loose that's enough to feel loose yeah and you know he went out got himself
Starting point is 02:03:52 loose took some did some coke got himself up a little and did this up man uh so fucking brutal man just brutal altogether march 16th 2009 and like i said kevin really doesn't wrestle much after that because he's just not. Why would you want to? And he's not really a commodity and he's just kind of away from the whole thing. And it's really weird. March 16th, 2009. WWE Hall of Fame inducts the Von Erich family.
Starting point is 02:04:17 The whole thing. All together. Well, they induct Fritz, Kevin, David, Kerry, Mike, and Chris. All the guys who wrestled, basically. All of them. Even Chris, who barely wrestled. He tried, and he's a Von Erich. So they put him in there.
Starting point is 02:04:30 All the Von Erich boys are in there. Not Lil' Jack, though. He didn't make it quite far enough. There was no room for black and white on that stage. Now, his daughter, Lacey, what might a grown woman think about her father who committed suicide when she was six years old? She says, quote, with the addiction to painkillers, a divorce and the death of his family, I don't blame him for taking his life. His brothers died and he was secretly wrestling with one foot because of a motorcycle injury. Before he died, he fought in the ring better than anyone.
Starting point is 02:05:01 He fought in the ring better than anyone. He put his fans above himself and will always go down as the greatest wrestler that ever lived i know i'm biased she says so that's fine uh also later on in the uh about 2007 lacy who was going by lacy adkinson on there changed her name on myspace which was myspace back then to lacy von eric uh very shortly afterwards that she gets a call from the WWE. They found her asking. She said, quote, I never even thought of becoming a pro wrestler. She said they called and asked if I wanted to be a diva.
Starting point is 02:05:33 I had no idea what that even was. 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. Even though the show was very different than when I was young at the Sportatorium in Dallasallas the smell of the bengay and seeing the guys taping up their wrists it reminded me of being in the locker room as a child i signed a contract to wrestle that night wow uh so she ended up yeah she ends up literally because of myspace as a myspace so she ends up uh she doesn't last long there because they put her in florida and i guess her family lived in cal her husband lived in california so was difficult. She had kids.
Starting point is 02:06:06 It took a little bit for her to quit. She quit that, and she ended up being with TNA later on for many years and all that sort of thing. So that went on. Now, Kerry is buried here in Dallas here, Grove Hill Memorial Park in Dallas, hilltop section near lot 535. Right. In case anybody wants to go say hi to Kerry. All of them except for half of his back and a foot. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:06:30 And, well, most of him is there. Put it that way. Most of Kerry. A lot of Kerry. No. Can't get enough? ProWrestlingTees.com. You can get a bunch of Kerry Von Erich t-shirts there.
Starting point is 02:06:40 I have to tell a quick story that I heard. I listened to this one podcast. Oh, shit. What's the fucking name of it? Oh, no. God damn it. it's there i have to tell a quick story that i heard i listened to this one podcast oh shit what's the fucking name of it oh no god damn it it's not information that they called it's from dave melter so i'll just give give dave melter the plug because i can't remember the name this is a good story it's a well it's i believe it's dave melter that brought it up but it's the super clash three took place like we told you that was the one with the claw where he scratched his razor and all that in the blood okay carrie it's in illinois and there's an old statute that says basically you can't uh you can't rest you can't wrestle or box if you're
Starting point is 02:07:17 an amputee yeah because wrestling and boxing are in the same rules right back they didn't monetize it because then you probably got blood and you could have titus so vince mcmahon said in a fucking effort to get their show to get to ruin this person's show even though it was get no one cared no showing up he wanted to drive it further into the dirt what he did allegedly here apparently was jesus christ he went to the state athletic commission and found some fucking medical form on Kerry about him not having a foot to try to get them to not let Kerry wrestle because he had no foot. Unbelievable. That's what they were trying to fucking do, to try to fucking screw Vergagna and screw
Starting point is 02:07:57 all these. Vince, you dick. That's amazing. That's amazingly bad. Apparently, the final ruling was that he's been wrestling and has had no problem. So it's fine, basically. And he said, we don't know if anybody else has wrestled in the past without it. So how can we bar him?
Starting point is 02:08:12 Yeah. You know, if it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. So that's the way it was. That's the way it went down. God damn it. What's the name of that podcast? It's going to fucking kill me. And I apologize to the two dudes who do it.
Starting point is 02:08:23 And I can't remember who they are. I'm so sorry. Jesus are. I'm so sorry. Jesus Christ, I'm an asshole. Lapsed fan. There you go. Thank you. God damn it. There we go.
Starting point is 02:08:30 Nailed it. If you have a piece of info, I want to give you credit. I felt bad. Anyway, that's the Von Eriks. That's Kerry Von Eriks specifically. Crazy ass story. What a fucking trip. It's a trip, dude.
Starting point is 02:08:42 It's a mess. I feel bad for him. But you know what? You kind of feel bad for all these guys. As soon as you said the man was in a motorcycle accident It's a trip, dude. It's a mess. I feel bad for him. But you know what? You kind of feel bad for all these guys. As soon as you said the man was in a motorcycle accident and lost a foot and he's got a drug addiction, he's probably going to end it himself. That's the thing. And it's funny because not funny, but Mike got arrested, killed himself right away. Carrie was going to go to jail, couldn't handle it, killed himself.
Starting point is 02:09:01 Same thing. And then, yeah, Chris kills himself. David's the only one who didn't kill himself. And it's a um uh and then yeah chris kills himself david's the only one who didn't kill himself and it's it's it's pandemic in wrestling look at the graham family uh the graham family eddie graham the florida patriarch there eddie graham killed himself in 1985 shot himself about i think 2015 16 his son mike who was a big wrestler and who was small but he was a famous wrestler and who ran the Florida Territory after he shot himself. He shot himself. No kidding.
Starting point is 02:09:28 And then guess what happened a couple of years later? His son shot himself. Yeah. This shit goes, man. It rolls downhill. Like they said in the thing, once one person does it, it makes it easier for the others to do it. It's almost like they plow the path for them, make a path in the snow. But if you like that, please let us know.
Starting point is 02:09:46 Give us a review on Apple Podcasts, that purple icon. Give us five stars. It doesn't matter what you say. Just say you're following instructions or following directions or whatever it is. Definitely listen next week because our boxer is nuts. So do not say, I've never heard of that guy. Doesn't matter. You've also never heard of these crazy ass crimes he did he's insane okay
Starting point is 02:10:06 so listen to that I know you'll listen to it you have no goddamn choice you're contractually obligated to sit here and fucking listen to me tell you about it but uh yeah and you're gonna tell me and make dick jokes we're gonna do that together so I'll be here you better be here I can't wait so do that head over to shut up and give
Starting point is 02:10:22 me murder.com for all of your merchandise needs t-shirts, mugs, bags. Those tote bag things are pretty cool. People are buying those, the overnight bags. All sorts of new designs and everything up all the time. Get your tickets to live shows. Small Town Murder live for the rest of the year.
Starting point is 02:10:37 A lot of them are selling out. I got to be honest with you. Not a lot left in terms of that. This weekend, we're going to be in San Diego and L.A. San Diego sold out. L.A., few tickets left. So if you want to go see us in L.A. this weekend on Saturday night, get those tickets right now because they're really going fast. And for the rest of the year, there's only a few left, I think.
Starting point is 02:10:57 D.C., Philly, we have a few left. Chicago, a couple left, and that's in December. Chicago a couple left and that's in December and then really besides that I think maybe Charlotte has a few left Atlanta everything else is pretty much sold out so yeah come check us out there do everything like that buy your merchandise
Starting point is 02:11:14 follow us on social media at crime and sports on Twitter and Facebook we're at small town murder on Instagram we put everything on that page to make it easier there everything like that if to make it easier there. Everything like that. If you want to be a producer, if you want to be a hero of ours, and God damn it, these
Starting point is 02:11:30 people are our heroes. They keep this going, and I'll make an announcement during it. But Jimmy, tell me about these people because I love them and I need to hear their names. This week's executive producers are Yeehaw, I guess. Woo-hoo! Bang, bang. Pew, pew. Ellie Comack. She's in Houston. She's going to come to the I guess. Woo-hoo! Bang, bang. Pew, pew. Ellie Comack.
Starting point is 02:11:47 She's in Houston. She's going to come to the show. Can't wait to see you, Ellie. Wow. Thank you. Shauna, Tommy Craig, Chrissy Ann Costaldi, and Taylor Seaman. Ugh. I'm so sorry, Taylor.
Starting point is 02:11:58 Sorry, Taylor. You're not an ick, Taylor. You're anything but ick. I was excited because I recognized what i shouted it loud and clear it's not what i want to shout thank you taylor god damn it okay miranda hurt heather cotton quick quick before you go on i just have to say you guys are so fucking awesome you know what i got this week jimmy you do you do? I got health insurance. Yeah. I can get sick and go to the doctor and I won't die now. All right.
Starting point is 02:12:27 So that is because of you guys. As you know, that was my goal from... Thank you guys so much for making that a reality. We both got health insurance. Sarah and I both have it now. And we're so excited. You have a laminated card with your name on it. Where I can literally go to the doctor now.
Starting point is 02:12:42 And it's good because I work like 80 hours a week. I probably have some kind of health insurance you know you guys gave james a life thank you guys so fucking much for everything and now you're gonna have this show because if he gets sick he gets penicillin it's amazing thank you thank you don't keep donating don't stop donating though because i have to pay the premiums but thank you for helping it make it reality and also the copay. And also the copay. So thank you. Prescriptions aren't free. It's very expensive. I don't want you to have to fly to fucking South America and smuggle the shit back.
Starting point is 02:13:12 It's cheaper. So thank you, you guys. Other producers this week. I'll start over. Miranda Hurt, Heather Cotton, Courtney Kurtz. Is that Kurtz? Yes. Courtney Kurtz.
Starting point is 02:13:22 Yeah. Keon Butler, Sarah Alvarado. Steph Murphy. Nick Collins. Yuval Dom. Megan Black. Lydia Bohuis. I think.
Starting point is 02:13:34 Conchata Rowe. Shanna Colbert. Casey. No, Cassie. Cassie Redis. Michaela Amundson. Megan Farrell. Denise Anderson.
Starting point is 02:13:44 Jeff Millick. Susan Phillips, Tammy Stuber. Yes. Richard Lott. That's that's. Yeah, that's right. Richard Lott. Dick Lott. Jeff Maynor.
Starting point is 02:13:55 Colleen. Colleen Christian. Sarah. Wait. We're Lee. These are the most difficult stumblers this week. Molly Leis. I think Hillary Brown.
Starting point is 02:14:04 Julia. Julia Fuentes. Amanda Rafferty. Yeah. Denise Urbane. difficult stumblers this week molly leis i think uh hillary brown julia julia fuentes amanda rafferty yeah uh denise urbane button buttony what is that buttony is that for real buttony or is that britney what did i do it's buttony rocks button buttony all right ah i see that's why you did it buttony cox i understand uh sean green Sean Green, is that right? Breen. Sean Breen, Brandy Felt Castellano, Michael Given, Greg Briggs, Lynn Villarreal,
Starting point is 02:14:31 Amanda Shoemaker, Katie Peters, Liz Cooper, Natasha Fellow, Zach Villanova, Holly Figueroa O'Reilly. Thank you very much, specifically.
Starting point is 02:14:40 That lady has like 300,000 Twitter followers. Wow. And she follows us and then donated to us. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Thank you so much.
Starting point is 02:14:47 Dan Wondorowski, Woodrasca. Emma with no last name. Jacinta McCauley, Heather Stoud. Shani-Ann Deistja Dutton, I think. Or Sutton. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's right. Jess Lynn Terry.
Starting point is 02:15:05 Lindsay Fields. Evan, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Jess. Jess Lynn Terry. Lindsay Fields. Evan. Evan Mullen. Austin. Why am I doing this to myself? Austin Clemer. Rochelle Singh. Norman Sather.
Starting point is 02:15:14 JG Houston. Mela. Malia. Malia Kirk. Emily Giles or Gills. Norman Sather. I said that. Kyler.
Starting point is 02:15:21 Kyler Stopman. She. She. Che. It's C-H-E-Y and then a shit so thank you uh park gary uh courtney holt skip bailess not the real one for sure uh sam landis tisha or tasha uh julia pl pael uh cassidy hall noah gilbo molly whittaker no whitmer uh emma carver andrew bishop kate milton uh car caroline caroline aiken i uh aisha uh ryan lennox uh sean and sarah madden tobs liskana lascowa damn it i'm a really bad reader samantha with no last name. Louis V25. Louis V25.
Starting point is 02:16:06 Oh, that's like fucking the drink, right? It's Louis V15. Oh, yeah, you're right. Expensive shit. I'm fucking stupid. You know what? Louis V25 would be Louis V15, right? Louis V25.
Starting point is 02:16:18 That'd be five plus 25. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not five before 20. That'd be 20. Either way, I'm an idiot. We're going long. I'm trying so hard to decipher that into something that I can understand. Elisa Joles.
Starting point is 02:16:32 Kendall Lampier. Lynn Van Hoes. I think House Hoos. Lynn Van Hoos. One of those. Jordan Yancey. Brandon Shaw. Christine Fritzmeier.
Starting point is 02:16:42 Lauren and Brandon Bice. Nicole Loder. Adam Hughes. Kayla Herndon, Lisa Turan, and then the home stretch. I've got this. I'm sure of it. Brooke Dover and her brother Ben, I imagine. Daniel Belusi, Aria Tasher, Ron Sutton Jr., and he emphasized the junior. Lex Furist or Forst, christopher wiley anthony canella jesse hartman that's jess hartman jesse yeah that's jesse again clay thorson thanks again my
Starting point is 02:17:11 man james martyr justin miller thank you justin uh ashley vo peyton meadows jason fuller gary howard thank you guys very much stephanie jones jordan bennett again thank you jordan uh rachel cascaden rachel love yes that that's two Rachels in a row. I was not wrong. Brianna Blankenship. Amanda Stanford. Crystal Walker. Callie Shinkunas.
Starting point is 02:17:30 Thank you. Thank you, Callie. Yes. I'm trying so hard to get these words out. These words are a motherfucker. They're tough. They're tough words. Trey Valkenar.
Starting point is 02:17:38 Robin Anderson. Ronnie Kumar. And Amanda Horn. Thank you all so much. And all of our Patreon supporters. You guys make this all worth it. Thank you, folks. You're amazing.
Starting point is 02:17:48 So much for everything and for what you've done for me personally and for Jimmy as well, but for me and my family, I appreciate it. Thank you guys so much for everything that you do for us. Jimmy, what if they wanted to thank you for something, anything that you do? You can find me at WismanSucks, W-H-I-S-M-A-N-S-U-C-K-S, on Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Thank you, guys. Where can they have at wisman sucks wh isman sucks on twitter in his room and snapchat thank you guys where can they find you you can find me at jimmy p is funny or you can just copy and paste my last name from the show description and make it simple and easy on yourself so you don't have to try to spell it because that's insane don't do that uh other
Starting point is 02:18:17 than that though it's been a wild time and a crazy week and this is a story that we needed to needed to do a lot of people been asking for it. And crazy stuff coming up in the next few weeks. Keep us in here because we've had a wild year. This has just been crazy from the start. We're going to keep it going. We're going to keep rocking this shit out live from the Crime and Sports Studios. We will see you next week. Bye.
Starting point is 02:18:37 Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Taylor Swift is soaring high, her every move captured in the news cycle and devoured by her devoted fans. She's broken billboard records and made Grammys history, not to mention becoming a billionaire in the process. But along the way, Taylor has had to
Starting point is 02:19:23 wage war, first by taking on a very powerful, very famous manager, Scooter Braun, and then by going up against the biggest live events company, Ticketmaster. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery Show Business Wars. We go deep into some of the biggest corporate rivalries of all time. And in our latest season, Taylor Swift will shake up not only the music business, but Hollywood and the NFL. Follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.