THE LAST SURVIVING SON OF A LEGENDARY FAMILY OF PRO WRESTLERS EXPLAINS WHY HE’S PARTING WITH A CAREER’S WORTH OF MEMORIES
By Robert Wilonsky
A few days before Christmas, in a big house on a sprawling ranch in the middle of the Texas Hill Country, there sat a long table piled high with history. There were countless stacks of photos, all featuring handsome young muscular men in wrestling trunks, many signed by their subjects. There were jackets, too, and two pairs of wrestling briefs, colorful togs sewn together decades ago that hadn’t seen daylight in forever. Mixed in was a robe of gold, once the cape worn by an everyday superman called The Golden Warrior.
These keepsakes and memories have long belonged to Kevin Adkisson, as he was born – Kevin Von Erich, as he is known. His father, Jack, more famous as Fritz Von Erich, is in some of those old photos, sometimes alone, sometimes standing alongside his boys Kevin, Kerry, Mike and David. Jack is stoic in some photos, smiling in others, in each of them so obviously proud of the sons who followed him into wrestling long after Jack seized the sport with his Iron Claw.
Kerry, David, Fritz, Mike and Kevin Von Erich in a 1980s promotional photograph signed by Mike. Mike died at only 23, leaving the autograph world with few of his signatures.
Kevin, for many decades now the sole surviving son of Jack and Doris Adkisson, was on the other side of the house as Tony Giese, a consignment director in Heritage’s Sports category, collected the keepsakes for auction. Kevin had decided it was long past time to part with these memories that tell the story of the Von Erichs – a family of wrestlers beloved for their good looks and good manners, heroes in a world populated by heels, a dynasty cut short by heartbreak. He schlepped these things from Texas to Hawaii and back to Texas, hauled each time in an 8-by-10-foot shipping container, stored in boxes that were time and again stashed in the attic.
Kevin, his wife and his daughter invited Giese to their ranch in Boerne, near San Antonio, to sift through the material to help determine what pieces of the Von Erichs’ history fans might want most. Kristen, Kevin’s daughter, walked Giese through the memories. Kevin remained in his den, reclining on the couch and watching television. He’d long ago said goodbye to that part of his life and didn’t need to give it one last look.
Centered on the reverse of this ring jacket Kevin wore in the mid-1980s is a gold lightning bolt outlined in sequins. ‘It’s strength and power,’ Kevin says of the symbol.
In the end, Kevin put 27 lots in Heritage’s February 22-23 Winter Platinum Night Sports Auction: ring jackets, wrestling trunks, signed photos of the Von Erich men, the 2009 World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame plaques awarded to Kevin and, posthumously, Fritz and the boys.
Every piece has a backstory, a reason for being, like the jacket with the lightning bolt stitched into the back: “Because the lightning bolt is from heaven,” Kevin says. “It’s strength and power.” And the gold cape: “It’s all velvet and gold satin, and it feels good to have on.” Except the last time Kevin wore it, during a match against Ric Flair at Dallas’ Reunion Arena. Kevin, who always wrestled barefoot, got his toe caught on the top rope, and the golden robe strangled The Golden Warrior, who threw it into the crowd – then wisely retrieved it later.
“I held on to this stuff for a long time, but there are people that would appreciate it more than I do,” Kevin said in mid-January, sitting in the den of the home he shares with his wife of 44 years, Pam; Kristen; sons Ross and Marshall, both wrestlers; and Kevin and Pam’s grandchildren. “I’m glad to know people out there would want it. Because, sure, it’s just pictures and jackets and trunks. But a lot of work went into all of it.”
The WWE Hall of Fame plaque presented to Kevin in 2009
One of his remaining keepsakes is propped on the mantel above the nearby fireplace: a framed Pizza Inn poster featuring Kevin, Mike and Kerry clad in tuxedos, back when the boys were beloved pitchmen for a slice of pepperoni. Kevin is 67 but looks not so different from the warrior in that old pizza ad. His hands are still big and powerful, and in their palms surely reside a few more Iron Claws. But now he uses them to play with his kids’ kids, or he warmly wraps them around the shoulders of old friends. In the squared circle, he played Nice Guy among so many cartoon villains. But it wasn’t a put-on.
“My brothers and I decided to say ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir’ and to fight for what’s right and just try to show that we have honor and dignity and respect and that we love each other and try to be good examples,” Kevin says. “I think we were blessed because of that. It’s nothing that we did to make money. It was something we wanted to project because it was right. So maybe it was that. It was that organic and natural; it was just really a labor of love. We just wanted to be like our dad.”
This early-1980s promotional photograph is signed by Mike, Kerry and Kevin. One of the brothers inscribed, ‘To our friends from the Bros.’
The last known photograph of David Von Erich, who died February 10, 1984, during a tour in Japan
But Kevin was confronted by more tragedy than anyone should ever have to endure. David, known as The Yellow Rose of Texas, died in 1984 of an intestinal infection while in Japan. Then Mike overdosed on painkillers. Then Chris and Kerry shot themselves. There was another brother, too – Jackie, born before Kevin, who died in 1959, when Jackie was 7, of a tragic accident for which Jack blamed himself.
Jack, a football star at Southern Methodist University, never wanted his boys to go into wrestling. They all had other aspirations – Kevin and Kerry, especially, the former a could-have-been football star and the latter a should-have-been Olympian known as the Texas Tornado. But they were sidelined – Kevin by a knee injury, Kerry by Jimmy Carter’s boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Jack and Doris just wanted what was best for their boys, who lived with Mom and Dad on 137 acres north of Dallas long after most kids have moved out of their parents’ house.
Kevin – the inheritor of the name, the keeper of the flame, the warrior now more gray than golden – isn’t so different from Dad. He, too, has always kept his family close, always within reach. Those mementos now just get in the way.
Red sequins spell out Kevin’s name on the back of this wrestling jacket he wore in the 1980s.
This velvet ring jacket was worn by David, Kevin and Mike.
“I’m at the stage now where I’m with my grandchildren, and I have fun every day,” Kevin says. “It’s a beautiful life, but it’s because I don’t want to let any of those moments pass. I loved my brothers, my dad and mom. It was a beautiful life together. We really did adore each other. But then you look at the whole picture and ask: What are we doing here? I was clutching for answers. I really wanted to know about God and everything, what this is all about. It seemed unfair at the time, but I realized to whom much is given, much is expected, and life is fleeting. It’s happening fast – so fast.
“All these beautiful things we have will be gone real soon. All that time could have been spent talking to children, fishing, getting muddy in the rain, riding horses, whatever. So much of that time was wasted with me – hustling to make more money, hustling to fulfill this person’s dream or this great idea this promoter has and on and on and on. So I asked myself: Who am I? I reevaluated. I want these moments to be my life. I want to be with my grandsons. I want to watch my children be parents. Your life changes, and you just move with it.”
Those of us raised in North Texas during the 1970s and ’80s know the Von Erichs’ story by heart – that it’s as mythic as it is tragic, as righteous as it was raucous. Young boys joined by their fathers and grandfathers would turn on Dallas’ Channel 39 to watch the Von Erich brothers tangle with the Freebirds or Ric Flair. Young women, enamored of the brothers’ good looks and better behavior, packed out the late Sportatorium, screaming like they were the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Some nights, it felt like everyone from Dallas to Denton to Fort Worth to Waco had shown up at Texas Stadium for the all-star matches and then jammed into whichever restaurant or convenience store they dropped into to sign autographs. It was as though we had giants as next-door neighbors and rock stars as best friends.
The Von Erichs were even bigger outside of Texas. By 1983, long before Vince McMahon took control of the World Wrestling Federation, the Adkissons each made fortunes, drew 40,000 to arenas worldwide and met presidents of foreign countries.
The Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Kevin in 2017 by the Cauliflower Alley Club, a nonprofit organization supporting retired professional wrestlers, boxers and other athletes in the combat sports industry
“In Jordan and Syria and Lebanon and Israel, we just had this huge fan base, even now – Arabs and Jews,” Kevin says. He grins. “Us being brothers, that’s something that everybody can identify with. We loved our dad. A lot of people can identify with that. We are also from a generation of latchkey kids: Kids would get home from school, lock the door, turn on the TV and watch wrestling.”
And now there’s a fan base that knows Kevin as the man played by Zac Efron in the movie The Iron Claw, which airs endlessly on HBO more than a year after its release. Kevin had nothing to do with the movie: He had no say in telling his family’s story, nor was he paid for it. Writer-director Sean Durkin didn’t even reach out to Kevin until after the script was written – by which point Durkin had eliminated Chris Von Erich from the story altogether, telling the Los Angeles Times in December 2023 that Chris’ death had “a repetition to it” and that “it was one more tragedy that the film couldn’t really withstand.”
Kevin did some promotion for the film, attending the world premiere in Dallas alongside a cast that included The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as Kerry because he knew the value in reminding the world of the name Von Erich. And he was right: Kevin and his sons Marshall and Ross – who recently signed contracts with All Elite Wrestling – are podcast regulars on their own show and countless others. And the family’s social media accounts swelled with new fans upon The Iron Claw’s critically acclaimed release.
Kevin at home with some of the remaining keepsakes from his wrestling days. Photo by Tommy Noel.
But in the end, the film reduced the family’s story to a single thing, unbearable tragedy, and made Jack look like a villain who shoved his boys into the ring. In part, that’s what this auction is about: giving people the chance to own a piece of the Von Erichs’ history while giving Kevin a chance to remind people his family’s story extends well beyond the frames of a 132-minute movie.
“They deserve so much better,” Kevin says. “My dad was the most vulnerable man I’ve ever known. So were Dave, Chris, Kerry and Mike. My mother was a first-class mom, too. She taught us mercy and love and forgiveness. But that’s how movies are. It’s entertainment. Take 10 years of someone’s life and cram it into two hours. But I’ve got such good memories. I’m not a sad guy. I’m as happy as I could be.
“I want somebody to want this stuff more than I do because, to me, it’s over. Life is about having fun, appreciating the things that help bring you joy. Not a whole lot of things can do that. But enjoy it. Let me help. I’d love to help you.” He laughs. “Me, I’ve got all I need. I’ve got such a good life now. It’s full of love. And that’s what it’s all about.”
ROBERT WILONSKY is a staff writer at Intelligent Collector.