Name: The Real Story of the Von Erichs, and what "The Iron Claw" Left Out
Uploaded: 2025-04-18T15:08:04.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Real Story of the Von Erichs, and what "The Iron Claw" Left Out' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-04-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Real Story of the Von Erichs, and what "The Iron Claw" Left Out' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-04-18. Transcript available.

i mean you know i had a lot of brothers and man i loved them so much we're
really close
super close for sure well i mean i only knew so much but you know i just saw
you guys in the ring
and stuff like that and you know there's been a lot of documentaries and
smaller documentaries
there's been the claw movie so there's been a lot of uh you know references to
you guys for sure
yeah your father was uh from texas and he he was a wrestler so i'm assuming
that's where you guys
all kind of got into it yeah yeah just even knew about it yeah this is you know
it's kind of ugly
turn i don't want to bum me out but my dad was living up in new york and we
were all living up
there and i was a baby but my brother jackie was like six years old and he
would touched a house
trailer with it had a short in it and it killed him it electrocuted him knocked
him out and he hit a
puddle of frozen water was frozen he drowned under the ice you know and broke
my dad's heart my mother
you know it just killed him you know i can't imagine i have sons you know that
i tell you i
lost my brothers and that was hard but i could not lose a son wow yeah i couldn't
get up i couldn't
stand on my hind legs you know did they have to go to therapy and stuff like
that when that first
happened to your oh because i guess that was your oldest brother yeah did they
have therapy back
then and stuff like that or what did you know no there was no later my dad was
like a rock
oh you know i couldn't believe he was he just uh he didn't want my mother to
suffer so we wouldn't
suffer around her but i'm sure my mother suffered so much and also when she got
married her little
brother david um died of a uh a brain hemorrhage thing you know what he called
it a tumor a brain tumor
and so just like a year later her son dies too you know it was just bang bang
you know i mean
and at those times two things i think there was more probably tragedy at those
times you know things
were you know you'd have a lot of people had a lot of children uh and a lot of
them work in farming
and people would get injured a lot there was just um i think it was a different
time probably when it
came to safety and stuff so yeah so your family had that yeah so your parents
had to deal with that so
early man yeah i guess people suffered in silence more back then huh yeah
people were tough you know
they were well i was just gonna say you know that you brought up the movie and
i mean the movie was
like uh i heard a lot of people talk about it was like the iron claw yeah you
know that my dad was
really hard on us when the fact was you know that we were hard on each other
you know we answered each
other it was like a brother thing really and the you know to tell the truth the
suicides and all
that was not because fritz made us wrestle or fritz was a a big monster or
anything of that that was
shame my brothers were ashamed with with carrie was you know when you're in the
public eye you really
feel a lot of pressure you really do you know you don't want to let those kids
down and when something
happens you know you do feel like you really let them down and you you know i
don't know everybody's
not like this sometimes you just can't forgive yourself and that carrie just
couldn't let it go
and yeah carrie was what carrie was one of your brothers i know you had david
carrie um jack um chris
and mike and mike and mike god that's all the boy names they had at the time
yeah y'all couldn't
have had another brother because what were you gonna do i'd have to be a girl
yeah it would have
had to been a girl by default man oh we wanted a girl so bad did y'all did your
parents my whole
life i never knew anything about girls you know oh yeah i mean uh y'all had
enough beautiful hair
in that family you got an idea how to figure that one golly i know what's with
that i never took care
of myself i never expected to live past 50 you know i was having fun my whole
life you know oh i
bet but y'all had so much dang hair y'all were very very true y'all would have
been considered trans
beautiful tall trans women these days y'all would have been because you guys
were ahead of your time
even like all the rock bands and back then had remember poison all those bands
they had the big hair
that's the truth did you guys have hair dues y'all had some hairdos did was
that something
like a pride was that almost like a lion's mane type of thing amongst the guys
in your household
or what was that like for you guys because you guys had some great hair no you
know what it was
just laziness to tell the truth i mean you know i i cut it where i keep it out
of my eyes you know
but then i i cut my own hair you know because i don't know i can tell dude i
cut my own yeah well
i can't see the back you know i don't have a mullet on purpose you know but but
i can cut this up here
you know um so so your dad i do want to know a little bit more about him so you
said that the
the film um kind of portrayed him as being more of a a stickler but what was he
like was he a businessman
was he um quiet i mean i guess he wasn't quiet because i could see like his
wrestling persona
but was his home persona like well i guess what was he like as a father and
what was he like as a
businessman but let me tell you my dad was like a mountain of a man he was he
was he was he was really
a considered full of love god but i mean he was serious and when he would he
wouldn't say anything
and like you know before you go to sleep at night you think oh man i wish i
would have said that
what should i thought of that well he thought of it right then and he would say
it right then and uh
at night you mean no i mean like whenever it came up yeah whenever he thought
of it it was just right
there man perfect answer you know but i mean uh he was the president okay you
know that movie the iron
claw where fritz says uh the nwa always wanted to screw me you know kind of
like but the truth is he
was the nwa he was the president you know and uh and and he was the the other
wrestlers i mean world
champions i mean when my dad came in the room i mean they were like rolling on
their backs like dogs
they respected him well i mean they yeah they feared him like because his
business acumen or just
i think was his business acumen and really do and and the way he shaded himself
he didn't ever pop off
he didn't ever brag he always had the accurate thing to say that not too much
emotion at all just
business and and people respected that i think in the wrestling business we
have a lot of personalities
you know the big egos and sometimes these guys don't want to do something you
know and uh but my dad had
the respect and it it made a great business it's just i think you have to have
that in you myself
man you can talk me out of anything you know oh is that all the money you have
well i'll take less
you know i'm i know i know why i'm like that we're not like my dad at all he
was he was great he was a
business guy he was yeah did you feel like you had to be a wrestler in your
family like was it
well you know the truth to it is my dad didn't want us to wrestle you know in
fact you know he
was so his finger was stuck you know and his hands didn't move right and oh
yeah he probably
walked around like a damn crossing guard oh god he was in his lower back and
knees and so you know
i actually said to my sons you don't want to do this i promise you know here we
are in hawaii and
i can't even run on the beach and i was a high hurler you know i used to high
jump over my head
you know and i love to move but a day comes you know where you traded that
traded that away you know
so i told my boys you don't want this you know you really don't and uh but you
can't tell them that
you know they uh they were just like i was i wanted to do what my dad did i
thought he was great
uh so did my brothers you know we thought every everything he did was great we
thought and that's
what i wanted to do like that i'm sure my sons are thinking the same stuff you
know well i think
there's nothing more there's something inside of a son you just want to make
your dad proud you know
you want him to look at you and and yeah just feel a sense of pride that goes
deep yeah i mean i think
that's probably the deepest thing that there is me too i really i don't think
there's anything less
than you you ask anybody do you feel like your dad's proud of you it's like
that you know it really
takes them to a place when they're thinking about that or answering that you
know yeah which one of
you guys was kind of the leader of you guys's brothers well and i know
sometimes it goes by age
right because there's always a i was the big brother you know and no doubt
about that but my brother dave
had a real responsibility streak he was just my dad would come to himself okay
i want this fence to be
i want it to go down there 200 yards and i want a good post i want it double fenced
and i want uh
and i want everything just right and he told dave and so david tell me and carrie
what to do
he's the foreman yeah there's a foreman and so and kind of working that way in
wrestling too
and uh he had he was good on the microphone too oh yeah it's important you got
to be good on mic was
there a time where all all of you guys were wrestling at the same time yeah
just briefly it was
man that was so much fun too because we never got to go to japan together dave
and i went japan
together and carrie and i went japan never together though but when we could
all three to
be together just for the when we first started out you know for that first year
we could all three of
us could go to towns we got so much fun man we always would stop we'd scuba
dive all the way there
you know if we if there's clear water if it's just a river or something we'd
dive in and swim it was
just uh oh along the way just yeah we had fun all day and we wouldn't even go
to the dressing room
we'd get dressed out in the in the woods where the swimming hole was and we
could get our rest
and stuff on go right to the show get in the rain come back out into our stuff
you know
we had it down we had fun and you got a leech in your tights brother you know
yeah hey don't call
it that you know uh were you all did you all train together at home at a
certain place like what was
that kind of yeah we had a gym outside uh the house and uh on an adjacent
property and uh
and i'm probably the cause of all the pressure because i i would put up uh vincent
bardi posters
all the time to for myself you know i wanted to be the best i could be and that
was what it was
like to live in my home back then it was like we lifted weights uh three times
a week but we ran we swam
everything was about getting better because i wanted to play in the nfl and uh
carrie
well carrie just wanted to wrestle but uh and dave wanted to wrestle but i was
i was a football player
and uh and so that's what it was all about it's just do your best to quitters
never quit winners
never quit winners never win you know that kind of stuff on i had posters
everywhere on the gym and
and we'd spot each other and push each other and call each other sissies if we
couldn't do it you
know and i mean we would spit on each other you know we we were savages and we
wanted to get
good as we could be and when we we wrestled it was hard you know we we we were
rough because we
anything worth doing is worth doing right yeah we wanted to be like successful
moms my dad was but it
would meant just go all out you know completely commit and that means every day
get on wednesdays
we run 500 400 meter uh five one lap around the tracks 400 meter we'd run five
four hundreds on
wednesdays we time them and carrie and i uh we're both high jumpers carrie high
jump too and we we could
bench carrie and i figured as long as we could bench twice our weight and high
jump over our heads then we
would we would we'll always be in shape and well yeah for knee surgeries and i
can't do that again but
that was the theory we wanted to go with and dave was the same dave didn't work
out in the
gym as hard as we did you know but carrie and i did every we everything we did
was too exhaustion
and when we were kind of nauseated when you think you're about to throw up now
you've done enough
dang we really did man it was all the way i quit way before that i realized
yeah
well everybody does man that's the if you want to look different you have to do
what everybody else
doesn't do you know and i mean fight through that and did were all your
brothers kind of
subscribed to that same mentality or did some of them come along just because
that with that
mentality just because they were your brothers no does that make any sense yeah
yeah i guess yeah
nobody was just along for the ride yeah i think they were all pretty much just
wanted to be like
me dave and carrie wanted to be like dad but you know things got kind of
different when we were in
when we were kids uh when i was in uh junior in high school sophomore high
school my mom and dad were
going to get a divorce you know and my dad was going to move out uh that's my
freshman year is what it
was and i came into the kitchen one day my mom and dad are talking and uh dad
said uh kev uh i'm going to move to
dallas and just get an apartment and uh y'all are going to stay here and it's
going to be just great
y'all go to school and come see me on the weekends and i said are you all
talking about a divorce
and he said hey yeah son we are he's trying to describe it to you without
saying yeah i said well
i want to go with you dad and uh dave heard me and carrie came and said we do
too dad we want to go
with you and so my mom's gonna be there alone it looks like you know and i
guess they but i was the
mediator with that you know and they kind of worked it out but uh with the
deaths you know then my
mother was kind of damaged inside it made her like um she was suffering so much
she you know with dave
she was tough i mean her little own little brother and jackie but then with dave
she toughed it out you
know but then baby mike he was the baby of our family you know chris was even
younger but mike was
the we'd been traveling around and we weren't home that much so when mike was
the baby you know traveling
with wrestling you guys had been traveling wrestling yeah see dave and the
movie doesn't have the suit
but dave and carrie were both married you know and carrie had dave had a
daughter uh died a crib death but
carrie had uh two daughters and uh holly and lacy and beautiful sweet daughter
they spend every
christmas with us and we told you we i got the big house for all to have all to
have our christmases
uh because family is just like we were saying there's nothing more important
than family to me
after any thinking man and then again there's the uh being wrestlers and our
brothers i mean my dad's a
bad guy you know when they're booing him it kind of makes you feel like it's us
against the world you
know these people are booing my dad if they hate him then we hate them too you
know right what was
that about so they because at what point did they did the what the audience
turned on your father
or just part of the no he was like the perfect bad guy he was a nazi and uh
after my brother jackie
died and there up in new york he was like his wrestling changed he was
different he was a he
was wild inside and i think it was like he wanted to just take it out on people
and it showed in the
ring theo when people would when the wrestlers would come to out of the
dressing room getting their cars
the fans would stand around and boo you know from a distance but when my dad
came out to get in his car
they were like fear it was like fear he might run over here you know

The Real Story of the Von Erichs, and what "The Iron Claw" Left Out

i mean you know i had a lot of brothers and man i loved them so much we're
really close
super close for sure well i mean i only knew so much but you know i just saw
you guys in the ring
and stuff like that and you know there's been a lot of documentaries and
smaller documentaries
there's been the claw movie so there's been a lot of uh you know references to
you guys for sure
yeah your father was uh from texas and he he was a wrestler so i'm assuming
that's where you guys
all kind of got into it yeah yeah just even knew about it yeah this is you know
it's kind of ugly
turn i don't want to bum me out but my dad was living up in new york and we
were all living up
there and i was a baby but my brother jackie was like six years old and he
would touched a house
trailer with it had a short in it and it killed him it electrocuted him knocked
him out and he hit a
puddle of frozen water was frozen he drowned under the ice you know and broke
my dad's heart my mother
you know it just killed him you know i can't imagine i have sons you know that
i tell you i
lost my brothers and that was hard but i could not lose a son wow yeah i couldn't
get up i couldn't
stand on my hind legs you know did they have to go to therapy and stuff like
that when that first
happened to your oh because i guess that was your oldest brother yeah did they
have therapy back
then and stuff like that or what did you know no there was no later my dad was
like a rock
oh you know i couldn't believe he was he just uh he didn't want my mother to
suffer so we wouldn't
suffer around her but i'm sure my mother suffered so much and also when she got
married her little
brother david um died of a uh a brain hemorrhage thing you know what he called
it a tumor a brain tumor
and so just like a year later her son dies too you know it was just bang bang
you know i mean
and at those times two things i think there was more probably tragedy at those
times you know things
were you know you'd have a lot of people had a lot of children uh and a lot of
them work in farming
and people would get injured a lot there was just um i think it was a different
time probably when it
came to safety and stuff so yeah so your family had that yeah so your parents
had to deal with that so
early man yeah i guess people suffered in silence more back then huh yeah
people were tough you know
they were well i was just gonna say you know that you brought up the movie and
i mean the movie was
like uh i heard a lot of people talk about it was like the iron claw yeah you
know that my dad was
really hard on us when the fact was you know that we were hard on each other
you know we answered each
other it was like a brother thing really and the you know to tell the truth the
suicides and all
that was not because fritz made us wrestle or fritz was a a big monster or
anything of that that was
shame my brothers were ashamed with with carrie was you know when you're in the
public eye you really
feel a lot of pressure you really do you know you don't want to let those kids
down and when something
happens you know you do feel like you really let them down and you you know i
don't know everybody's
not like this sometimes you just can't forgive yourself and that carrie just
couldn't let it go
and yeah carrie was what carrie was one of your brothers i know you had david
carrie um jack um chris
and mike and mike and mike god that's all the boy names they had at the time
yeah y'all couldn't
have had another brother because what were you gonna do i'd have to be a girl
yeah it would have
had to been a girl by default man oh we wanted a girl so bad did y'all did your
parents my whole
life i never knew anything about girls you know oh yeah i mean uh y'all had
enough beautiful hair
in that family you got an idea how to figure that one golly i know what's with
that i never took care
of myself i never expected to live past 50 you know i was having fun my whole
life you know oh i
bet but y'all had so much dang hair y'all were very very true y'all would have
been considered trans
beautiful tall trans women these days y'all would have been because you guys
were ahead of your time
even like all the rock bands and back then had remember poison all those bands
they had the big hair
that's the truth did you guys have hair dues y'all had some hairdos did was
that something
like a pride was that almost like a lion's mane type of thing amongst the guys
in your household
or what was that like for you guys because you guys had some great hair no you
know what it was
just laziness to tell the truth i mean you know i i cut it where i keep it out
of my eyes you know
but then i i cut my own hair you know because i don't know i can tell dude i
cut my own yeah well
i can't see the back you know i don't have a mullet on purpose you know but but
i can cut this up here
you know um so so your dad i do want to know a little bit more about him so you
said that the
the film um kind of portrayed him as being more of a a stickler but what was he
like was he a businessman
was he um quiet i mean i guess he wasn't quiet because i could see like his
wrestling persona
but was his home persona like well i guess what was he like as a father and
what was he like as a
businessman but let me tell you my dad was like a mountain of a man he was he
was he was he was really
a considered full of love god but i mean he was serious and when he would he
wouldn't say anything
and like you know before you go to sleep at night you think oh man i wish i
would have said that
what should i thought of that well he thought of it right then and he would say
it right then and uh
at night you mean no i mean like whenever it came up yeah whenever he thought
of it it was just right
there man perfect answer you know but i mean uh he was the president okay you
know that movie the iron
claw where fritz says uh the nwa always wanted to screw me you know kind of
like but the truth is he
was the nwa he was the president you know and uh and and he was the the other
wrestlers i mean world
champions i mean when my dad came in the room i mean they were like rolling on
their backs like dogs
they respected him well i mean they yeah they feared him like because his
business acumen or just
i think was his business acumen and really do and and the way he shaded himself
he didn't ever pop off
he didn't ever brag he always had the accurate thing to say that not too much
emotion at all just
business and and people respected that i think in the wrestling business we
have a lot of personalities
you know the big egos and sometimes these guys don't want to do something you
know and uh but my dad had
the respect and it it made a great business it's just i think you have to have
that in you myself
man you can talk me out of anything you know oh is that all the money you have
well i'll take less
you know i'm i know i know why i'm like that we're not like my dad at all he
was he was great he was a
business guy he was yeah did you feel like you had to be a wrestler in your
family like was it
well you know the truth to it is my dad didn't want us to wrestle you know in
fact you know he
was so his finger was stuck you know and his hands didn't move right and oh
yeah he probably
walked around like a damn crossing guard oh god he was in his lower back and
knees and so you know
i actually said to my sons you don't want to do this i promise you know here we
are in hawaii and
i can't even run on the beach and i was a high hurler you know i used to high
jump over my head
you know and i love to move but a day comes you know where you traded that
traded that away you know
so i told my boys you don't want this you know you really don't and uh but you
can't tell them that
you know they uh they were just like i was i wanted to do what my dad did i
thought he was great
uh so did my brothers you know we thought every everything he did was great we
thought and that's
what i wanted to do like that i'm sure my sons are thinking the same stuff you
know well i think
there's nothing more there's something inside of a son you just want to make
your dad proud you know
you want him to look at you and and yeah just feel a sense of pride that goes
deep yeah i mean i think
that's probably the deepest thing that there is me too i really i don't think
there's anything less
than you you ask anybody do you feel like your dad's proud of you it's like
that you know it really
takes them to a place when they're thinking about that or answering that you
know yeah which one of
you guys was kind of the leader of you guys's brothers well and i know
sometimes it goes by age
right because there's always a i was the big brother you know and no doubt
about that but my brother dave
had a real responsibility streak he was just my dad would come to himself okay
i want this fence to be
i want it to go down there 200 yards and i want a good post i want it double fenced
and i want uh
and i want everything just right and he told dave and so david tell me and carrie
what to do
he's the foreman yeah there's a foreman and so and kind of working that way in
wrestling too
and uh he had he was good on the microphone too oh yeah it's important you got
to be good on mic was
there a time where all all of you guys were wrestling at the same time yeah
just briefly it was
man that was so much fun too because we never got to go to japan together dave
and i went japan
together and carrie and i went japan never together though but when we could
all three to
be together just for the when we first started out you know for that first year
we could all three of
us could go to towns we got so much fun man we always would stop we'd scuba
dive all the way there
you know if we if there's clear water if it's just a river or something we'd
dive in and swim it was
just uh oh along the way just yeah we had fun all day and we wouldn't even go
to the dressing room
we'd get dressed out in the in the woods where the swimming hole was and we
could get our rest
and stuff on go right to the show get in the rain come back out into our stuff
you know
we had it down we had fun and you got a leech in your tights brother you know
yeah hey don't call
it that you know uh were you all did you all train together at home at a
certain place like what was
that kind of yeah we had a gym outside uh the house and uh on an adjacent
property and uh
and i'm probably the cause of all the pressure because i i would put up uh vincent
bardi posters
all the time to for myself you know i wanted to be the best i could be and that
was what it was
like to live in my home back then it was like we lifted weights uh three times
a week but we ran we swam
everything was about getting better because i wanted to play in the nfl and uh
carrie
well carrie just wanted to wrestle but uh and dave wanted to wrestle but i was
i was a football player
and uh and so that's what it was all about it's just do your best to quitters
never quit winners
never quit winners never win you know that kind of stuff on i had posters
everywhere on the gym and
and we'd spot each other and push each other and call each other sissies if we
couldn't do it you
know and i mean we would spit on each other you know we we were savages and we
wanted to get
good as we could be and when we we wrestled it was hard you know we we we were
rough because we
anything worth doing is worth doing right yeah we wanted to be like successful
moms my dad was but it
would meant just go all out you know completely commit and that means every day
get on wednesdays
we run 500 400 meter uh five one lap around the tracks 400 meter we'd run five
four hundreds on
wednesdays we time them and carrie and i uh we're both high jumpers carrie high
jump too and we we could
bench carrie and i figured as long as we could bench twice our weight and high
jump over our heads then we
would we would we'll always be in shape and well yeah for knee surgeries and i
can't do that again but
that was the theory we wanted to go with and dave was the same