The Iron Claw is a 2023 biographical sports film that arrived on Netflix in February, meaning a lot more people can now watch this depressing masterpiece. The movie is about the Von Erich wrestling dynasty, a family that was involved in pro wrestling for generations. That sounds fairly glamorous, but the Von Erichs endured so much tragedy it almost beggars belief. In fact, writer-director Sean Durkin chose to omit some of the bleakest details just so audiences could get through the film.
The unbearably sad, mostly true story of the Von Erich family
Iron Claw directly to your heart
The Iron Claw introduces us to the five Von Erich brothers, sons of former pro wrestler Jack “Fritz” Von Erich (Holt McCallany). The movie mainly follows eldest brother Kevin Von Erich, played by Zac Efron. In descending order of age, next there’s David (Harris Dickinson), Kerry (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White), and Mike (Stanley Simons).
A fifth brother, firstborn Jack Jr., died when he was only 6 years old in a tragic accident where he was electrocuted by a trailer tongue during a visit to Niagara Falls, after which he drowned in a puddle of water. That incident hangs over the film, setting the stage for the “Von Erich curse.” Normally I don’t believe in curses, but hearing this story makes you stop and reconsider.
All four surviving Von Erich brothers grew up to follow their father into professional wrestling. David dies of enteritis (inflammation of the small intestine) in 1984 while touring in Japan. He’s 25 years old. At the time of his death, David was set to wrestle Ric Flair for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. Kerry Von Erich steps in for his late brother and wins the match. But the next day, Kerry is in a motorcycle accident and loses his right foot. (In reality, that accident happened two years after the Ric Flair match, in 1986.)
Meanwhile, Mike Von Erich joins the family wrestling business despite nursing a dream of becoming a musician. But Mike injures his shoulder in a match and then goes into a coma during surgery. When he awakes, he has brain damage and can no longer play the guitar. He takes his own life in 1987, when he’s 23 years old.
Remarkably, Kerry Von Erich is able to have a successful wrestling career even after losing his foot. Wrestling with a prosthetic foot under the name the Texas Tornado, he wins the WWF Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam in 1990, but dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound three years later. He’s 33 years old.
This is an unbelievably tragic series of events. The real story is worse.
The Iron Claw is the sanitized version of the story
Brace for more sadness
The biggest change The Iron Claw makes to the story is that, in reality, there was a sixth Von Erich brother who also died tragically. Chris Von Erich was the youngest son of Fritz and Doris Von Erich (Maura Tierney), and he also went into pro wrestling. Chris loved wrestling, but it was difficult for him. He suffered from debilitating asthma, and the medication he took to address it made his bones brittle, which meant they could break even doing simple wrestling moves. He shot himself and died in 1991. He was 21 years old.
Sean Durkin talked to The Los Angeles Times about why he left Chris out of the movie: “There was a repetition to it, and it was one more tragedy that the film couldn’t really withstand.” On one level that seems distasteful — if you’re going to dramatize the incredibly sad true story of this family, leaving out an important member seems like a huge oversight. On the other hand, I kind of get it, because how much sadness can the audience really take?
The movie also left out the families of multiple brothers. David was married twice, and lost a daughter, Natosha, to SIDS in 1978, six years before his death. Kerry Von Erich was also married and had two daughters, but neither they nor his wife appear in the movie. Kerry and his wife Catherine Murray divorced after nine years of marriage in 1992, a year before Kerry took his own life. It makes some sense why the movie had to omit certain characters if it was going to come in at a reasonable runtime, but knowing that the brothers left family behind makes their deaths even sadder.
One omitted detail that isn’t quite so devastating involves Fritz Von Erich’s own time as a pro wrestler, which lasted from the 1950s through the ’80s. Fritz’s original name was Jack Barton Adkisson. He changed it to Fritz Von Erich to bring himself more in line with his wrestling character, who was a literal Nazi. Per GQ, journalist David Shoemaker wrote in his book The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling that the “Von Erich curse” began when a Holocaust survivor who had lost all his sons in a concentration camp confronted Fritz after a match and “said ominously that he sincerely hoped that nothing like that would ever happen to Fritz.”
The Iron Claw unfairly portrays one important character
According to someone who was there
There are other differences worth noting. For instance, Kevin Von Erich, who went on to have a large family and who is still alive today, took issue with how The Iron Claw portrayed his father, whom the movie depicts as overly strict, emotionally distant, and controlling. “[Fritz Von Erich] was an honorable, good man,” Kevin said on the Talk Is Jericho podcast. “What he said, his word was his bond. When you shook his hand, it was a contract, it was honorable. I want everyone to know he comes off pretty rank in this movie.”
Kevin said the movie is not “historical,” and mostly a fictional interpretation of what happened to his family. Obviously he knows better than anyone else, but that doesn’t mean The Iron Claw isn’t a quality movie worth watching if you’re in the right mood.
Further watching
If Project Hail Mary wrecked you, these sci-fi films hit the same way
Because sometimes good sci-fi will have you crying into your popcorn.
Sports movies don’t get much sadder than The Iron Claw, and after surveying a whole bunch of them, we should know. If you enjoy pro wrestling but don’t enjoy emotional devastation, we can also recommend some great YouTube channels about wrestling to check out. And of course, there are plenty of other things to watch on Netflix, some of which isn’t about wrestling at all.
- Release Date
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December 21, 2023
- Runtime
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132 minutes
- Director
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Sean Durkin
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Jeremy Allen White
Kerry Von Erich
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Zac Efron
Kevin Von Erich
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Harris Dickinson
David Von Erich
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Stanley Simons
Mike Von Erich
