David Von Erich

By Scott Keith on May 7, 2012

Hello Sir,

Long time reader going back many years, and for last four years I have written reviews for 411mania.com. I also run a pro-wrestling board where friends can come and discuss. One person posted the following today, and I was just curious on your thoughts. Do you agree with the guys idea that WCCW would still be alive today? Here is his post:

"Today is the 28th anniversary of the Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich match held at Texas Stadium where Kerry won the NWA title. That would have to rank as one of the most famous matches in wrestling history.
Too bad Kerry didn't get a longer reign. At that point, even with David passing months earlier, Von Erich mania was its zenith. WCCW was the hottest promotion in the world at that point.
To this day, I believe if David lived, WCCW would still be going strong and it would be a totally different scene in Pro Wrestling.
But for a brief moment, all eyes were on Texas and WCCW!"

That's not really much of a convincing argument. Kerry Von Erich was a much bigger star than David was, even if David was a better worker, and they had Kerry all the way until the promotion got swallowed up by Jerry Lawler. First of all, playing the "if David lived" game isn't really fair, because David had a heart and/or intestinal condition (if we go by the official story and not the drug rumors) and something like that was going to get him eventually. Same kind of deal as Eddie Guerrero, where you can't do the "if he lived" thing because Eddie's heart was destroyed by drugs and if he lived through one heart attack another would just get him a month later.

Anyway, let's assume David is 100% healthy and lives to carry WCCW past 1984. Is that suddenly going to keep Vince McMahon from destroying all the territories single-handedly with talent raids and pricing the smaller guys out of the TV markets completely? Nope. Much like the heart attack that killed David, Vince was an ongoing condition of the wrestling world and World Class was not going to survive into the new world because I assure you Fritz Von Erich was not the guy to compete with him. Even when David was alive Fritz was already showing signs of the same mistakes that would kill the promotion years later, so there was just too much working against the promotion. You can't just run with the Von Erichs on top forever. Eventually David would have moved on, just like Kerry, and it's the same story, game over for WCCW. Hey, David was great, no doubt, but let's not get carried away.

Comments are disable in preview.