In talking with Holt McCallany, I noted that a majority of wrestling fans view Fritz as almost the devil incarnate. Still, when listening to how people who worked in the territories at the time talk about him — and especially, how his son Kevin talks about him — there’s a great deal of reverence for him. How does a person even begin to approach playing a character that the world views as an abusive bastard but that his own son still speaks highly about?
“It’s really a great question because if you read the so-called ‘Wrestling Experts’ and you listen to the podcasts, and watch the documentaries, you hear people say a lot of very disparaging things about Fritz Von Erich,” McCallany tells me. “That he was controlling, that he exploited family tragedy for commercial gain … it’s almost like an endless litany of offenses.” But through his own research, McCallany says he didn’t see Fritz as a wholly bad person. Complicated, yes, but not the cartoonish brute he’s often painted as.
This decision to play him as such has also been controversial for some viewers who feel “The Iron Claw” might have been too kind to Fritz. “Look, some of the decisions that he made were questionable, there’s no doubt about it, but in terms of who is the guy at his essence, I did not see him as a villain at all,” McCallany says. “And neither does his son, Kevin Von Erich.”
The episode of “Dark Side of the Ring” centered on the Von Erichs echoes the sentiment. There’s a nuance and a complexity that fans often struggle to accept. Fritz Von Erich was rumored to use a leather strap as a form of discipline on his sons, which through our 2023 lens sounds barbaric — but punitive, physical punishment was tragically commonplace in the ’60s and ’70s. Is that a reflection of Fritz, or the toxic culture of masculinity that encouraged this sort of behavior … or both?