WWE Hall Of Famer Kevin Von Erich Explains Why He Chose To Wrestle Barefoot

With the box office success and critical acclaim of Sean Durkin's "The Iron Claw," the tragic story of the Von Erich brothers is as popular as ever. While the film is a mix of fact and fiction, one aspect of Kevin Von Erich's story is never explained, his preference for wrestling barefoot. A popular story about the origins of Von Erich's barefoot wrestling was that his boots were hidden as a prank one night and that he simply went out and competed regardless, with the rest seemingly being history. According to the veteran himself on "Talk is Jericho," the true story isn't as interesting as the tales that have been spun over the years, and was due to knee surgeries. 

"Well, there are a lot of stories out there, but the truth is I had so many knee surgeries before I even started wrestling, in football," Von Erich explained. "Your boots, they soak sweat, the socks, the leather boots, they get heavy, so I took 'em off one time — Kerry [Von Erich, Kevin's brother] used to do it too — and we loved it because you feel like you can fly taking that weight off your feet."

Von Erich never put the boots back on, and now his son Marshall Von Erich also wrestles barefoot to carry on the legacy of his father. However, like his father, he now finds that it was an irrevocable choice.

"Now I can't wrestle with shoes on," Marshall exclaimed.  Kevin moved to Kauai, Hawaii in 2006, when the boys were in their late teens, but even before island life, Marshall says that shoes were a foreign thing in their house. "It's a shoot, we've always been barefoot our whole lives." On the other hand, Ross Von Erich wrestles with his boots on, though his brother notes that Ross's feet are just as gnarled and beat up as his own. 

"We have nasty feet because they look like hooves," Marshall said. "We've been walking around barefoot everywhere, it's just natural." Ross doesn't feel he had much of a say in wrestling with or without boots though, as his younger brother beat him to the punch, or the kick, considering the topic. "[Marshall] already stole the barefoot gimmick," Ross said. However, Marshall was quick to quip that it's good that Ross covers his feet up since he has the worse feet of the two brothers.

The Von Erich brothers are currently wrestling on the indies, and have made appearances in AEW and ROH, even taking part in a backstage pull-apart brawl between Christian Cage and Adam Copeland on the December 27 "AEW Dynamite." While Marshall is carrying his father's barefoot legacy into the 21st Century, the choice has become far more common than it was in the days Jericho referenced, where seemingly only Kevin Von Erich and The Wild Samoans wrestled barefoot. The tandem also wrestled for a time in MLW, where they held the MLW World Tag Team Championship.

With the skyrocketing popularity of mixed martial arts and other combat sports, a number of professional wrestlers now wrestle barefoot, including Impact's "Speedball" Mike Bailey and Matt Riddle, though neither wrestler is doing it in honor of Kevin Von Erich. Trained in Tae Kwon Do, Bailey believes that wrestling barefoot gives him more control, to the point where he is seemingly of the same mind as Marshall Von Erich, unable to understand why wrestlers wear boots in the first place, lambasting them as "thick" and "clunky" appendages, strapped to the foot.

"If I will do a backflip, over-rotate, and land on a heel, that can be a little bit painful," Bailey explained. "But for everything else, in terms of kicking [since] my wrestling is mostly kick-based, it allows me to flex my foot fully, which gives me so much more control." Bailey not only won the Impact X-Division Championship barefoot but also wrestled in Impact's Match Of The Year two years in a row, against Josh Alexander in 2022 and Will Ospreay in 2023. In both matches, Bailey wrestled barefoot.

Former WWE Superstar Riddle also wrestled barefoot for the entirety of his time on the indies and in WWE, paying tribute to his UFC roots, where Riddle fought to a 10-3 record until he was suspended for drug use. Riddle is a former WWE United States Champion and "Raw" Tag Team Champion, both of which he won barefoot.

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