Kevin Von Erich Explains How He Got Over 'Sacrifices With The Truth' In The Iron Claw

"The Iron Claw" has become one of the most talked about movies in recent months, both in and out of the wrestling world. The movie tells the real-life story of the Von Erich wrestling family as they achieved great things in the ring, but suffered terrible tragedies outside of it. However, as the last surviving brother, what did Kevin Von Erich — who's portrayed by Zac Efron — think of it? Speaking on the "Under The Ring" podcast, Von Erich revealed how he found out about the project, and how there were some truths that were left out.

"My daughter told me one day saying they're going to make a movie about us," Von Erich said." "So I wanted to find out how they're using the information. Would it be just YouTube or word of mouth? I just didn't know because they didn't ask me anything about the movie, they just did it. It's based on the family, but I'm not going to be real hard on them when you think like they had like 10 years to try to put in to a little two hour window, so there were sacrifices with the truth, but I wanted people to enjoy the movie, and I don't have much to complain about, so I thought I'd let it go."

One of the biggest omissions from the movie was the story of Chris Von Erich, the fifth brother who is completely absent throughout. He took his own life at the age of 21, and was reportedly in the script for a long time in the pre-production phase, but his story was cut for pacing reasons as the movie already had a long runtime. This decision was criticised by some people who know the Von Erich story, but understood the decision.

There was one part of the story that Kevin Von Erich wasn't a fan of and that was the portrayal of his father Fritz. The former owner of World Class Championship Wrestling died in 1997 after a battle with cancer, but was mainly portrayed as an unforgiving character in the movie, something that his son didn't think was accurate. Instead Kevin explained that while he and the rest of his brothers were always loyal to their father, they loved each other very much and always looked out for each other, which is something Von Erich felt was omitted from the final cut.

Please credit "Under The Ring" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.