Pennylynn Webb: COLUMN: The Iron Claw brings back fond memories

Nov. 9—For me, November is about family. This November there is one family that is at the top of my thoughts; The Von Erichs. The world premier for The Iron Claw, starring Zac Efron as Kevin Von Erich, was held in Dallas Wednesday night.

The Iron Claw is a biographical sports film based on the life of Kevin Von Erich and his family of professional wrestlers. It also stars Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Stanley Simons, Maura Tierney, Holt McCallany and Lily James. The movie is set to release in theaters Friday, Dec. 22. I'm so excited to see this movie. I've been promoting trailers for it for months on my personal social media pages.

For those who don't know who The Von Erichs are, they were a dynasty of professional wrestlers from Texas that had enormous success in the 1980s and popularized the iron claw professional wrestling hold.

They were and are an integral part of my life and who I am. I can't think of my childhood, without thinking of the Von Erichs.

Let me explain.

One of my fondest memories of my late brother, Jeff Lockey, was watching wrestling with him.

My brother, technically my half-brother, was seven years older than me. He came to live with us when he was in the sixth grade. I adored him. He teased us and rough housed and played all kinds of games with us. Although, looking back now, I don't think he really enjoyed playing Barbies with me all that much. But he was so much fun. Much to our sister's chagrin, since I was the baby of the family, he would team up with me against her most of the time. Not everything about our childhood was happy, but we were, for the most part, happy together and had fun.

Teen boys like teen boy stuff, and late on Saturday nights, after my parents had gone to bed, my brother would tune the T.V. antenna to a station to watch wrestling in the early 1980s.

It was probably the whining and thumping sound of the antenna rotator turning that either woke me up or caught my curiosity the first time I found my brother watching wrestling in the living room late one Saturday night.

After that, each week I would stay up to watch the World Class Championship Wrestling, later known as the World Class Wrestling Association, with him. My sister eventually joined us.

There were snacks and sneak-up-on-you wrestling attacks and lots of laughter as we sat together with pillows and pallets on the floor watching wrestlers hit each other with chairs and springboard from the top ropes for a dropkick, leg drop or moonsault.

At first I was just there to spend time with my brother. I thought wrestling was great, because he thought it was great. Over time, I developed my own love of the sport and had my favorites. I loved, and still love, The Von Erichs, crushing on Kerry and Kevin Von Erich at the age of five or six.

There were big names like "Gentleman Chris Adams," "Bruiser Brodie," "The Fabulous Freebirds," "Iceman King Parson," "Gary Hart," "Rick Flair," and there were big feuds and we were were there for it every Saturday night, for a while at least.

At some point, my brother got a car and opted to go out with friends on Saturdays and wrestling morphed into something bigger than Saturday nights on Texas television stations. My sister and I were introduced to Saturday Night Live and that became our new weekend ritual together.

I was still a fan, dragging my dad to area wrestling matches in my early teen years. I enjoyed it, but it was never the same as those early years with my brother.

Wrestling's glory faded for me, as the height of celebrity did for the Von Erich family.

Just like my family, the Von Erichs, whose real surname is Adkisson, suffered a string of agonizing personal tragedies. Members of the family have continued to be a part of the world of professional wrestling, but nothing like Fritz Von Erick and his sons were in the early days. They were the forefathers of what would develop into the W.W.E. with names like Hulk Hogan, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Andre the Giant, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, "The Undertaker," "Macho Man" Randy Savage, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and John Cena.

I never knew The Von Erichs as people, I just knew them as the wrestling gods of Saturday night. I'm excited to learn more about them as people. I'm hoping that Hollywood did them right.

Beyond that, this movie will bring back a lot of memories for me. Lots of great memories about my family, especially my brother who passed away in 2021 from COVID, and I'm here for it.

PennyLynn Webb is the Editor of the Palestine Herald-Press and Jacksonville Progress and an award winning columnist.