This is a downbeat on ninety seven one the freak all right, thirty minutes
will jump back in the MAVs Lakers for a minute. And also, Danny
and I have Power ranked our top ten TV shows of twenty twenty three.
This was a lot more difficult than I thought, wasn't it. But it
was a lot of fun. It was fun to do. Yeah, and
I still I feel good about it. But I also, like I've said,
there going fighting about a couple of spots on there. But you know,
we'll get to that. Didn't Good Morning News at eight thirty I am
going to ask that you get to the story that involves panties boobies, Which
is the story or do you want boobies? Well, there's many stories that
you have, but one on your links I saw involved a celebrity relationship that
I do what you to talk about, involving Andrew wk by getting a party
started. It's one of the weirdest I had no one of the weird ones.
I had no idea that was even the thing. At eight thirty nine,
We're gonna have Jeff and Julie from the Speakeasy on from two to six
pm. They are in trouble. They're in trouble. At nine, we
will go through their official iHeart Employee performance review, and we'll find out what
some of their goals are for twenty twenty four. If they make it,
that's in the hands of me now, Kevin Turner, the Klamath National Forest
Radio Personality of the Year, take that for awards. Joining us now live
in studio. We normally did the scuttle but here we're gonna shift out of
that a little bit today because I've got a good friend in studio and you
might know him from his work in d magazine. It is Mike Palucci at
Mike Like Sports on Twitter. Hello Mike, what is up, buddy?
How are you guys? I feel like I'm really bringing the mood down.
If you know, you're talking about firings and you're talking about awards. These
are big high points, and now you just got me here, I feel
like I'm bringing the mood down. No, no, here's the thing.
Basically, I've taken over the responsibility of reviewing everyone's performance here at the station
because I'm equipped to do so obviously, because I won the Klamath National Forest
Radio Persons established. Yes, he will, he will remind you in case
you forget took. Yeah, well Sroy's won some awards, but he's on
vacation, so you know he couldn't do it. So I've known Mike for
a long time. I know, Mike, you've been up here in studio
before with Been and Skin Show. But you I told you probably little Let's
probably two or three weeks ago on the phone, and we uh, this
is about the same time that Mike and Danny and I and JJ went and
saw the Ironclaw world premiere, Yes, at the Texas Theater and nows were
you at that? I was, yeah, Which it's funny. I lived
in LA for a long time, and uh, to me, it didn't
scan as quite as big as it probably should have because like I'm just like,
oh, a movie premiere and then by coworkers like yeah, you know,
we don't do that in Dallas a whole lot, right, I'm like,
oh, yeah, yeah, because it was a big deal. Man,
A lot of people were the whole movie was there. They kind of
shut down the whole neighborhood. It was a cool scene for it to be
a world premiere like that. Yeah. Yeah, and just here, you're
right, I mean, JJ goes to a lot of like premieres and things
like that. She's our resident movie expert around here. But like that was
I mean for me, who doesn't go to a lot of premiers like that.
But then just knowing that where it was happening, the Texas Theater and
the town's history was a big difference. But also between a premiere and a
screening, you know that that happens before the actual release. Gah. Yeah,
So you know, we all watched the movie, we discussed it,
you know, a ton three weeks ago, and then you know it's about
to be released to the public here in a couple of weeks. I've seen
that it's starting to get reviewed a little bit, and it's mixed. You
know, I'm seeing a lot of a good a good balance of people liking
it to people thinking it was kind of dull, which I kind of bell
on the side of it being a little dull. I felt like they missed
it was a missed opportunity. I thought they could have gone really hard into
their life, maybe been a little more truthful about it. There's a lot
of inaccuracies in it that are obvious to every you know, to everyone that
kind of knows the story, but they could have they could have gone a
little more rest the wrestler with it than uh. There was too much Hollywood
and CBS after school special aesthetic to it that just kind of watered it down
for me. It could have been a lot more uh edgier and and grittier
than than I think it was. And it was and it wasn't just watered
down completely, right, Yeah, it just could have been a lot more
realistic, I felt. I thought the funny thing was just being in the
theater. You could tell who knew the story and who didn't by people gasping
at certain moments. You know, Yeah, I mean when yeah, the
first time they showed Kerry without without a leg of people are like, and
uh, I'm sitting there. I'm like, well, yeah, I don't
know what you guys kind of thought you were getting into this. This kind
of sort of feels my theory as I was working on the story, we're
about to discuss that, like the number of people out there who don't know
the story and are just you might be going for a zac Efron Prestige film.
They have no idea how dark this thing gets. They're just not at
all prepared for how rough it gets, and so what I give, like
the cliff notes version, people like, wait, there were six of them,
but five of them died before they were thirty three. I'm like,
yeah, man, it's rough. It's pretty rough. Well, and for
someone like me who only knew about the van Erks through growing up, you
might hear your dad mention it here and there, and then really just working
in radio for ten years, like dude, the van Erks were not a
part of my life, so you just kind of knew the name a little
bit. It knew a little bit of the history, and it was nothing
I ever dove in on too much because I'm not, you know, I'm
a quote unquote wrestling guy. Well, people in Dallas probably it's lost on
them that this was a very metroplex centric family and their place in the history
of wrestling was largely sectioned off to this part of the country. We had
Chris Jericho on yesterday and I asked him, what was your interact because you
know, he's fifty three years old, he's in that wheelhouse. To have
crossed paths with those guys, goes, what was your interaction your connection with
the von Erics back in the day and he goes, none whatsoever. He
goes, I'm from New York. I lived in Canada. Why would I
rackey? People forget you know, sure, so just tell us about the
article that is in D magazine. It's on you can get it in the
magazine right now, it'll be online next week. And tell us about the
premise and yeah, kind of the story here because it's wild. Yeah.
So if you really go back to nineteen eighty eight, and this is when
it's kind of the midpoint of all of the deaths of the family, and
so D magazine really did the best magazine story ever on the von Erics by
the great Skip hoonds Worth is now Texas Monthly, one of the best journalists
ever. And you know it was called follow the House fot Eric, which
at that point there were still two more deaths to go. But you know,
after three of them die, you're sort of thinking, how could get
it worse than this? Right, you know, just the most depressing part
of this. And so we what year was that article written in? Eighty
eight? Eighty? Yeah, you should it's archived, right, it's online.
Yeah, it's online, you read. Everybody should go check it out.
It's because it's talking to the whole family as this is going on.
It's right before they got you know, right before Fritz got out of the
business. It's really a phenomenal piece of journalism. And you know, as
the result, I mean, certainly I think any Dallas publication is gonna be
doing things when the movie comes out, because how could you not. But
for all of us at d were like, we need to do something special
for this because we you know, this magazine has a history of writing the
best magazine pieces ever been done on the Von Erics. So what do we
do? And let me tell you, it's a little daunting. When you
were reading Skip Pald's Worth, who is definitely a lot better at this than
I am, You're like, god, I have to follow that guy.
But what we came up with was, if you know the Von Erics story,
there was always this curious part of it that really now these days it
gets presented as a footnote, which is that midway through after David dies and
he debuts after Mike Van Eric would later commit suicide, but at the time
he was wrestling, but he had basically experienced a shoulder injury. The surgery
went bad, he got septic shock, he'd had brain damage. Mike was
kind of about a commission, and so they bring out a ringer, a
fake Von Eric named Lance spot Eric. Lance Vaughan Eric in reality is a
guy who was a bodybuilder that they happened to find on a golf course and
they were like, hey, do you want to wrestle? And they've been
I'm oversimplifying here for the sake of radio, they've been searching for a bit.
But it's a curious footnote because Lance wrestled you for World Class Championship Wrestling,
which is the Von Eric's promotion, for about a year and a half,
and then he's gone. And if you watch any documentary about them,
it will always be mentioned he's in the movie, except they cut the guy's
scene, so you see basically one action sequence that if you don't know who
it is, you're not going to know who it is. Yeah, but
it's always mentioned, and it's kind of just mentioned as like this is the
biggest disaster of all time. But so we had the idea, can we
find this guy, can we talk to him? And we did, and
really, when if you talk to him, and then you talk to people
who were around at the time, you get this understanding of just how weirdly
pivotal. If you want to understand why this all went downhill for the promotion,
you kind of have to understand the Lance van Eric story because it's not
as though this single handily broke the promotion. You know the fact that this
was built around family boys and the boys start dying, that's gonna do it.
But what really ended up happening is to understand how Lance's story unfolds.
You get how the fans really fell out of love with his family that was
as big as the cowboys in Dallas at one point, because back in the
eighties, everybody believed wrestling is still real and the most authentic story in wrestling
was this family. And eventually you bring in someone who isn't a von Eric
and people find out he's out of on Eric, because the wildest part of
this is the Von Erics told them he's not of on Eric, and it
just burns this thing to the ground because at that point, once people find
out the actual truth, they had sort of stood by this family through so
many tragedies at that point that they're kind of looking like, wait, wait,
wait, wait, wait, we're you you told us. This guy's
of Eric, but he's not of on Eric. And now you're telling us
not to care anymore. We believe everything you told us, and now he's
gone. How did at the time did the family, the von Eric family,
couch this out of the blue family member. How did they set it
up? Was he did they say, Oh, he's a cousin that has
lived abroad and now we're bringing him back into the fold. I was just
curious how they incorporated him into their their whole scene. Well, so there's
there's two broad explanations, right, One is that this is still wrestling.
Wrestling is a you know, it's a storytelling thing, but it's a Carney
thing. You make things up. And the second layer to this is that
when Fritz von Eric who's the dad, started wrestling years ago, they had
a storyline brother for Fritz named waldov on Eric. This is when they were
wrestling out in Canada, Waldo, which you know Fritz the von Eric boys,
Right. So yeah, so back especially back in Canada, which is
when they're really you know Fritz, Well, before Fritz was a thing in
Dallas, Fritz was wrestling all over the country, right, So he had
teamed with waldov On Eric and occasionally waldov On Eric would make appearances at the
Sportatorium. So it's not as though these people were not accustomed to the idea
that there could be more von Eric's out there. The problem is is that,
you know, Fritz is a really smart businessman. Uh and basically,
you know, everybody knew that Fritz von Eric was really Jack Adkisson, right,
you know his boys. You know, of the five on Eric sons,
the three made it to adulthood where the big adonises, you know,
David, Kevin Carrey. They were on TV in world class, you know,
during the local broadcast every week when they were kids. Because they're all
really good athletes. So the problem wasn't necessard. If Fritz von Eric just
happened to have storyline sons or maybe people weren't so attached to those sons,
maybe this would have worked. But the problem is that these guys were on
TV ever since there were kids. Because if Kevin had a great football game
because he played full back in North Texas, you're gonna hear about a TV
Kevin Adkinson is gonna be on TV, like, look what Kevin did this
week, Look what David did in basketball. Look with Kerry who was an
incredible discus thrower, like an actual Olympic hopeful. Look at this guy did
in discus. So you became attached to these kids, you know. People
in the story tell me it's like the city grew up with them and Danny,
you were around, so you could remember this a little better. Like
people loved that family and so as a result, you create this bond that's
better for business. But the trick is if you taint it in some way,
that's when it goes bad. So as far as how do they bring
Lance in, it's well, here's cousin Lance. And to a point,
it's like, you know, okay, well we've seen Walda before. Sure
there could be more von Erics. And it's worth noting that David Manning,
who played a ton of different roles in the promotion, he was Fritz's right
hand man for a while, you know, he pointed out, He's like,
look, even when this was working, people probably may some people may
have suspected it. But because the family was so beloved, because everything was
going so well, people didn't really care it was gonna work until it didn't
work. That's not like the Internet existed then either, so information is just
exactly well, where of mouth did get you hyped up? Really easily?
How did you find And by the way, this is Mike polucciv D magazine
who wrote a big article on Lance vaugh Eric and kind of the hidden Von
Eric brother cousin cousins, be a cousin, you know, just to say
you and I aren't cousins. Yeah, we go back far enough. Maybe
the branches, you know, we're fourth cousins twice removed out of them,
we probably are. And uh, well, how did you find Lance von
Eric? So, yeah, that was the tricky part we got it.
Actually, to be fair, it wasn't as it could have been tricky.
Thankfully it wasn't tricky. So I got a number. Number did not work.
So I, you know, at first, I'm trying to research him
because the way my job works, if you're gonna profile anybody, everybody's got
a different process. For me, I try to talk to the main guy,
uh, kind of late in the game, you know, I let
him know I'm doing it, but I want to talk to everybody else before
then, because invariably I talked to you first, and I talk to everybody
else around you they're to tell me all these things about you. I then
just got to go circle back with you. And it's just easier that way.
So to come a knowledge what his real name was when you started doing
it, he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all out there.
He's got a Wikipedia paget. And also we'll get to this. I
mean, they flat out when this all goes down hill, Fritz says,
the guy's real name on TV whole thing. But anyways, yeah, it's
it's kind of incredible how this all fell apart. But basically had a number.
It didn't work. But he had written a book a couple of years
ago called Lance by Chance, amazing title, and so I read it,
and you know, I just found the author and I emailed him. I
said, hey, you know, and sometimes sometimes journalists help each other out
with sometimes they don't. It's really a crapshoot. Like I'm emailing this guy
and I'm basically asking him me to him to connect me to the guy who
he knows to one of his sources. But this guy was super cool,
great guy named Vinnie Barry, and also probably understood that, like, you
know, the name of the book is in the article, and like people
you know who knows. Maybe they read this article you want to read more
about to get the book. So he was like, yeah, you know,
let me talk to Lance and get back to you. Got back to
me the same day, so Lance said, call him. So I call
him and he's in Baja, Mexico. He works in the time share industry
now does half the year in Baja, half year in South Africa, which
is a much cooler existence than I have. And we chatted by phone.
And the thing that I did not realize phone lines at Baja, at least
where he is, could be real spotty because the time first time I get
on the phone, it's easy. He's like, you know, we're texting?
Is like calling me Sunday night at eight o'clock and I call this dude
like six times and the number is not getting through, and I'm like,
did he changes number on me? What is going on? And I don't
you know, I cannot get a hold of him. I'm telling my bosses.
I'm like, I don't know what's happening. This may have just fallen
apart for reasons I don't understand. And then he text me on like tuesdays,
like, Hey, where worry you? The night man, I'm like,
dude, your phone doesn't work. It's like, oh phone lines,
baha, yeah, just call me back. We'll figure it out. And
so thankfully we did, and that's how we got here. Okay, Now,
I don't know how much you want to tell about how this all fell
apart. Wow, we want everyone to go read the article of course.
Well here's the thing. I mean, you could google this and find the
broad strokes of it, which you won't be able to find even if you
know the broad strokes is just the amount of people we talked to for this
thing. You know, nobody's really talked to Lance very much aside from this
one book. Kevin van Erickson there, Michael Hayes, the leader of the
Freebirds, is in there. David Manning, who ran the promotion for a
while, was in there. So we've got i mean, nobody's got have
the full version of this, and the design is freaking incredible. We got
an illustrator who's in the Netherlands who did this, this whole thing super cool.
So anyways, you know, so even when you hear this, still
read this story because whatever I'm gonna tell you on radio, whatever you can
google. It's not gonna be as thorough as what we all put the work
in to tell here. But basically, Lance was a real estate agent before
he was doing this. Lance was making good money, you starving a Jaguar
as a real estate agent. So it's not like he is this dude who
aspired to be a prorestler all his life. He was very much lured into
this by hey, you can make some real money doing this. You know.
He's thinking, all right, well, maybe I harlay this into acting,
you know, I'll give it a shot. So he goes he got
the entertainment bug. He got the entertainment bug, you know. And Lance
is one of these dudes when you talk to him, he just some people
just know how to make money. Lance is one of those guys. He
just knows. Like He's had so many different jobs over the course of his
life, you know, but he's he's done very well for himself. He
sold some gyms in South Africa and made like a good amount of money off
that. He's just one of those dudes that some people just see an opportunity,
they know how to make the opportunity work. So he says, Okay,
I'll go try it. It works for about a year and a half,
and you'll you'll see it when you read the piece. But the schedule
they had him on was wild, and they're paying him about you know,
in the beginning, he got some big checks, but really he's he ends
up at one point he's working two shows in the same day, which means
he might wrestle in the opening match in Waco, then drive back the sport
to tour Nament made event. Good. God, he's you know, the
drive time, he would be so pressed for time. He's wearing his wrestling
gear in the car because it it's time to change. That's such a grind.
He's such a grind. And he's a dude. He was a bodybuilder.
He's a powerlifter. And he said this, and you really can kind
of tell if you look at the photos and look at the He's like,
if you look at how big I was when I started and what my size
was at the end, I kept shrinking because I did not have time to
work out because I'm working these wild hours and he's getting paid about a one
fiftieth show. Now, they're the counterpoints to this, because I'm sitting here
and I'm reacting like you guys are reacting like this sounds rough, This does
not sound like it's planned. The counterpoint to this, and we're gonna have
an accompanying story online because we couldn't get this guy before the movie came out
because of the sag after strike. The guy who plays Lance in the movie
is a wrestler for All Elite Wrestling name Maxwell Jacob Freeman MJF. It's the
world Champion of the promotion. Very charismatic dude. MJF plays him. I
really wanted to talk to him for the story, couldn't because of the strike.
We talked after publication and then we're read it online. But Max is
basically like, well, you know, I don't have a sympathy for a
Lance because I'm a wrestler and that wrestling culture is, yeah, you pay
your dues and you do this stuff. So the disconnect is, if you're
a wrestler, you're thinking, okay, well, this stuff happens if you're
not a wrestler and your a real estate agent and you're told, hey,
you're gonna make a bunch of money if you wrestle, and then you at
one point you start falling behind in your bills so much you need to get
a loan to pay for your stuff. You're thinking, this sucks, man.
So Lance quits after year and a half. He's bitching because he's gotta
pull over an Ennis to get some gas just his spanax puppet gas wave a
weird shoes. So he is a He wrestled. He did the whole wrestling
barefoot thing, which I feel like would just I'd break like all my toast
if I did that. But he did that. He did Kevin von Eric
did that too, sure, So anyways, Lance, it's like, look,
man, you know, he asked for rais, doesn't get the raises,
like thanks but no thanks, I'm out, and he thinks that's the
end of it. But this is back you know, in the eighties,
and like you're saying, like Chris Jericho is talking about, he wouldn't have
come to Dallas because this is before, you know, back then, WWE
is just a territorial operation in New York. This is kind of the mafia.
Everybody's got your territory, Aaron's got your talent. We don't cross lines.
So Dallas, you know, he might quit the territory Dallas. Who's
to say that Lance Van Eric can't just go wor in some other big territory
in New York and if people are watching, and this is when territories are
trying up and consolidating, so these operations are becoming bigger and bigger. Who's
to say someone doesn't see him on TV or see him in a magazine and
it's like, wait, this guy's wrestling is I don't know Jack Simpson,
that was Lance Van Eric. He's not a real Vaughan Eric. That what's
going on? So what happens is they try to the family tries to beat
everybody to the punch and go on TV and expose them preemptively. So you
have first to have kry Von Eric going on TV and saying, you know
that he's an impostor, Sandy's imposter. But doesn't I remember when this happened?
And yes, so he says he's not you know, his name's William
Vaughn. He won't be here tonight. He's walked out on us. He
doesn't really get into all of the specifics. Wow. So then people are
asking what the hell's going on? And so a month later, Fritz goes
on TV and just in no uncertain terms says, this man's name is William
Kevin Vaughan, he has you know, he's not a Von Eric. He'll
never be a Von Eric. He might try to contes off the name,
which is trademarked, I legally protected, and he can't do that. Now,
if you're somebody who's just a fan of these people in Dallas, and
these guys are so big, they shut down six Flags when they're there freaking
six Flags because there are too many people swarming the Von Erics. That is
the cowboys. Man. It did crazy. So if you're just a normal
person in DFW and you're like, I love the Von Eiris. This is
like my wrestling family TV. This the most wholesome, good family boys who've
been through some hard times. Because David died and by this point Mike had
died, and then you're hearing, wait a second, you just lied to
me in an era when you know, people thought this was so real that
when I asked Michael Hayes about Lance, He's like, well, you got
to remember, I can tell you a little bit about working with him.
I never hung out with this man outside of wrestling because I was a bad
guy and he was a good guy. We could not be seen together in
public it would not work. That's how real this still was. And even
in nineteen eighty seven. So you're telling these people, yeah, he's not
a von Eric. And by the way, you know this name that you're
attached to, our great family name, this is trademarked, illegally protected.
So don't ever try to use this at home. Kids. What do you
think is going to happen? Yeah, and it just shattered the mistique in
a lot of ways because there were fans who were just like, we've stuck
by you through this awful stuff. And remember, Mike van Eric committed suicide.
Suicide in Texas in the eighties, carries a stigma very different than what
it does now. And so these people are like, wait, we've stood
by you the whole way, and you're just coming out here and you're telling
us that you lied to us like that you just to try and make more
money because you didn't have enough von Erics. You threw another von Eric in
the mix. What's going on, man? And so that's when this seemingly
small footnote in the story, if you really get the timeline and you really
get how the promotion fell apart, Lance van Eric very unwittingly and not in
a way that he ever intended to. Played a very crucial part in this
whole story because he kind of fueled the whole downfall, the whole thing.
Can't wait to read this, man, You can get it right now.
You can just go with the magazine at the magazine and it'll be online next
week next Thursday, twenty Yeah. If the movie's coming out next Friday,
we'll have it up online next Thursday. The design for it's gonna be really
sick, include the supplemental piece that's gonna come out the day of the movie
on Friday. So Thursday we'll have the story online. Friday. You will
hear from mjf the guy who played Lancewan Eric in the movie. It was
also an EP on the movies kind of taught people how to wrestle. I
think it's part of that whole fantastic and wait, dude, Yeah, And
Mike runs a strong side over at the magazine with you know, people writing
articles out. Not only Mike, our buddy Jake Kemp writes for you guys
sometimes, and so I'll go check that out as well. It's a good
group, very incredibly is great always great reads. Cowboys, MAVs, you
name it, we got it, man, So thank you there is.
That's Mike Palucci at Mike Like Sports on Twitter x whatever we're calling it now.
Uh go check out that article today or next week. Uh coming up
next we're gonna get back into MAVs and Lakers because that's not the only big
game for the MAVs this week. And the top ten TV shows of twenty
twenty three, next to Nice seven won the Freak