Kevin Von Erich

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Kevin Von Erich
Statistics
Ring name(s)	Kevin Von Erich Cosmic Cowboy #1
Billed height	6 ft 2 in (188 cm)
Billed weight	235 lb (108 kg)
Born	May 15, 1957 (1957-05-15) (age 51) Belleville, Illinois
Trained by	Fritz Von Erich
Debut	1976
Retired	1995

Kevin Ross Adkisson (born May 15, 1957) is a retired professional wrestler under the ring name Kevin Von Erich of the Von Erich Family. He is the last surviving son of wrestler Fritz Von Erich and had four brothers that wrestled, David, Kerry, Mike and Chris, as well as an older brother, Jack, Jr., who died in 1959.

1 Career
2 In wrestling
3 Championships and accomplishments
4 Retirement and personal life
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Career

[edit] Football career

Kevin Adkisson played football at North Texas State University as a fullback, second string to Garry Smith, until an injury ended his football career and dream of playing in the National Football League.

[edit] World Class Championship Wrestling

Kevin started wrestling as Kevin Von Erich in 1976. He spent most of his career wrestling for his father's promotion, World Class Championship Wrestling. He teamed with his brothers and had a huge feud against the Fabulous Freebirds (Michael Hayes, Terry Gordy and Buddy Roberts), where they had many six-man tag matches.

Kevin also had a long feud with Chris Adams that lasted for months and had many violent matches. Kevin would also tag-team with Adams on numerous occasions before and after their feud. Away from the ring, Kevin and Chris were close friends; Kevin served as a pallbearer during Adams' funeral in 2001 and traveled to England to visit Adams' family afterwards.

A longtime friend of the Hart family away from the ring, Kevin also represented the Von Erich family in 1999 during the funeral of Owen Hart.

Kevin was also known for wrestling barefoot, highly unusual in a sport where almost all wrestlers wear high-topped boots. Kevin later admitted in an interview that he never set out to wrestle barefoot, but that before his debut match, someone hid his boots as a rib, and he wasn't able to find them before his match, so just went out barefoot to wrestle, and it later became his trademark. Kevin was also a huge fan of Jimmy Snuka, who also wrestled barefoot, and like Snuka, Kevin often performed a flying body splash from the top rope, which Snuka calls The Superfly.

Kevin had several close matches with NWA World Champ Ric Flair, including the main event of the 2nd Memorial show at Texas Stadium, but never won the title.

After the failure of SuperClash III, in 1989, Kevin became very dispondant over his father's decision to sell the promotion to Jerry Jarrett, who owned the Memphis-based CWA, despite his brother Kerry welcoming Jarrett into the mix; the merged promotions became the USWA. However, because of disputes, including suing Jarrett himself, he pulled WCCW out of the USWA in 1990, but he couldn't resurrect the promotion his father built and shut down that November.

[edit] WWE Homecoming

On October 3, 2005, Kevin made an appearance on the WWE Homecoming show alongside many WWE Hall of Famers. Later that night, as Dusty Rhodes and the WWE Hall of Famers were gathered in the ring, Rob Conway came out and interrupted Rhodes. This eventually led to Conway's beatdown by several Hall of Famers, in which Kevin used the legendary Iron Claw on Conway, to the raves of the partisan Dallas, Texas crowd. Announcer Jim Ross said afterwards that he never thought he would live to see the Iron Claw again.

[edit] Independent circuit

On January 20, 2006, Kevin and his son Ross Adkisson (billed as Ross Von Erich) appeared on a local wrestling card in Longview, Texas as guests of Roddy Piper's Piper's Pit. During the segment, in which Kevin and Piper talked about going to the Sportatorium as teenagers, Skandor Akbar interrupted the interview to berate both Kevin and Ross. At one point, Akbar pushed Ross, which prompted Kevin to apply the iron claw on Akbar. Greg Valentine then pulled Akbar away, with Kevin, Ross, Piper and The Grappler taking in the cheers of the crowd.

[edit] In wrestling

Finishing and signature moves
- Iron claw
- Dropkick
- Body scissors

Nicknames
- "The Golden Warrior"

Entrance theme
- Stranglehold by Ted Nugent

[edit] Championships and accomplishments

All Japan Pro Wrestling

AJPW All Asia Tag Team Championship (1 time) - with David Von Erich^[1]

NWA Big Time Wrestling | World Class Championship Wrestling | World Class Wrestling Association

NWA American Heavyweight Championship (5 times)^[2]
NWA American Tag Team Championship (4 times) - with David Von Erich (1), El Halcon (1), and Kerry Von Erich (2)^[3]
NWA Texas Heavyweight Championship (2 times)^[4]
NWA Texas Tag Team Championship (2 times) - with David Von Erich^[5]
NWA World Six-Man Tag Team Championship (Texas version) (7 times) - with David & Kerry Von Erich (2), Fritz Von Erich & Mike Von Erich (1), Kerry Von Erich & Mike Von Erich (3), and Kerry Von Erich & Brian Adias (1)^[6]
NWA World Tag Team Championship (Texas Version) (1 time) - with David Von Erich^[7]
WCCW Television Championship (1 time)^[8]
WCWA World Heavyweight Championship (2 times)^[9] (Last)
WCWA World Six-Man Tag Team Championship (4 times) - with Kerry Von Erich & Lance Von Erich (1), Mike Von Erich & Lance Von Erich (1), Chris Adams & Steve Simpson (1), and Kerry Von Erich & Michael Hayes (1 Last) ^[10]
WCWA World Tag Team Championship (3 times) - with Kerry Von Erich^[11]

NWA Southwest

NWA North American Heavyweight Championship (1 time)^[12]

St. Louis Wrestling Club

NWA Missouri Heavyweight Championship (1 time)^[13]

[edit] Retirement and personal life

Kevin was very close to his brothers David and Kerry and was deeply affected when each of them died. He semi-retired after Kerry committed suicide in 1993 and permanently retired in 1995. In an interview in 2000, Kevin got out of the business simply because wrestling stopped being fun for him after the deaths of all of his brothers.

Kevin and his wife of over 25 years live in Hawaii and run a family investment business together. Kevin also dabbles in commercial real estate, and owns the rights to Southwest Sports (the distributor of World Class Championship Wrestling), which was later renamed K.R. Adkisson Enterprises. Together they have four children; Kristen, Jill, David Ross, and Kerry Marshall, and one grandchild, Adeline Clair.^[14] Kevin is also the uncle of Lacey and Hollie Adkisson, Kerry's two daughters.

In 2006, Kevin, and a number of others from World Class Championship Wrestling's heyday, participated in Heroes of World Class Wrestling, an independently produced retrospective documentary about the promotion and the Von Erich family.^[15] The documentary featured comments from Adkisson, Gary Hart, Skandor Akbar, Bill Mercer, Mickey Grant, David Manning, Marc Lowrance and via earlier interviews, Chris Adams.

Later that October he sold the rights to the (pre-1988) WCCW name and tape archives to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).^[16] WWE has since been broadcasting WCCW's syndicated programming on their subscription video on demand service WWE 24/7 with Kevin and Michael "P.S." Hayes acting as hosts. WWE has produced The Triumph and Tragedy of World Class, their own documentary on the territory.^[17] Kevin was also featured in the 2007 WWE produced DVD The Most Powerful Families in Wrestling in a segment on the Von Erich family.