How were the deaths of David and Mike Von Erich, Gino Hernandez and Bruiser Brody handled on Championship Sports?
Generally, on those occasions when a major WCCW star passed away between the show’s taping on Monday night and its airing on Saturday night, commentator Marc Lowrance would appear in taped inserts from the KTVT studios to announce his passing and pay tribute. (You can view the segments dealing with the deaths of Hernandez and Brody at WCM’s YouTube channel.) The exception was the episode which aired the weekend after Mike Von Erich’s suicide — a tragedy so profoundly shocking and heartbreaking that KTVT opened the show with nothing more than a stark graphic: All references to Mike were hastily (and somewhat choppily) edited from that night’s show. On the 2/18/84 Championship Sports (taped on 2/13), referee David Manning, accompanied in the ring by the babyface wrestlers on that evening’s card, opened with a brief memorial for David Von Erich including the traditional ten-bell salute, and announced that David’s brothers would not be appearing on the card as scheduled. The music video f
