Whats the story on how Fritz Von Erich turned from hated “Nazi” heel to beloved babyface?
Storyline-wise, the turn was the result of a feud between heel teams and stemmed from a braggadocious (and totally unscripted) Gary Hart interview on KTVT’s Main Event Wrestling in December of 1966. Hart, who had recently debuted in the D/FW area as manager of former Fabulous Kangaroos member Al Costello and another Nazi villain, Karl Von Brauner, legitimately shocked everyone in the Dallas wrestling office by boasting unexpectedly on TV that not only could Fritz and Waldo never hope to be as good as Von Brauner but, in fact, they weren’t even real Germans: in reality, Waldo was a native of Canada and Fritz was actually Jack Adkisson, who had once played football for Southern Methodist University! Hart recalled in his posthumously-published autobiography My Life in Wrestling…with a Little Help from My Friends that then-booker Danny “Bulldog” Plechas made an urgent phone call to KTVT to ask that the interview be edited from the show; Plechas’ request for what would then have been a co
Storyline-wise, the turn was the result of a feud between heel teams and stemmed from a braggadocious (and totally unscripted) Gary Hart interview on KTVT’s Main Event Wrestling in December of 1966. Hart, who had recently debuted in the D/FW area as manager of former Fabulous Kangaroos member Al Costello and another Nazi villain, Karl Von Brauner, legitimately shocked everyone in the Dallas wrestling office by boasting unexpectedly on TV that not only could Fritz and Waldo never hope to be as good as Von Brauner but, in fact, they weren’t even real Germans: in reality, Waldo was a native of Canada and Fritz was actually Jack Adkisson, who had once played football for Southern Methodist University! Hart recalled in his posthumously-published autobiography My Life in Wrestling…with a Little Help from My Friends that then-booker Danny “Bulldog” Plechas made an urgent phone call to KTVT to ask that the interview be edited from the show; Plechas’ request for what would then have been a co
