Welcome to a new installment for WCCW (finally!). I’ve taken over as writer for this region and though you’ll notice that this column is quite similar in content to the previous one, I felt it important to get out my thoughts on the Von Erich tragedy. Growing up in Texas, I was naturally a huge Von Erich fan and the tragic history of this family has made quite a wrestling legend.

February 18,1993 will be a day I’ll never forget as long as I live. I received a call at work telling me that my boyhood idol "The Modern Day Warrior" Kerry Von Erich was dead. This was the same man who just one week earlier had been arrested on drug charges and was facing jail time for violating his probation. This was the same man who 3 years earlier was the World Wrestling Federation Intercontinental Champion. This was the same man who seven years earlier had lost his foot in a motorcycle wreck and had wrestled hundreds of matches on a prosthetic foot without anyone being aware of it except friends and family. This was the same man who nine years earlier on May 6,1984 had defeated "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair in front of 35,000 fans at Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas for the National Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight title. All of a sudden my life had changed along with thousands of Kerry's fans around the Dallas area and around the world. You see growing up in a small town just outside of Fort Worth, Texas in the 1980's, I was taught 3 things… The Dallas Cowboys were "Americas Team"… The Texas Rangers would never make the playoffs in baseball… and the Von Erichs were the first family of wrestling and were the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex's favorite sons.