WWE The Triumph And Tragedy Of World Class Championship Wrestling

After watching the excellent World Class documentary "Heroes of World Class," I checked out "The Triumph and Tragedy" and rate both of them five stars. Although "Triumph" isn't as long as "Heroes" (it's about an hour and fifty minutes), it covers some issues that were not addressed in "Heroes" and offers vintage promos and additional interview clips as extras. "Heroes" has more perspectives from the creators and non-wrestlers of World Class like Mickey Grant, Marc Lowrance, and David Manning while "Triumph" has more interviews with wrestlers like Michael Hayes, Jimmy Garvin, Buddy Roberts, Bill Irwin, Jerry Lawler, Verne Gagne, and Triple H. I recommend both documentaries for World Class fans."Triumph" begins with a brief history of Dallas wrestling as told by Skandor Akbar, Dusty Rhodes, and Bill Mercer. Kevin discusses the career of his father Fritz. An interesting point is both Fritz and Kerry were capable but unable to compete in the Olympics because of marriage for the former and the boycott for the latter. "Triumph" seems to flow better than "Heroes." Clips are shown of Iceman King Parsons, Sunshine vs. Precious, Chris Adams, Kamala, The Missing Link, Bruiser Brody, and the Freebirds vs. the Von Erichs. Neither DVDs make mention (except a commentary on the bonus "Heroes" DVD) of Brian Adias. Why is that?The tragedies are told in a different way on "Triumph" compared to "Heroes." Bill Irwin was in Japan with David Von Erich and may have been the last man to see David alive when he left him at his hotel room. He gives convincing insight on what he believes caused David's death. Mike Von Erich's toxic shock syndrome and suicide, Chris's suicide, and Kerry's motorcycle accident is discussed in more detail on this DVD than in "Heroes." Kerry's suicide is told a little differently here, too (no mention of Kevin trying to warn his father). More details on Gino Hernandez's "overdose" are on "Heroes," but there is information on Gino's paranoia on this disc. Clips of Chris Adams's "blindness" is found here (it is completely ignored on "Heroes"). The Lance Von Erich experiment is also discussed more here."Triumph" covers, briefly, the demise of World Class and the change to the USWA which wasn't discussed at all on "Heroes." Strangely, the murders of Adams and Bruiser Brody are not discussed at all. The drug issue is covered here more as well with Triple H mentioning that the Von Erich story is an anti-drug public service announcement. "Triumph" is a little more critical than "Heroes" of some of the decisions and actions of the Von Erichs. Fritz did not want to hear about the drug problem in his wrestling organization. Kerry's lack of reliability is mentioned (though not detailed). Two different perspectives on Fritz's "heart attack" are given by Gary Hart and Kevin.The extras are excellent. I like the Gino Hernandez promos ("What you see is what you get and what you don't see is better yet") and the full-length Freebird video "Badstreet." The most revealing extra is a story Kevin gives about suffering a serious concussion and his father insisting he wrestle in Japan in place of an AWOL Lance even though doctors were warning him a single blow to the head could kill him. Gary Hart describes a terrible plane crash he survived. Jimmy Garvin gives a couple revealing stories on the pain wrestlers suffered to perform their craft. Other extras include Tea with Chris Adams, 1983 Iceman promo, Freebirds 1983 interview (Michael Hayes was hilarious), Freebirds at home in 1984, Adams and Hernandez at the Guy Laney Lincoln car dealership, Jimmy Garvin as David's valet for a day, Sunshine gets an assistant, 1987 Kerry's Korner where Kerry talks about his fondness for photography. Interview segments: Hayes on Kabuki, Kevin on Sunshine, watching Fritz wrestle, showing Bobo Brazil a move that backfired, and being a survivor, and Bill Irwin tells a story about Fritz's generosity.The second disc has twelve matches. The first is an old black & white "Texas Rasslin'" match between Duke Keomuka and Ricky Starr. I would have liked to see a match with Jack Adkisson before he became Fritz. These are the other matches: Fritz retirement match with King Kong Bundy, Ric Flair and Kerry steel cage match June 1982, May 1983 Parsons/Kevin/David vs. Freebirds with alternate commentary by Todd Grisham and Kevin, and Hair vs. Hair (Iceman vs, Buddy Roberts). There are three matches from the David Von Erich Memorial on May 1984: Kevin/Fritz/Mike vs. the Freebirds, Adams & Sunshine vs. Garvin & Precious, Kabuki vs. Kamala. The remaining matches are the Fantastics vs. the Midnight Express at the second David Von Erich Memorial, July 1985 match between Adams and Kevin with alternate commentary by Todd Grisham and Kevin, October 1986 Bruiser Brody & Missing Link vs. One Man Gang & Rick Rude, and October 1986 steel cage match with Brody vs. Abdullah the Butcher. It seems like a decent variety of matches, but I would've liked to see a Gino Hernandez bout included on this disc. Still, for the price, it offers a lot of wrestling action and an excellent documentary.

i loved this video by WWE The Triumph and Tragedy of World Class Championship Wrestling is a wonderful look into the lives of the Von Erichs and World Class Championship Wrestling a must watch

I never really understood how or why WCCW's syndicated show got on TV in my neck of the woods in the early 80's, since i lived in AWA country, and the standard AWA "All-Star Wrestling" show was already getting competed against by two WWF shows at the time -- but one day, there it was. The show quickly became my favorite, simply because WCCW shows employed the radical concept of SHOWING THE GOOD MATCHES ON TV. The AWA and WWF shows on broadcast TV at the time were an endless litany of star v. jobber matches -- to get the "good" stuff, you were supposed to come out to the bouts and buy a ticket. With WCCW, you got REAL matches, all the time, which was AMAZING. They also always had a pretty limited number of wrestlers working for the promotion at any given time -- it didn't seem like it was more than a dozen or so -- so it was easy to pick up on the various personalities and storylines. I really think it was the best wrestling TV show ever, or at least the best wrestling show that wasn't on cable. I guess that doesn't have much to do with the DVD set, so let's move on.I thought the documentary portion was decent, though not as good as the Rise & Fall of the AWA documentary. It was more kay-fabey than that, but not horridly so like the Starrcade documentary was. Obviously, they had a good tale to tell -- but, like most fans, i'd have liked to have seen them dig a little deeper on various issues. Like, when they say Kerry Von Erich wasn't "reliable," what does this mean, exactly? It would be nice to get some insight as to the scope of the problem. Did he not show up for matches, at all? How many matches? What kind of matches? Or did he just show up messed up? Anyway, it's decent, but not deep. Kevin Von Erich's interviews seem sort of half-shoot/half-worked; i hate having to decode what is reality and what is kayfabe out of what he says. Still, a good story, generally told well.It was great to see some of the old matches, but i want more. There really should have been an additional disc of matches. I understand why they included the Kamala v. Kabuki and Brody/Missing Link v. One Man Gang/Rick Rude matches -- to tie-in various later-to-be WWE personalities -- but these aren't particularly important matches in the history of the WCCW, and therefore they compose too great a percentage of the matches here. They'd be fine if there was another disc full of matches, but, as it stands, i'm sort of like "why THIS match?" all too often here. Put another way, Kamala appears in as many matches here as Kerry Von Erich -- one! Further, i'm not sure what factors conspired to keep the Kerry/Flair Texas Stadium bout off the DVD, but leaving that match off the DVD is like leaving the Ice Bowl off of a Green Bay Packers DVD. Not hearing Gino Herndandez saying "I AM YOUR CHAMPION!" once during this DVD set is also inexcusable.In short, the documentary portion is good -- not truly great -- and there should have been double the amount of matches. Since there weren't, they should have made better use of the one disc's worth of matches they did include. Not fully satisfying, but by no means disappointing.

The Doc is good but I got kinda bored with the matches. The Doc is 5 stars but I say the matches are 3 stars. But if you are an old school wrestling fan this would be right up your ally!

かつて「世界のプロレス」でも盛んに紹介されていた、テキサス州ダラスのプロレス団体ＷＣＣW。オーナーのＦＶエリックと息子達を中心に８０年代隆盛を誇ったが、息子達の相次ぐ死などが原因で９０年頃に消滅している。この作品では、同団体の歴史が、代表的な試合を交えて語られる。語り部として最も多く登場するのが、エリック兄弟唯一の生き残り、ケビン。こうなるとどうしても兄弟達の死の真相について聞きたくなるが、事実、兄ジャックＪＲの死から弟ケリーの死まで、色々と語ってくれている。が、肝心のケビンの声がくぐもった感じで実に聞き取りずらいのだ。ワールドクラスならぬ英検３級クラスの私には聞き取れない部分が多々あり、残念至極なのである。まあ、明るく元気に話す内容ではないので仕方ないが・・・聞き取れたのは、・兄ジャックＪＲの死をきっかけに、一家はイリノイ州からテキサスに戻った・弟デビッドは、最期の日本遠征に出発する際、すでにかなり体調が悪かったなどなど。また、新日マットでの知られざるトラブルについても語っている。何でも、Skinnyなキックボクサー？にリング上で頭部を蹴られ激怒したという話なのだが、これも完全には聞き取れず。そんな訳で日本語版の発売を期待したいが、今更無理だろなぁ・・・試合の方は全１２試合。フリーバーズとエリック兄弟の抗争や、ジム・ガービンと女性マネジャーサンシャインの抗争など楽しく見れる。他にもアメプロ独特の寸劇や、「バッドストリートＵＳＡ」のプロモーションビデオまで収録されており、アメプロファン必携の作品である。

Fantastic

the tragic story of the Von Erichs, and others, such as Gino Hernandez, is quite sad. a good documentary for wrestling fans. the matches on disc two aren't all that great, really, but overall, this is a very good DVD.

This is one of the best wrestling DVD out there. You get to see what could have been, rather then the fall of one of the best wrestling alliance ever.