UNT, Football, Wrestling Share Deep Roots
8/21/2018 9:42:00 AM | Football
DENTON - While pro wrestlers doing battle after a college football game is a first, it's really not so unimaginable.
In fact, what took so long?
The September 1 pro wrestling card on the floor of the Mean Green's Apogee Stadium following the UNT-SMU football game - the first such wrestling event of its kind - is a marriage of Texas traditions. The Lone Star State has been a hotbed of wrestling almost as long as football has been a state obsession, certainly since the first golden age of pro wrestling following World War II.
And North Texas - both the region and the University - produced enough legends of the squared circle to fill countless Royal Rumbles.
Start with one of the biggest names in the sport: the Undertaker, one of the sports' international superstars, got his start at Dallas's Sportatorium in Fritz Von Erich's World Class Championship Wrestling. WCCW, headquartered in Dallas-Fort Worth, cultivated and launched the careers of heros and villains such as Chris Adams, The Fabulous Freebirds, Mick Foley, Gary Hart, Gino Hernandez, Shawn Michaels and Iceman King Parsons.
Just north of Denton, Gainesville was the birthplace of Jake "The Snake" Roberts, who became a star in the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE). Fom the southern metroplex came Killer Tim Brooks, the Waxahachie Wild Man, a staple of the DFW wrestling scene as well as national circuits.
The connection between college athletics and wrestling is long standing.
The 2x4-wielding Hacksaw Jim Duggan, who is scheduled to appear on the Apogee card, played college football at SMU, as did North Texas wrestling icon Fritz Von Erich. West Texas A&M's football program has been a veritable nursery of pro wrestlers, churning out big-time names like Dusty Rhodes (The American Dream), Dory Funk, Jr., and his brother Terry Funk, Tully Blanchard, Tito Santana, Bruiser Brody, Ted Dibiase (the Million Dollar Man) and Black Jack Mulligan.
And UNT is no stranger to martial sports. In the 1950s it had a boxing team that produced golden-gloves champion Pat Riley, who is a member of the North Texas Athletics Hall of Fame. Mean Green football and basketball have been called home by some of the biggest names in the history of pro wrestling: the Von Erichs and Stone Cold Steve Austin.
Austin is a native Texan who earned a full scholarship to play college football at North Texas and lettered in 1985 (then known as Steve Williams), and he began his wrestling career locally at the Sportatorium before rising to international superstar status in the 1990s. Kevin Von Erich played football at North Texas and his 6-foot-8 big brother David lettered in basketball at UNT.
It's the Von Erich clan that are the royalty of Texas wrestling. Based in the DFW area, they lived just outside the Denton city limits in Shady Shores.
Jack Adkisson, better known as Fritz Von Erich, was both a superstar inside and outside the ring, winning multiple championship belts and presiding over rise to national prominence of WCCW. Key to that ascent were Von Erich's sons David, Kerry and Kevin, who became champions and household names. Kevin Von Erich will on hand on September 1 to watch his sons Ross and Marshall headline the Apogee card.
So it's appropriate that the decades-long romance between football and wrestling should finally be consummated at North Texas.
