Did David Von Erich really die of a drug overdose?
Since his death in February 1984, members of David’s family have maintained that he suffered from “flu-like symptoms” for a number of weeks prior to his ill-fated trip to Japan. They state that David died as a result of that illness, citing a coroner’s verdict of acute enteritis — which was also reported in the mainstream news media at the time — as the cause of death. However, a report published later in Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer newsletter stated that, after finding David’s body, Bruiser Brody (who was wrestling on the same All-Japan tour that David had been scheduled to participate in) discovered pills in the hotel room and flushed them down the toilet before the police arrived. Larry Matysik, former St. Louis wrestling announcer and assistant to promoter Sam Muchnick, tells in his book Wrestling at the Chase of his phone conversation with Brody shortly afterward: A shaken, tearful Brody called me from Tokyo and said, “I don’t want to believe it. He had so much to live for
