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Lance NON Erich: A Tall Texas Tale

Posted: Mar 23rd 2026 By: Brian Damage - RingTheDamnBell.com

This is the story of a gimmick that tried to fool a fanbase and how it adversely affected that territory’s business.

William Vaughan was an aspiring bodybuilder early in his adult life. He was discovered while playing golf with his father in law by World Class employee David Manning. According to Vaughan, Manning followed him all over the golf course staring at his legs. At the time, Vaughan thought Manning was gay, but instead Manning was scouting him to potentially become a professional wrestler.

Manning gave him his business card and invited him to come down to the Dallas Sportatorium to meet with his boss/promoter Fritz Von Erich. Vaughan admitted he wasn’t a fan of pro wrestling and knew little about it, but was intrigued by the offer. Vaughan met with Fritz and after a lengthy discussion decided to give pro wrestling a try. For three days a week, he showed up to the Sportatorium to be trained by the likes of Jake Roberts and Kevin Von Erich, but stated many times they would either “no show” the training session or just teach him to run the ropes for an hour and then stop training.

Seeing this, Fritz decided to send Vaughan to Portland, Oregon and learn the art of wrestling in the Pacific Northwest territory run by Don Owen. Vaughan agreed and traveled to Portland, where he was being trained by Billy Jack Haynes. He and Haynes became fast friends and moved in with Haynes during his time in Portland. Don Owen booked him as ‘Ricky Vaughn’ and won the Pacific Northwest tag team titles with Billy Jack. Vaughan said he only made about $250 a week while wrestling in the territory, but fell in love with the area.

He said that both Haynes and Owen talked to him about how bad it was wrestling for Fritz and World Class. Haynes said that no matter how popular you could become, nobody was going to get over on his sons. Owen offered to keep Vaughan with his territory for two years and then send him to Japan for further training, but his time in Portland was cut short when Mike Von Erich suffered toxic shock syndrome and was immediately called back to Dallas, Texas. With the death of David Von Erich and now the uncertainty with Mike’s health, Kerry and Kevin Von Erich were being worn thin having to wrestle everywhere within the territory.

To ease the workload on his sons, Fritz came up with the idea to make Vaughan a Von Erich himself. Since he couldn’t book Vaughan as a brother, he made him a cousin of the family by claiming Vaughan was the son of Fritz’s kayfabe brother Waldo Von Erich. Vaughan said that he had no idea if Waldo was a real person and never met the wrestler his entire time as his so called son. Several people in the office were against the decision to make Vaughan a Von Erich including his real life son Kevin…but the decision stood and William Vaughan was christened ‘Lance Von Erich.’

Lance would wrestle with the real Von Erich boys Kerry and Kevin and make the towns that the sons didn’t want to go to. Vaughan remembered one of his first big pay days as a Von Erich wrestling on a Texas Stadium show. He was paid $4,000 and thought that this was going to be the norm for him as Lance Von Erich. That wasn’t the case at all. Despite wrestling in front of large sell out crowds and main eventing show after show either in tag matches with the Von Erichs or on his own…Vaughan began to notice his paychecks were much smaller than his “cousins.”

At first, Vaughan thought it was just about paying his dues in the company, but after talking with his friend and fellow World Class wrestler Steve Simpson…he began to realize that he was being unfairly paid. Vaughan would approach Fritz for more money, but was basically laughed at and or given false promises. When Mike Von Erich took his own life in 1987, Fritz demanded that Vaughan be one of the pallbearers at Mike’s funeral.to keep up with the charade of being a Von Erich cousin. Vaughan said the entire service was surreal with mother Doris genuinely upset, but it appeared that Fritz and his sons were more calm and laid back in spite of the situation. The entire scene soured him a bit.

Eventually, Vaughan became tired of being underpaid and overworked and walked away from the territory. Once Vaughan quit World Class, he wrestled in other locations around the globe and joined the rival promotion Wild West Wrestling run by booker Ken Mantell as ‘Fabulous Lance.’ The defection forced Fritz to admit to his fanbase that Lance wasn’t a legitimate family member and in doing so killed a lot of the aura of the Von Erich family of being honest and wholesome.

Business in World Class was steeply declining and Fritz decided to step down as the promoter and agreed to sell a 35% stake of his territory to his rival Mantell, with his sons each receiving the remainder of ownership. Essentially keeping his family in power. Mantell would merge World Class with his Wild West promotion and with that…would see the return of Lance to the territory. There was a plan in place for Lance to return to World Class as a heel and team with the Freebirds against the remaining Von Erichs.

The plan never came to fruition, because Vaughan reportedly began no showing events, despite being booked. The reasoning was apparently because Vaughan was doing some acting and modeling and his agent refused to have Vaughan portrayed as a bad guy or villain. The agent felt that in doing so, it would negatively affect his modeling career. He was ultimately fired by Mantell and thus ending any possibility of resurrecting the Lance Von Erich character.

Over the years, Vaughan took the brunt of scorn from fans and the last surviving member of the Von Erich family Kevin for his portrayal of Lance Von Erich. Vaughan did say that Kevin eventually sent a letter to him apologizing for all the time he spent badmouthing him as it was just a wrestler playing a part.