Lacey Von Erich is the daughter of Kerry Von Erich and the granddaughter of Fritz Von Erich. Both Kerry and Fritz are legendary names in professional wrestling, and the entire Von Erich family are members of the WWE Hall of Fame. With the weight of the Von Erich legacy resting on her shoulders, how does Lacey Von Erich stack up against her legendary family?
Unfortunately not that well. But to be fair, that isn’t all her fault.
Lacey Von Erich Began Her Career With TNA
Lacey had brief runs in WWE developmental and in some independent promotions, but it would be in TNA where she would get her big break. Lacey Von Erich debuted on TNA on the October 1, 2009, episode of Impact and immediately joined the legendary TNA faction The Beautiful People. Angelina Love had just left TNA and Lacey Von Erich was brought in as her replacement.
It was evident immediately that Lacey wasn’t ready to be in the ring, even being hidden in 6 Women Tag Matches with The Beautiful People, Lacey stood out as being very green. It was very apparent that she was forgetting spots, she was late for things and her selling wasn’t up to the standard of everybody else in the ring with her. In promos, however, she did fit the look and the attitude of The Beautiful People. It's as if she didn’t need to wrestle and could've settled for being a manager.
Noticing that she wasn’t ready, TNA started booking her as a dumb bimbo character, even compared to the rest of The Beautiful People. This was never more noticeable than in the LockBox Challenge match for the Knockouts Championship, Lacey was booked to not care about the Knockout Championship, she was only competing in the match for the chance to do a striptease. She started carrying around a pink nightstick which she called “Lacey’s Ugly Stick” and she would use it to cheat to help the Beautiful People win matches.
In spite of how green she was and how TNA booked her to be an idiot, Lacey managed to “win” the Knockouts Tag Team Championships. It was actually Velvet Sky and Madison Rayne who won the titles, but the Beautiful People did Freebird the belts and Lacey did, on occasion, defend the Knockouts Tag Titles. Lacey never had any feuds of her own and usually just stood in the background while Velvet Sky and Madison Rayne did all the heavy lifting. And that was about it when it came to her TNA career, Lacey was released from her TNA contract on November 11, 2010.
Apparently, at the time, Lacey was not well-liked backstage. It was reported by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter in October 2009 that people in TNA were describing her as “another Kerry Von Erich” from a mental standpoint, which means she had no common sense. While others were saying she has no positive qualities for the industry other than her physical appearance and was nicknamed internally as “Rhaka Blonde.”
Lacey Made Significant Improvement In The Ring
To be fair to Lacey, watching her matches as time went on, you could see she was genuinely improving in the ring. She was still rather green but considering she was only wrestling in TNA for 13 months from October 2009 to November 2010, you could definitely see an improvement by the time she left.
In an interview with Wrestling Epicenter, Lacey explained why she left TNA. “I only stopped because they were going to put the singles TNA Knockouts Title on me. They were going to make me the solo champion which meant I was going to have to head out on the road to the little podunk towns where there is only Applebees! And, I have a kid. So, I didn’t want to and I was about to get married. So I was on my way to the airport to go to the show where I was going to become champion. And I texted Dixie Carter, who is still a friend of mine, and I was like, ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t think I want to do this anymore. I don’t want to go on the road.’ I was like one of the only ones who ever was like ‘don’t make me champion! I just want to have fun. I don’t want to be the champion!”
Well, anything was possible in TNA during 2010, however, Lacey Von Erich becoming Knockouts Champion at the time would have been a very strange decision. In spite of her improvement, Lacey wasn’t ready for a singles title run.