Former Impact Wrestling Star Going To Harvard Business School
On today's episode of The Wrestling Inc. Daily, Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman sat down with new president of SWE Fury, Lacey Von Erich. Von Erich discussed her new role and revealed another recent achievement of hers.
"Life has been really crazy and really busy," Von Erich stated. "I had my kid's teacher this morning, she said, 'Trip was saying a lot of big changes are happening in your house. Is there?' And I go, 'No, not really.' Then I was like, 'Oh, wait, yeah, I own a wrestling federation now, and he asked to come out with me once a month to different locations,' and she goes, 'Yeah, that's a big change.' It's been a really big change in my life.
"I've owned several companies but always very counting and math driven, like medical billing and an advertising company where I was the CFO. I'm definitely coming into SWE to reorganize the back office and business side of things. Right when I bought it, I got accepted into Harvard Business School."
Harvard Business School is one of the top business schools in the world and has an acceptance rate of around 12%. Von Erich spoke more on being accepted..
"I didn't know I would get in," Von Erich admitted. "I mean, honestly, if I did, I would have waited for the acceptance and thought about whether I'm going to own a big company, but it's really helping me a lot. I just actually did a really big seminar on how to write a couple papers on an entrepreneur that you admire. I had to study up on entrepreneurs, and it's put a lot of things in perspective that I'm going to implement into SWE Fury, which I'm really excited about, so it's actually working out really well. It's helping me develop my mind, which will help develop SWE."
Von Erich then went into detail on her ownership of SWE. She revealed what it was that inspired her to make this investment.
"I didn't buy the whole company. I bought a big chunk of it," Von Erich noted. "The rest of the company is owned by Tom Lance, my business partner and good friend. He owns the rest of it, and then I just do the business side of things and he helps promote and do the wrestling stuff. I went out because they (SWE) put daddy in the hall of fame, Kerry Von Erich, and so I kind of saw what they were doing. It was different than all the other wrestling federations I had gone to. It was very much an old school Sportatorium cool way of doing wrestling again.
"It felt like it was back, honestly. I was actually interested in watching it for the first time since ever, since I was a little girl. If you've been to a SWE Fury match, it's as real as it gets. I feel bad for those guys a lot. In backstage, when they're done, they are beat up, and they just do it right. It's not show-boaty production. It's genuine, good, Texas, in your face kind of wrestling, and so when I found out that one of their shareholders wanted to be bought out, I decided to do it because I really wanted to help develop this. I feel like WWE has gotten really big kind of production Broadway, and I'm like, let's bring actual real wrestling back.
"Talked to my cousins, Ross and Marshall, they're gonna be coming and joining me, so all the Von Erichs will be back together. We, as a family, are going to be doing something really big. I implemented kids camp because I felt like the generations of watching wrestling kept getting older and older, and we gotta go back. We got to get these kids. We got to get their memories and everything instilled with SWE or pro wrestling again."
Pro wrestling is currently in the midst of a boom period that is led by AEW stepping up to WWE. Von Erich spoke on the growing competition in the wrestling world and how she plans to navigate it.
"I honestly don't feel any kind of competition. I don't think anyone's doing what we're doing," Von Erich said. "I think that they're all trying to be WWE wannabes, and SWE is absolutely a different company. We are back to the basics. We're back to when granddad (Fritz) started WCCW. These guys are so genuine. They're so cool. I feel like we really, here, are wrestlers. When they have ideas and when they want to do something really cool, something that's going to make headlines, we're a yes company.
"I think that if you watch AEW and then you watch SWE, you're getting something different out of both of them. I support all the wrestling federations. Why not? I think we should all be a team. I think that we should get together and do events together. I don't think that anyone should be competition. I wish we could all come together as a community and build each other up as opposed to thinking of each other as competition."
You can find out more information about SWE by visiting SWEFury.com
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