Chavo Guerrero Discusses Training Zac Efron For Role As Kevin Von Erich In The Iron Claw

Nearly a week remains until "The Iron Claw" officially hits theaters for the world to learn more about the story of The Von Erich family. Former WWE star Chavo Guerrero Jr. served as a consultant for the biopic and will also be seen portraying The Sheik.

Ahead of the film's release, Guerrero spoke to Chris Van Vliet of "Insight" about how he approaches training actors how to wrestle.

"Wrestling creates a bond with people. Being on the road, traveling on the road, being in the trenches, we call it, with other wrestlers. But also, when I'm training actors, there's this trust that we have to build with each other. I have to get theirs, and when that happens you just create this bond. I think that I have this bond with all these actors. I know them as people, not just Zac Efron, the actor, or Jeremy Allen White, 'The Bear.' I know him as the guy in the ring as this, 'Let's do this,' type of thing. It's pretty cool to be able to get that rapport with people."

"The Iron Claw" stars Zac Efron as Kevin Von Erich. As part of his consulting role, Guerrero was tasked with training Efron how to wrestle for seven weeks.

"You squish in as much as you can and whatever they can absorb," Guerrero said. "Every actor is different. But, you know, Zac was able to absorb a lot so we kind of sped him through it. But I threw a lot at him. And when you're creating the scenes, there's a lot of things you have to take into consideration."

Guerrero noted all of the considering factors including the script, what the director wants, how they want to film it, and the limitations of the actors.

"Once I can get them to give me trust and just know that I'm never going to put them in harm's way — safety is the number one important thing for me," Guerrero continued. "Of course, we have to get the shot, but at the same time, if I ever have a hurt actor, it's bad. So the number one thing is safety. And I won't let them do anything that I am sure they can't repeat 100 times. It's one of those things, you know, there's fluke accidents and freak accidents, things that happen."

The former WWE Tag Team Champion shared his analogy that he tells actors they already know how to wrestle but they just don't know it yet. In the world of acting, they have to convince the studio and audience that they're better, taller, prettier than what they are, and he feels that it's not much different in wrestling.

Guerrero also explained that he first met Efron when they met in the ring to start training. After nearly a dozen sessions in the ring, Guerrero helped Efron ease into it like showing a child the waves of the ocean. However, he does feel like there's an "eighty percent" difference in training an actor how to wrestle versus training a wrestler.

"In 'Iron Claw,' we filmed entire matches," Guerrero recalled. "Sean Durkin, the director, really wanted to get the feel of a real match, and then pick and choose what he wanted. There's other productions that I'm shooting like 30 seconds or 10 seconds or sometimes they want one move. But Sean wanted these wrestling sequences. So, if you see one of the opening matches, that happens to be me and Zac. That's probably a 10 to 12-minute match. And we filmed that probably 10 or 15 times."

"So I tell the actors that go, 'Sometimes this is easier than what we do in WWE, but sometimes it's much harder.' Because I can go 20 minutes in a match at WrestleMania. Great, let's do it on a pay-per-view. But I'm 20 minutes and I'm done. I go, 'You're doing this three to four to five or 10-minute match 10 to 15 times you're doing over four hours, and then you're taking a break to go to lunch and you're coming back and filming it again.' So it's very difficult. By the end of a couple of those matches that Zac had, he was spent. You couldn't tell in the match. But afterward, he even came to me and he goes, 'Man, this is maybe one of the hardest days I've ever had on set. This is really hard.' Well, yeah."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Insight" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.