A Netflix show fans hailed as ‘amazingly intimate’ and a show for the ‘whole family’ has quietly been scrapped after just one series.
In late 2023, documentary maker Greg Whitely treated fans to Wrestlers, which gave an peek behind the scenes at how a professional wrestling company was really run.
It still has a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but Al Snow – whose promotion OVW (Ohio Valley Wrestling) was the focus of the series – has exclusively told Metro that a second season is officially off the table for Netflix.
”There were certainly talks. They had an option for a second season up until last September, and they just never took the option,’ he explained.
‘[It] just ticked past. There was no fanfare or anything of that nature. It just quietly moved on.’
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The 62-year-old star heard on the grapevine that there had been some behind the scenes moves ‘to do basically the same format with more established brands’.
Indeed, filmmaker Whitely went onto work on series featuring the likes of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, while Netflix launched WWE Unreal this week, which gives fans an intimate look behind the curtain of the worldwide juggernaut.
Al, who wrestled for WWE from 1995 to 2008, insisted the new WWE series is ‘good for everybody’, while the door isn’t shut on OVW reviving Wrestlers in another way.
‘From what I understand, we have the option to have a second season, if we wish. We just would do it with a different streaming service than Netflix,’ he added.
Confirmation Wrestlers isn’t returning to the streamer will be a blow to viewers, who had hoped for a second season after getting hooked on the original run.
‘This wrestling documentary is amazing! It made me cry because I felt the hard work of all the wrestlers and everyone at OVW,’ wrote Charish Herida on Google Reviews.
‘Great show the whole family can watch together. Fantastic binge worthy series,’ added Kelly iztheBest, while William Luckett said: ‘Greg Whitely makes amazingly intimate portrayals that you can tell are authentic and not overproduced.’
And Simon Manley said: ‘There are heavy emotional moments in here as well as heavy bumps and hats off to [them], there are some real cinematic moments here too. Greg Whiteley has created an absolute gem of a series that wrestling fans and non-wrestling fans alike will love.’
Thankfully for OVW fans, the company is still going strong after being bought out by UK-based sports agency Morley Sports Management (MSM), who are launching a new initiative to give athletes in football, rugby and other sports a launchpad into wrestling.
MSM founder and CEO Rob Edwards said: ‘We absolutely know the talent is there in the UK – particularly in football – and the opportunities we OVW provide could give so many sports people another chance.’
But Al warned that he’s seen lots of athletes come into wrestling without realising the ‘physical exertion and amount of commitment’ required.
He added: ‘A lot of them are like, “You know what? That’s it. I’m done.”‘
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