Al Snow Shares Trepidation About Pulling Back The OVW Curtain In Netflix's Wrestlers
Throughout his several-year run in charge of Ohio Valley Wrestling, and even before that during his time as a wrestler in WWE, Al Snow has never been shy about expressing his old school, traditionalist pro wrestling viewpoint. Given that mindset, Snow and OVW would seem like strange bedfellows for the Netflix docuseries "Wrestlers," which pulls back the curtain on OVW in a way that would go against Snow's beliefs. In an interview with Wrestling Inc. promoting the new show, which premiered September 13, Snow revealed he didn't mind pulling back the curtain in this case, believing it could help OVW business and maybe create some new fans. To no one's surprise, however, Snow admitted he had some trepidation of giving wrestling fans this much of a behind-the-scenes glimpse.
"Yeah, of course," Snow said. "I've used this as an example of ... It's like 'The Wizard of Oz.' When you watched The Wizard of Oz and everything was magic and exciting and colorful and then you get to the end and you find out it was just some stumpy old man when you pulled the curtain back pulling knobs and twisting the levers and pushing the dials and buttons and pulling chains, basically orchestrating everything, and then the magic was gone. And I feel like sometimes our quest to really know things backstage that we really don't need to know to enjoy the show breeds familiarity and familiarity breeds contempt and it takes away a little bit of the joy of just being a fan."
"Some fans, I think they become so passionate about whatever they are watching ... that they feel like they have to know more so that they don't feel like they're a fan, that they're actually a part of a business or an industry that they're not really a part of, which then now develops into becoming a critic of that business or industry that they once just loved for the pure love of it ... now they have certain evaluations that have to be met."
Stay tuned to Wrestling Inc. for the full Q&A with Al Snow. Wrestlers is now available to stream on Netflix.