EXCLUSIVE: How The Owners Of A Welsh Football Club Ended Up Buying OVW

Ohio Valley Wrestling will soon have new ownership following the announcement that Morley Sports Management (MSM) will acquire a majority stake in OVW from May 1, 2025. The pro wrestling promotion's current ownership group, which includes Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg and is headed by Matt Jones, will retain a minority stake in OVW and remain as advisors to the new ownership and board of OVW.

MSM are the owners of Cymru Premier side Haverfordwest County AFC, who are currently third in the division and competed in the Europa Conference League in the 2023/24 season.

The owners of a Welsh football club would be considered unlikely candidates to purchase a pro wrestling promotion, but future OVW CEO Rob Edwards revealed exclusively to Cultaholic's Tom Campbell how the deal to become the majority owners of Ohio Valley Wrestling came together.

"We always had the ambition to replicate that and build a multi-club, multi-sport business where we can share IP, share experience, share partnerships, and add value to everything that we get involved in. We've been actively looking for the last 18 months really for the next opportunity. We've had many come across our path, but generally within sport there's a reason why a sporting business is available for takeover, and for us the risk profile was just too high. The next business that we wanted to take on had to be the right one and we see OVW as being the right one....This is probably something that will open up MSM to a bigger audience because at the moment not many people know who MSM are as we're effectively really only focused on building Haverfordwest in Wales. The time is right now to expand and OVW is a massive opportunity," Jones said.

While MSM were looking to expand, Edwards spoke to a broker in the United States who revealed that OVW were looking for input.

"[He] introduced me to OVW. I hadn't seen the documentary at this point, I was familiar with OVW and the talent that have come through over the years, being a WWE fan as a youngster. I reached out to Matt [Jones]. He responded really quickly. He said, 'Look, the timing is perfect for us.' This was probably August-September last year."

This led to a meeting between Edwards and Jones at an Indian restaurant in London a couple of weeks later and talks continued over the next few months.

"We kind of got to the point where I went to Kentucky in December to meet everybody and get a feel for the place. It was at that point that a lot of things clicked in terms of what’s needed, where we can fill that gap. For me, it lined up really, really well. Watching a couple of shows as well, 13-year-old Rob Edwards was having the time of his life sat in the Davis Arena watching these guys go at it. It was an incredible experience, I had a great time, and came away with just really wanting to take the opportunity. So then it was just a case of over the next few months just fleshing out what that looked like," Edwards added. 

Talks continued to be positive and Edwards met with Jones in Amsterdam, Netherlands on Friday, April 4 to finalise the takeover.

Edwards confirmed to Cultaholic that Al Snow will remain an integral part of OVW, hopefully for years to come, and MSM are not planning to scrap the promotion's weekly show, OVW Live.

In the short term, though, MSM are looking to decide upon OVW's identity and introduce improvements to the production of OVW shows.

"If we're going to take this further afield, I think we do need some investment in the quality of the production, tweak the professionalism of it a little bit, and I think everyone would be completely on board with that. We want to keep the shows going, we want to keep having that unique difference to other promotions and we want to have that opportunity to bring awareness to OVW on a weekly basis. It's our job to make sure we can give the guys the best chance to be able to make the best product that they can so we can fulfil the bigger visions that we've got," Edwards continued.

"First and foremost, we need to know what OVW is and that's before we start to look at partnering with other wrestling organisations. We need to know what we can offer them and that's something we need to work out ourselves, and something that is underway now with the identity of OVW. Again, it's the weekly live show, the academy that OVW has in place, which I think we can develop further, and we want to take the academy reach internationally and try and attract people from further afield. That then creates that emotive tie to TV and media abroad."

Founded in 1993 by "Nightmare" Danny Davis, OVW were WWE's top developmental territory from 2000 until 2008. OVW alumni include the likes of John Cena, Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton, Batista, and Shelton Benjamin. OVW Live airs weekly on TrillerTV+.

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