It was more or less a "fluke" that Mathews resident Will Worley wound up as a contestant on CMT’s hit-show "Redneck Island."

"I had recently trimmed down and lost 50 pounds to go from a power lifter’s look to a bodybuilder’s look," Worley said. "I was searching for something on Google and saw a casting call for Redneck Island (Season Two). I thought ‘What the heck, I grew up in Gloucester, my mom is from the Guinea circle and my dad from the hills of Tennessee,’ so I decided to apply and just see what happens."

He said he kept telling everyone that he was going to be on that show and have a beer with its host, Stone Cold Steve Austin, a former wrestler.

The show selects 14 red, white and blue-collared Americans out of the South, far away from cold beer, and drops them in a tropical paradise where they compete for $100,000. Austin guides the contestants through a number of mental and physical challenges designed to highlight the group’s streng...