Former WWE star Al Snow saves boy from riptide in ocean
A scary scene at a Florida beach had a happy ending thanks to a former WWE star.
Al Snow, who gained fame in the 1990s for his bizarre gimmicks and tag team success as a pro wrestler, told TMZ that he saved the life of a young boy who was being pulled out to sea by a riptide in Destin, Florida.
Snow, whose real name is Allen Sarven, said he was out in the water with a friend when he heard people yelling around the beach. He soon saw a young boy struggling to swim back to his float in rough water, with a riptide appearing to pull him away from the beach.
The lifeguard had reportedly started moving, but the 58-year-old Snow said she wasn't going to make it in time. So he started moving. Here's how he told TMZ it played out:
"I was pretty far away, but I started running through the water and trying to get over there. I made it, thank God, and, I caught him just by the arm just as a wave started pulling him even further out. If I hadn't have grabbed him, I think he'd have probably went out to sea."
"That would have been it."
"Pulled him in, told him to hold on. For a moment, I honestly thought about Shad Gaspard [who died after getting caught in a rip current while swimming], because a wave took us both under right then. I was able to stay up and hand him off to the lifeguard and I made my way back across to my friend and we went up on the beach and I felt like I was about to collapse. I was exhausted."
"The mom ran out in the water and she grabbed her son and she was crying and she said 'Thank you.'"
Snow said what he did wasn't "anything that anybody else wouldn't have done."
He told TMZ that the mother and boy came up to him again while they were on the beach to thank him again. The mother reportedly said that the son told her ,"The bodybuilder saved me," which Snow took as a compliment.
Neither Snow nor the boy was hurt in the incident, though Snow said the boy was "really scared, really shaken up at first."
All in all, a pretty wholesome story for a guy who spent his pay-per-view time playing a schizophrenic that enjoyed talking to a dislodged mannequin head in the ring.
