Under The Learning Tree – Part 1 Of An Exclusive Interview With WWE Legend And OVW Co-Owner Allen Sarven (Al Snow)

Recently, I had the honour to chat with WWE and ECW legend, and OVW co – owner, Allen Sarven aka Al Snow. In this first part of the interview, we discussed where his love for the wrestling business started, how he broke in and his career as Al Snow.

Born in 1963, in Lima, Ohio, you grew up in a great time for wrestling with the territories. Was wrestling something you fell in love with an early age? If so, who did you look up to?

“I did yes. When I was very young, I fell in love with it. I can name off names but it’s highly unlikely that anyone knew who they were (chuckling), I mean they were stars but to this day you may not remember who they were. “Big Time Wrestling, that was the one in Ohio.”

“Ed Farhat, was the original Sheikh, and he owned the territory rights to Michigan, Ohio, a bit of western Pennsylvania, northern Kentucky and eastern Indiana. So, he had a fairly large regional operation and, probably outside of the north-east of the United States, one of the more financially viable areas of the country.”

“However, when I was around ten or eleven, The Sheikh’s, Ed Farhat, operation went under so we didn’t have any wrestling in the area. Then, when I was around fourteen- years old, cable television was invented or started to go across the country, which really dates me and shows how old I am haha. There was one national television network, which was TBS (Turner Broadcasting System) and on Saturday night I was flipping through the channels and there’s Georgia Championship Wrestling and I was like “Oh My God! That’s it, that’s what I wanna do, I want to be a wrestler when I grow up!”.

“In terms of guys I looked up to in Georgia Championship Wrestling, there was Dusty Rhodes, The Masked Superstar, Mr Wrestling II, Ric Flair, Austin Idol was awesome, Tony Atlas cause his physique and everything was so impressive, and Tommy Rich. Now, before Hulk Hogan became a national phenomenon as far as wrestling, there was Tommy Rich and he doesn’t get the credit he deserves because here, in the United States, with the reach of WTBS, he was the real first national babyface superstar on a national level.

“There was also Buzz Sawyer, who in real life was a complete lunatic (chuckling), and then it’s funny because with the advent and development of cable television I started getting access to not only Georgia Championship Wrestling but also the MSG (Madison Square Garden) network and late night Saturday night wrestling. We then got Memphis Wrestling on Saturday mornings, so I got to see those guys, and for a period of time on TBS we started getting Bill Watt’s promotion out of Louisiana.”

“So, it was getting to see all these guys that I would only see and be aware of or see anything about through reading magazines like PWI (Pro Wrestling Illustrated) and ‘The Wrestler’, which were the only magazines you got to see these people in or you’d hear about them. It was different styles, different takes, different presentations and it was so exciting to get to see all those different things.”

You began training to be a wrestler in 1982, what made you want to break into the business and who were your mentors?

“I started in ’81 and had my first match on May 11th 1982. I always thought it was May 22nd 1982, I don’t know why, and then somebody sent me an actual copy of the poster from the event and it was May 11th 1982 and I was like “Oh shoot, I’ve been saying May 22nd all these years” (laughing).”

“What made it worse (on difficulty breaking into the business) was whoever brought you in at that time, you now carried their name, their reputation. So, now, if you did anything wrong, it directly affected them and their ability to make a living, which meant people were very reticent to do that and take responsibility for you.”

“I’ve told people in the past, it was easier to be a made-man in the Mafia, than it was to become a wrestler back then, and especially at fifteen/ sixteen years old. I tried from fourteen on, to try and get somebody to train me, to get in the wrestling business, and they just waved me off. Finally, when I was eighteen, I was able to con my way in and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

“I had tried lots of times, but I’d met a guy who was, kind of, going into semi – retirement and was wanting to start promoting his own shows and his name was Jim Lancaster. The first time I met him he told me no and just threw up off, but then fate would have it that we was going to run a show and he had reached out to another regional promoter, Dick Afflis or Dick ‘The Bruiser’. Dick owned all of the Indiana, southern Illinois territories and he was part owner with Vern Gagne in Chicago. Dick had a son – in – law who’s name was Spike Huber, and he was VERY popular in the mid-west area as a babyface/ good guy and he was an attraction.”

“So, Jim had booked him (Huber) on this show and Dick pulled Huber from the show and sent him to St. Louis,for Sam Muchnick, without telling Jim. Jim got upset, and decided we wanted his own crew of wrestlers, that he didn’t have to go to someone else and ask for but instead he could control, and that was how he changed his attitude and was willing to train me.”

“I got lucky because if Dick ‘The Bruiser’ hadn’t yanked Spike Huber, I’d of had to go find somebody else willing to train me. Also, I’m not going to lie, there were times when I didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of but I remember having so much fun and I’d go do it again.”

In your career, you’ve had gimmicks such as Avatar and being one – half of the New Rockers. However, in 1997, the Al Snow character is reborn and debuts in WWE, two years after first seen in ECW. Where did the idea for Al Snow and Head come from and was it meant to be a play on words?

“Actually, it was never meant to be a double entendre, I knew it was but it was never meant to be. If you notice, each time when I would say “What does everybody want!? What does everybody need!? What does everybody love!?” I’d get angrier because I’m getting jealous of the Head. I should be the thing that everybody wants and needs and loves, and after all those years of trying, I still wasn’t as it was the Head now that was the star, not me.”

“I was working towards laying the groundwork to where I would turn on the Head because I’d get jealous and, just like you’d see with other wrestlers, where I’d jump them in the back and gain an edge. I kind of did a little bit of it where I wrestled the Head in matches, so yeah, I knew it was a play on words but in my head it was about me being jealous of the Head being the star, not me haha.“

“In terms of the idea, I came up with it as I was trying to show that I had had a nervous breakdown because if you were a fan and watched me on WWF, as Leif Cassidy then someone who is that happy all the time, must be mentally unstable. If you were a fan in ECW, where you’ve know of me from the tape trading, and all of that, then you know how long I’ve been doing it (wrestling) so anyone who’s been doing it as long as I’d been doing it, you’d eventually think they’d get frustrated and have a nervous breakdown or something.”

“So, I was reading a book on abnormal psychology and trying to do things that would exhibit that I was losing it, but nothing clicked or never really connected. Then, I read a book about a lady who had schizophrenia and what they call Transference Disorder, where, wherever she heard the voices from, she thought that they or it were crazy, not her. After reading that, I thought ‘Well, that’s interesting” and found a Styrofoam head one night, in the back of the ECW arena, and thought I’m going to start carrying the Head to the ring and talk or interact with it and then I’m going to blame the Head if I lose.”

“I was the weirdest thing, because I would wrestle and the audience would cheer for me the entire match, I’d lose and throw a fit to where I beat the crap out of the Head and they’d boo me and like, you know, just turn on me and get angry because I was beating up the Head. I thought “Hmm ok”, so then just kept doing it and the thing that finally took it over the top was, a couple weeks right before the November to Remember PPV, I worked with Paul Diamond and he went to give me a gore buster but my arm caught up underneath me and it completely dislocated my shoulder.”

“As a result, I couldn’t wrestle but that was a blessing because, God bless his heart, Chris Candido kind of politicked for me to get a pre-tape in the locker room where I was in the locker room with everybody, who were completely normal, and I was arguing with the Head because I’d believed ‘they’ (the Head) had stooged me off that I was injured and couldn’t be on the PPV.”

“That was the one thing everybody talked about the next day, that vignette, and then Paul (Heyman) was like “You just go do vignettes”. Literally, I think I am one of the few people that beat, probably, no one to get a World title match and headline a PPV, and the one thing that got me over was those vignettes where I would be talking to the Head, making jokes and, you know, letting out the frustration that I had at the time.”

“So, thanks to the grace of God and a plastic head, it worked and people got into it.”

Do you think a lot of that frustration came from real life experiences with the gimmicks you had been given despite the talent you had and the mind you have for the business?

“Oh yeah. I mean, for one, they’re gimmicks and if they’re not gimmicks then they’re characters, and characters don’t work. A gimmick is who you really are in aspect of your personality, turned way up, because an audience has to believe in who you are and if they believe in who you are, they’ll believe anything you do.”

“Knowing what I know now, I could have made those opportunities work better and took more advantage of those than I did but, unfortunately, I was too caught up and lost in my own frustrations.

You are known as ‘The best kept secret in wrestling’. Why do you think that is? Only ask as you were super-over and are still considered, to this day, one of the best minds in wrestling and highly respected.

“That was a moniker, or reputation, I’d developed several years prior to going to the WWF (WWE) at the time, or Smokey Mountain Wrestling too. I had that reputation of being known as the ‘best kept secret’ and the biggest reason was because I didn’t have a persona that you could sit there and describe to me, or anyone, in a sentence or less.”

“When you think about all of the wrestlers you really like that are stars, that are major attractions, each and every one of them have ONE singular thing in common, and that is your ability to turn to your friends and family and go “You’ve got to go watch this person because they are A, B, C, D” to encapsulate that persona. That way, you can tell people; who this person is, what they stand for, what they’ll do to win and what they’ll do not to lose, all in 5 or 6 words or less. That’s what makes somebody a star. That’s what makes them an attraction.”

“People were always telling me how good I was and how adept I was, but the one thing that was always missing was that I did not have that identifiable, definable, describable persona. You know, I’d go to the ring as a heel, I was very adept at being a heel and leading matches, and could make a babyface look better than they actually were. In doing so, I’d still be able to generate enough ‘heat’, to the point where they would bring me back in different places to continue to do the same thing.”

“However, I did not have that definable character. Al Snow, ok, what is Al Snow? Well I couldn’t tell you (in the early days) but what really led to the success was Al Snow, oh yeah that crazy guy that carries a head around then BOOM. You know exactly who I am and what I’m about, you know what mean, and now there’s an interest, there’s a curiosity, because everyone can relate “This guy is completely insane! He talks to the head and believes it’s alive and he can heard it”. Boom, we’re done. You know what I mean. Now, you’ve created an interest to where people want to watch.”

Look out for Part 2 of this exclusive interview on Bodyslam.net, via the website at www.bodyslam.net or give us a follow on X at @BodyslamNet.

I would like to thank Mr Sarven for taking the time out to do this exclusive interview and you can watch the hit series ‘Wrestlers’ on Netflix, I highly recommend it.