A pro wrestler just pulled off the ultimate comeback, pinning death to the canvas after his heart stopped post-match.
Videos by Suggest
In a June 26 KCRA report, the news station brought to light a startling incident involving Northern California independent wrestler Josh Littell, known in the ring as Sir Samurai. On April 26, Littell competed in the main event of a Supreme Pro Wrestling show in Pinole, California.
After his match, he returned to the locker room, took a seat, and then blacked out. When he regained consciousness, he was on his way to the hospital. Medical professionals later informed him that he had, in fact, died that day before being revived.
“We were the main event,” Littell recalled to the outlet. “We wrestled the match, and it was fine all things considered.”
Alex Bell, Littell’s mentee and best friend, was interviewed about performing CPR on Littell after he collapsed. Bell is also an EMT outside of wrestling.
“Even seeing him collapse, I was like, ‘What are you doing? What’s going on?’”, Bell admitted. “I had him in my lap and I’m talking to him and, there was just a moment where I saw the life just leave his eyes, and I knew in that moment I knew he was gone,’ he continued. “I started compressions, asked someone around me to get an AED. The ambulance was already on the way. My first thought was, really, this isn’t going to work. I’ve done CPR many times before, and it has never worked before.”
The Pro Wrestler was “Technically Dead” for “3 to 4 Minutes”
Littell was reportedly dead for 3 to 4 minutes, though doctors are still unsure what caused his cardiac arrest. He now has a defibrillator as a precaution.
“I was told it was three to four minutes that I was technically dead,” Littell explained. “I didn’t see a light or anything, but I had a sensation of being pulled back before I woke up. The percentage of people just to survive is .00001 percent, so I shouldn’t have survived anyway, but the fact that I survived and my brain and body are still working, nobody understands how that happened.”
A month after his incident, Sir Samurai returned to the ring to announce his retirement from wrestling.
“People would always say, ‘you’re 30, you’re 40, you’re 50, how much longer can you do that?’ and I was very clear I was going to wrestle until the day I died,” Littell told the crowd, per KCRA. “I pulled that off.”
Littell had wrestled for 22 years.
After Littell’s medical emergency, all Supreme Pro wrestlers began CPR training, and SPW now keeps an AED on-site. Littell hopes other wrestling organizations will follow suit.