So, at this point everyone's probably heard about Hall of Fame defensive lineman Warren Sapp suffering a shark bite. If not, Sapp was diving for lobsters down in Florida on Wednesday when a shark got a hold of his arm and lit him up pretty bad (see: below).
Crazy story? Absolutely. End of story? Not so fast, my friends.
Sapp called into the Rich Eisen Show on Thursday, and the NFL Network host asked his old colleague about the details surrounding the incident. They are absolutely bananas.
Sapp was diving for lobster, something he has done for three years in a row. It involves "free diving" and holding his breath for 45 seconds, looking in holes in the coral to find lobsters (no pinchers in Florida and "you don't have to pay $39.99 for the lobster") and taking them up top.
"I go down, I grab the anchor line and I pull myself down because I got to get my naked 200-pound butt down to the bottom without expending too much energy so I can actually hold my breath for 45 seconds once I get down to the bottom," Sapp recalled. "So now I get down and I look, and I'm looking and I reach in there and I feel something soft and I pull my hand out, like uh-uh, I don't like the way that feels. So then I looked over the top from the top hole to the bottom hole and I see him and I can see the dorsal fin and the tail and I said, 'Oh that's a shark in there!'
"And I look out the side and I stick my hand back in the thing and now he's out the backside where I can snatch him out. You know me."
No. Nooooo. Nooooooooooooope. The one rule of being in the water with sharks is you let the shark do what it wants. Bother the shark, and it will mess you up. Warren wasn't aware of this rule, apparently.
"I decide I'm going to snatch him out. About 4 feet. He ain't a monster," Sapp continued. "He's a little fella. He comes from a little stock."
At this point Eisen and co-host Chris Law are borderline in shock themselves, asking Sapp if he actually reached out and grabbed the shark with his bare hands while holding his breath 15 feet below the surface.
"I did! I snatched him out with right hand and then with my left I grabbed him by the tail and then he went to taking off and then I had him and he was going straight like away from me in a straight line," Sapp said. "So I'm enjoying this moment -- I actually fell into a moment where I was up on the boat, you know with the sharks we grab up on the boat and we grab them and take pictures and point them at the camera."
You won't believe what happens next but -- and stop me if you've heard this one before -- the shark got mad!
"I look up at [my friend] JC and I turn back and I'm almost out of air at this point. Man, this sucker turns back and he grabs my shirt and my wrist, I mean right underneath where if you slice them that's the bad part, right?" Sapp said. "So he's right at that point and he globs down onto the top of my shirt and I snatch down. And luckily my shirt had the top of his teeth because that part came loose and he swung his bottom jaw to bite me and he knocked a nice little plug out."
Some might call this a plug, yes.
That's not a plug -- that's a straight-up gash. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go straight to the doctor. You know Warren didn't though.
"He got me to the gristle. It's past the white meat. I should have went to the doctor, but ... I'll be fine. I'll play doctor on myself for a week, I'll be fine," Sapp said. "I wrapped it up, put some black tape on it and went back in, Rich. I had to go get the lobster."
At this point, yes, your face should look something similar to Eisen's.
