page_title: Al Snow
section_title: Hardcore Championship pursuits (1998–2000)
hierarchical_section_title: Al Snow / Professional wrestling career / Return to the WWF/E (1998—2008) / Hardcore Championship pursuits (1998–2000)
caption_attribution_description: English: Al Snow shakes his tradmark "Head" before a match in then-Newcastle Arena. Originally taken April 3, 1999 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
context_page_description: Allen Ray Sarven is an American professional wrestler, actor, and professional wrestling trainer and promoter better known by his ring name Al Snow. He is best known for his in-ring work in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, Extreme Championship Wrestling, and World Wrestling Entertainment. Snow has also held various backstage positions for professional wrestling promotions. Snow worked as a road agent for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling from 2010 to 2017 and has owned Ohio Valley Wrestling since 2018.
context_section_description: Sarven was then recalled to the company, where he continued his gimmick of talking to "Head," creating some of the more memorable humorous skits of "The Attitude Era" including fighting himself in a hardcore match (which he won by putting himself through a table) and his short lived comedy tag team with Steve Blackman.
  Snow received some mainstream publicity in 1999 when Wal-Mart pulled his action figure from their shelves after Sabrena Parton, a professor at Kennesaw State University, complained that "Head" was a "decapitated woman's head" that sent an inappropriate message about violence towards women. Parton was quoted as saying "What kind of message would this toy send children about brutalization of women?" Sarven used the story as part of an angle in which the controversy caused Al Snow to suffer from depression.
  At WrestleMania XV, Snow lost a WWF Hardcore Championship triple threat match involving Hardcore Holly and Billy Gunn. During the summer of 1999, at the conclusion of a storyline where Head was impaled with a spike by Prince Albert, Snow replaced Head with a chihuahua named Pepper, who he claimed talked to him.  A variety of segments were broadcast showing Snow's interactions with the dog, including bringing Pepper to the ring to either "participate" in matches or be held by the broadcast team.  This led to a storyline where Big Boss Man kidnapped Pepper. Boss Man agreed to return the dog if Snow defeated him in a match for the Hardcore title; however, after losing the match he reneged and kept the dog. Later, in a segment on SmackDown, Boss Man invited Snow to his hotel room to discuss the situation, before serving Snow dinner which was then revealed to be Pepper. (In a 2008 interview, Snow said that this angle had been based on a story of Mr. Fuji having done something similar with a neighborhood dog.)  The feud culminated at a "Kennel from Hell" match at Unforgiven, which consisted of a regular cage which was surrounded by a Hell in a Cell structure, with "a trained pack of wild dogs" in between the two, and the objective was to escape both cages without being attacked by the dogs. Al Snow won the match.
caption: Al Snow with "Head" in 1999.
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