Tony Gonzalez is on pace to be among the best, if not the best, tight ends of all time. Tight end is a football position and any resemblance to his ass is purely coincidence- and no, I'm not going to look.
Gonzalez was eating dinner in Hunnington Beach with his wife, his brother and his baby daughter when a patron at the next table started choking. This wasn't just heavy coughing and watery eyes choking, this was the everyone freezes and/or freaks-out kind of choking, like in the movies.
The choking man, Ken Hunter, had a piece of meat lodged in his throat and his dining companion started yelling, "He can't breathe, he can't breathe."
Gonzalez, who has never been trained in the Heimlich maneuver, realized that nobody else was going to act so he "jumped to his feet,
wrapped his long, sinewy arms around the stricken man and began to
squeeze. After a few seconds, the meat popped out and Hunter, a
shipping company manager in Huntington Beach, recovered."
After the incident Hunter told the media, "Tony saved my life."
The story was so big that Gonzalez received a letter from President Bush (he can write?) and was even approached by Barack Obama at a campaign stop to discuss the heroics.
From the NFL:
"I
never anticipated what an impact this would have," said Gonzalez, who
arrived in River Falls on Thursday for the Chiefs' training camp.
"But
now, looking back, I think with all the negative stuff that's in the
media these days about NFL players and athletes in general, when a
story like that comes out, it really grabs people's attention. I know
it was an incredible situation the way it came down. I believe things
happen for a reason. Hopefully, there'll be a domino affect."
Chiefs president Carl Peterson was traveling in Europe when his star tight end made news off the football field.
"Nothing
surprises me about the abilities of Tony Gonzalez," Peterson said.
"Thank God he was there, in the right place at the right time and
reacted the way he did. The story was all over the world."
Shortly afterward, Peterson happened to run into Steve Tisch, part owner of the New York Giants, in France.
"We hugged each other and right away he said, `Hey, how about your tight end saving that guy's life?"'
Good for Tony Gonzalez and lucky for Ken Hunter, kind of pathetic for everyone else in the restaurant.
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