I think there should be and is some leeway in the rules so that the person in charge can make a ruling in a spot like this. Yeah his cards hit the muck but if its clear his intention was to call then i think its essential that you can over-rule the hand being automatically dead and call it live. Im fine with his hand being ruled live and have seen rulings like that many times. Similarily ive also seen the hand called dead many times aswell.

While i like the initial ruling, I dont know what the dude was smoking after that. The cards should be retrieved from the muck and the hand played out. Letting the guy basically play with 2 wild Aces is so wrong. So wrong that I find it hard to believe it even happened.