Opinion: Pro surfing needs a McGregor!

Can you imagine a world champ with the loosest lips?

It’s qualifying season on the North Shore, and it looks like we’ll be seeing some new faces on tour for 2017. Leonardo Fioravanti, will be a welcome addition to the rookie class. Kids got an olive oil voice and Italian charm.
His flare will add spice in a league of vanilla post-heat interviews. Which albeit for Mason Ho, and Keanu Asing, I’m getting pretty tired of watching.

See, there’s this blueprint that they all follow, and which commentators like me have poked at before. The post-heat interview goes like this.

Compliment the other surfer. Say how well they’ve been surfing all week. How blessed they were to have caught the waves that they did. Thank shaper and add how good the board felt under their feet. More humility and graciousness and the part that shits me up the wall.

“I’m just taking it one heat at a time, Rosie”.

We fucking know that you can’t win the final in the first round. But they keep saying it anyways. Every event. Without fail.

Recently, I came across this interview Conor McGregor did with Joe Rogan after he clinched the light weight belt, the first time someone in the UFC has held two titles simultaneously.

“ I’ve ridiculed everyone on the roster and would like to say from the bottom of my heart and take the chance to apologize, to absolutely nobody,” said Conor McGregor.

Now, obviously fighting and surfing are different. But as athletes, they have the same job. No, not to win, but to entertain. Been that way since the gladiator days of Rome. Sure, someone can dominate, but if he or she isn’t appealing to the public’s emotions, they aren’t filling seats.

Conor McGregor is a perfect example of a people’s champion. Rags to riches. Good to his women. Obliterates his opponents. Dances around the ring and makes headlines every time a microphone passes in front of him.

What do we have?

A humble, soft spoken, John John Florence that has every right to say, “None of you guys are on my level, not even close” but he doesn’t. He’s bashful, shy, and just what the WSL wants, a clean-cut poster child at the head of his organization.

The UFC sold for 4.2 billion however, and the WSL is in the red year after year.

Maybe, if there was a brazen and outspoken champion like Andy Irons was, it would be more enticing to tune in. John John isn’t the guy, however. Years of being haole in Hawaii have ingrained respect and humility into his genes.

Gabriel Medina would fit the role of anti-hero perfectly. Shame that he’s too busy thanking god and being a cry baby to deliver anything of true entertainment value. Well, there was that one time he threatened the smallest guy on tour with a Portuguese lesson. That was pretty entertaining.

John John can still take a page out of Conor McGregor’s book by competing on the Big Wave Tour next year. With the way that he made Waimea Bay his bitch last year at The Eddie, I’d wager he would of won Puerto Escondido and Jaws easily.

If the WSL was able to hold events around his schedule, guy could win both titles in the same year, setting a new precedent that not even Slater has on his mantlepiece.