The name calling has been fierce!
The Zeke Lau and John John Florence affair is old news now, already picked over by the best in the game. In case you were camping in the woods and missed, Zeke Lau surfed against John John Florence in an early round heat at Bells and paddled very aggressively, throwing John John off his game and winning. Commentary was instant and harshly against Zeke. “Fuck that guy…” “rude” “no place for that in surfing…” etc.
An amateur sociologist could have observed before easily declaring, “Well, surfers are racist. Any time a person of brown skin (Zeke, Brazilians) pushes back the establishment (blonde, blue) reacts by reminding the offender he isn’t altogether welcome.” But surfers are too vacuous to be racist. So what? Why the near unanimous derision of Zeke Lau?
For answers we must travel back to Torquay where ancient grudge breaks to new mutiny. And what is this ancient grudge? Jocks vs. surfers of course! Nearly every comment I’ve read this week mirror this one here from Storm Boy. “Zeke is the worst kind of bully, an over-swole knucklehead jock without the guts to intimidate off his own back, instead paying a grown man to tell him who is weak enough to push (paddle) over.”
Over-swole knucklehead jock.
Jocks vs. surfers, fighting in the Garden of Eden, fighting in olde Egypt, fighting during the Industrial Revolution and fighting at Bells. Where did the enmity first begin? Who knows but it is certainly eternal. The jock with his organization and team muscle head. The surfer with his uniqueness and individuality and lack of roolz.
All fine and good but I am still confused. The viciousness directed toward Zeke Lau for surfing like a jock, for being a jock, seemed… uninformed. Hasn’t the World Surf League been pushing and pushing and pushing “surfing” into “sport” since its most recent remake? Don’t more and more and more professional surfers see themselves as “athletes?”
All Zeke did was complete the circle and then you drew and quartered him.
So which do you want? Is professional surfing a sport or is it a gentleman’s game?
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You ought to learn how to write a coherent sentence.
I Agree
Zeke will most likely never beat John John in a man on man heat.. Don’t poke the bum fluff.
zeke is just jelly.
i cant wait for zeke’s next web clip doing pushups and surfing town
funny we were on the stairs at Bells this Easter Comp , and overheard some of the coaches/ex pro’s , who surfed against Curren and said he was one of the worst hasslers , paddle under you and block you .
Zeke is a Hawaiian , and yeah a lot of chest beating going on , but so was Sunny G, talent and humility , hmmmmm . a Once great American Sportman was quoted as saying ,” humility is for those who have little or no ability!”
The heat needs to begin with a paddle battle first in the lineup gets priority.
I find good for the sport the war like approaching in the line up, and all that shit of competitive-agressive behaviour, etcetera.. But there is needed to bring up a new rule avoiding physical contact with the opponent like in NBA e.g.,; you can do everything you want in order to win but if you don’t respect the physical space of the other you get interference. In surfing that’s a basic rule: nobody can’t touch my fucking board!!!
*double negative…
No it’s not, it’s called competition. Whining in a post heat interview and practically letting someone clown you like that is pathetic.
Fuggenhell!
Surfing is the only thing I’ve ever seen where it’s encouraged to be more soft during a competition than just playing around. John John actually complained in his post heat interview and people are defending him. That’s crazy to me.
so, you played what sport in high school?
Basketball, does it really matter? Are you really gonna act like people don’t paddle over each other and act aggressive in your local lineup every time it gets good. John John grew up at pipeline it’s wild to think he has never dealt with aggression before.
when you sit as deep as he does and take off as late as he does, all you have to worry about is shoulder hoppers. (you shouldn’t have admitted the hoops thing, did you start surfing in college?)
Where I live the waves aren’t great everyday so if you don’t have a second hobby things can get pretty boring. But if it makes u feel better I didn’t start surfing till I was 14 and I do generally disagree with a lot of the ideas around surfing.
Fla? you related to Dwayne Makki?
No and no
oh well, sorry i accused you of being an adult learner. that wasn’t right.
All good I try not to take offense to anything posted on the internet.
John John is just lucky he was born in this era and didn’t have to surf against men who took bites out of the rails of their opponents. Sad that this is the most interesting thing that’s happened in pro surfing since Pottz bear-hugged a very surprised Kelly before a heat.
Zeke’s actions were within the rules ,JJF could have easily taken another tack after being hassled , and blown Zeke out of the water with his surfing but he was rattled that someone would hassle him , haha, when the history of competitive surfing is riddled with way worse than a bit of argy/bargy…….
once upon a time , at Bells Michael Peterson pulled Peter Drouyns leg in a final , so Peter went to the beach after the final grabbed a huge chunk of wood and waited for MP to come out of the water and yeah he would have bashed him in front of the whole crowd Easter Monday crowd.
Fast forward 10 years Michael Ho and Rabbit best mates come down to Bells together , make a semi final against each other Mr Ho is caught putting Vaseline on Rabs board…
Lets go thru the list of absolute hassling arseholes in surfings history………….BL /Dooma/Curren/Potz/Sunny/Adriano/Kelly /Andy/Hopgoods/Parko/Ho/OOccy/Medina …….all absolute cunts when in heats against each other , and they all won world titles ……it’s called competition!
Nice guys get Fucked!
How many surf Juno’s are willing to cover that story? Wasn’t it an Outside magazine journalist that outed AI’s cause of death. The brands have all these guys afraid of loosing their bro deal..
call it a bro deal but its the only deal. Outside isn’t running a surf story without a corpse.
Reason for the rage is WSL is going for tennis theme. Tennis players don’t go bobby martinez. Ok they may go rockstar and overhead smash their rackets, so an occasional rabbit humping, huntington hopping on a rock to self destruction is allowed.
John John has adjusted to the new tennis olympic style, but seems like others haven’t. Go Australian Open! French Open. US Open. WSL will change its name to Wimbeldon Surf League. They took out Hawaii because no tennis tourneys in the Sammich Isles.
But the days of Sunny and Bobby are gone, and so is pulling a Sig Sauer P226s (tek 9’s aren’t as water proof) and / or diving knife and brandishing them. Or pushing like Da Cat . . . or this girl.
https://vimeo.com/105606249
Mick’s not a jock at all.
It’s time for more JJF e Zeke Lau
The softly e sugar candy JJF and the tough, brave, Zeke Lau
Look at the eyes of JJF!!! Sparkling, shining!!!
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Surely you’re not suggesting that when there’s no referee people should be more rude/aggressive ?
I’m saying that when people are surfing for fun guys are often (always?) being aggressive and territorial when they compete for waves. But when two guys are actually competing for money, for their livelihood, we expect them to be “sporting”?
Makes no damn sense
Uh, uh, uh. Thug Life. Ugga ugga ugga. Yo yo yo. (Random grunting noises)
The top 5% get 60% of sponsorship cash so if you are in the back 16 of talent you only have one choice to make a buck and stay on tour and that is to train hard, have a strategy and be ruthless in execution. Zeke perform d that beautifully and I want to see more of it, fuck the top 5make them earn their money and add some colour and fresh talking points to the sport.
If the roles were reversed, would John John’s conduct have been worthy of a Cook of the Day Instagram post?
People up in arms with “there goes whitey being whitey again!”
haole seems to come to mind here