Third log crown for Joel Tudor…
The ultra-purist and black belt grappler Joel Tudor has become the sport’s oldest-ever world champion, winning the log crown, aged forty-five, beating the Brit Ben Skinner at two-foot Malibu.
Tudor won his first log world title in 1998 in the Canary Islands and number two in Biarritz, 2004.
Before today’s final Tudor said,
“I was at a Final here decades ago, the last time the WSL decided a World Title at Malibu, and I lost in the final to Russ K (Keaulana). Winning here all these years later would be a heck of a way to top off a pretty good run. You need to have goals, it gets you up in the morning. Winning another Title off this incredible field of talent won’t be easy, but I have a lot of experience at that wave and I intend to give it everything I’ve got to pull out the event win and the Title.”
When Joel’s daddy Joe swung into frame, Marshall Bro referenced the 1994 Titles, when Joe and Hawaiian Lance Hookano beat the hell out of a kneeboarder who wouldn’t leave the contest area.
The kneelo got fifteen stitches and a separated shoulder.
Described as “a fist-flinging, hair-pulling melee would have made the Beach Boys blanch”, footage of the fight appeared in the Chris Bystrom film Longboarding is Not a Crime.
Anyway, Chad brought it up, Kaipo freaked and shut down the direction of the convo with “Oh, but we don’t talk about that.”
After his win Tudor said,
“The most proud thing of all of this is that I finally beat Kelly at something. So remember that.”
(Slater won the 2011 world title a few months shy of his fortieth birthday.)