“Now I’m speaking my mind and the truth WSL… I think Kelly (Slater) and WSL burned the tape!”
The Hawaiian surfer Johnny Boy Gomes, often cited as the best power surfer on the eighties and nineties, has slammed the WSL for ignoring his wild 1997 Pipeline Masters win in a recent best-of list.
“I’ve been keeping this in for a long time,” writes Gomes, “bcus I wanted to be cool and humble for my O’hana but now, I’m speaking my mind and the truth WSL. I can’t believe I’m the first guy in surfing history to make it from the trials to win it and still WSL didn’t even pick it as their top past Pipeline Masters winners list. We know the truth. I think Kelly (Slater) and WSL burned the ’97 Pipeline Masters tape… I’ve Neva Ask For Anything From Anyone but Let’s Do This wsl! Pipeline Heritage Heat Against Anyone or Maybe Even A Wildcard, Next Year.”
Gomes, who is fifty-seven and a grandfather, is described by Matt Warshaw as a man of “near-superhuman strength” and riding “in a tightly clenched weightlifter’s squat, with a ramrod straight back, leveraging his board into one massive turn after the other, and often riding deep inside the tube.”
In 1999, Gomes won fifty gees in the Backdoor Shootout, the biggest winner’s cheque in surfing at that point, and placed third in the Eddie that same year.