Mysteries abound!

The biggest surf news of the week has been the mass exodus from the upcoming Pipe Masters by every single good surfer on the World Surf League’s Championship Tour. John John Florence gone. Kelly Slater not showing. Gabriel Medina, Italo Ferreira, Filipe Toledo staying away. Stephanie Gilmore no more.

The event, which has long been the most prestigious in all of surfing, has created unforgettable heroes. Gerry Lopez, Rory Russell, Michael Ho, Jamie O’Brien, Andy Irons etc. And the thought of today’s surfers turning down an opportunity to Pipeline or Backdoor to fortune or fame has surf fans scratching their heads in disbelief.

Why?

Wherefore?

Well, speculation initially fell upon the World Surf League itself. As you know, the Pipe Masters used to end the Championship Tour until last year when it was decided that it should kick it off instead. Problem? January is the better time to begin but Vans, owner of the Pipe Masters name and window, did not want to make it in January forcing the WSL to rebrand their offering the Pipeline Pro. Vans then teamed up with Stab to create the “new and improved” Pipe Masters, an invitational specialty event that scores Pipeline, Backdoor plus airs at Ehukai.

With the WSL stars dropping out, certainly Santa Monica was either fining or disallowing participation.

Sources within the League’s office declare, definitively, that not to be the case. That the Pipe Masters has been sanctioned and any and all are welcome to play.

More noggin itching.

Much confusion.

And so, as a surf journalist, I reached out to a in-the-know industry source who has been around the game for decades and seen many iterations of professional surfing. The wizened soul who prefers to remain unnamed opined, “The Pipe Masters used to have real stakes. Best surfers with something on the line. Used to be the title itself. Anyhow, now it’s just a sorta strange exhibition event with no stakes at all. As much as surfers want to surf Pipe, to do it with a real lack of prestige and not against the best surfers in the world makes it a lot less enticing. I think it’s a lot like Vans turning the Triple Crown digital. They messed that up good with much less interest compared to when the events were each live and based on results.”

But do you think correct?

Has Vans attempted to fix something that was not broken?

And are you excited for the new format?

Speak from the heart, please.

Time to unleash the lion.

So did you see anabolic steroids becoming the it topic at the tail end of 2022? I’ll be honest, I did not. I thought vein poppin’ spray tanned big ol’ muscles were a relic of 1988 and, while they might still exist in odd subcultures, would not be major surf news. But here we are and all thanks to Brian Johnson.

Johnson, better known as the Liver King, recently came out as a steroid user, shocking his many fans who had believed that he had crafted his arms, chesty, abominables through the consumption of raw animal guts and raw animal guts alone.

It turns out that he lied, was on steroids and continues to be on them so as to help young men not commit suicide.

While professional surfers became intently curious if these blast from the past hormone boosters could help them paddle battle harder or maybe strengthen the spine and allow for dropping into Teahupo’o, notable surf personality interviewer Joe Rogan has made it his recent mission to publicly out potential users who are keeping their secret secret.

He began with Conor McGregor, declaring that his urine would burn a hole in the drug testing cup, before turning to Hawaii’s Snicker King Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson saying, “The Rock should come clean right now. He should make a video in response to the ‘Liver King’ video. I need to talk to you because The Rock’s been lying. There’s not a f—ing chance in hell he’s clean. Not a chance in hell. As big as The Rock is, at 50? He’s so massive, and he’s so different than he was when he was 30. There’s a responsibility you have to people who are listening to you. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s one thing. But if you do talk about it, there’s a responsibility you have to people listening to you and I think you have to be honest about it, which is why I’m honest about it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking hormone replacement.”

But what do you think about that?

Will it scare Filipe Toledo off or no?

I think it shouldn’t as Rogan casts no moral judgement and it doesn’t appear that the World Surf League has a serious testing program.

Time to unleash the lion.