"After I attacked her I saw that it was a woman."
The Brazilian surfer João Paulo Azevedo, aka JP Azevedo, achieved the worst sort of notoriety yesterday when video emerged of him beating hell out of the American surfer Sara Taylor in Bali.
“After being dropped in on on my first wave, the guy’s friend punched me in the head and then after being confronted about hitting me, he attacked Charlie on the beach for filming him,” wrote Taylor, along with video of the attack. “This is insane, does anyone know who they are?”
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A who’s who from the surf and skate world, including world champion surfers Gabriel Medina and Mick Fanning, as well as skate icons Ed Templeton, Tony Alva, weighed in on the stoush.
The greatest surfer ever, Kelly Slater, doxxed Azebvedo writing, “Get this guy sent home where he belongs.”
Azevedo, who’s been living in Bali since 2019, has since blamed the fluidity of the modern gender binary for belting Taylor.
“This girl looked like a man, I didn’t know she was a woman. She surfed like a man, dressed like a man,” he said. “She was riding everyone’s wave, she wasn’t respecting anyone. She went with my friend’s wave and pushed my friend out of the loop.
“I went to ask why she had done that to my friend. She went by and threw water in my face, cursed me. And then I lost my mind due to momentary stress and ended up attacking her. I lost my reason. After I attacked her I saw that it was a woman. She was wearing a T-shirt and I couldn’t see her bra. Soon after I apologized, a friend of mine came paddling up and I said, ‘Calm down, it’s a woman’”.
Taylor, a shredder of sorts, not tour level but good enough to land the occasional air-rev, ain’t no stranger to conflict in the water.
Two minutes into the edit, below, Taylor appears to get a little punchy after a drop in, although maybe they’re pals etc.