The future was yesterday!
Kelly Slater, Kelly Slater, Kelly Slater, etc. but did you really think the world’s greatest surfer would actually go away, could actually leave after becoming decapitated after the much ballyhooed mid-season cut?
Ha!
After quietly changing the rules under cover of darkness, the World Surf League has come into the light and gifted our 11x champion a golden ticket into the season’s remaining events plus the entire beginning of next year’s campaign.
Per the sizzling hot press release:
MARGARET RIVER, Western Australia, Australia (Thursday, April 27, 2023) – Kelly Slater (USA) and Johanne Defay (FRA) have been awarded the WSL Season Wildcards for 2023/2024. The Season Wildcards gives Slater and Defay entry into Championship Tour (CT) events following the Mid-season Cut and entry into the first half of the 2024 CT season. Miguel Pupo (BRA) and Brisa Hennessy (CRC) have been awarded the 2024 WSL Season Wildcards, which gives entry to all competitions in the first half of the 2024 CT season.
Slater, as a former World Champion, and Defay, as a previous Final 5 competitor, will earn ranking points as the Season Wildcards and thus will be eligible for the WSL Final 5 rankings, where the Top 5 surfers on the men’s and women’s CT will compete in the Rip Curl WSL Finals to compete for the 2023 World Title. Slater’s ranking points will also give him the opportunity to compete for provisional qualification for the Olympic Games Paris 2024. Defay’s provisional qualification for the Olympics was confirmed last week at the Western Australia Margaret River Pro.
The WSL is the Tier 1 pathway to qualification for the world’s best surfers to the Olympic Games. Of the 48 athletes competing in the games, the Top 18 competitors (10 men and 8 women) will qualify via the 2023 WSL Championship Tour’s final rankings. Each country can only qualify a maximum of two men and two women.
Wow.
Ish.
While stupidity and questionable behavior reigns supreme in Santa Monica, Slater being allowed to continue to waffle around in the public eye was a foregone conclusion. The now obviously failing league clearly needs the world’s greatest surfer more than he needs it…
…oh hell. It’s a proper embarrassing junk show all around. Slater is only, and maybe not even anymore, a threat in heavily barreling lefts. One remains on tour. And while sitting champion Filipe Toledo is too afraid to paddle, is there any thought that Cocoa Beach’s finest has anything left in the tank?
What’s more, how does Jackson Baker feel about this wicked turn?
Ramzi Boukhaim?
Let him, the greatest of all-time, prove me wrong, but I say he does not and the pandering to the past, instead of the future, lays the World Surf League absolutely bare.
No?
Please share your opinion.
“You can’t script this”……(but we can.)
Like it or not, we need him, just like we need Trump.
Maybe it’s time to let go of this idea of surf competitions after all. I don’t see that surf culture or surfers in general are really that in to competitions. Let them all free surf and make great videos and films for us all to enjoy. When competitions first started TV or the occasional surf movie was the only way to watch the sport. Now you have non-stop surfing streaming from every direction. Not all of it is quality but let the consumer figure that out.
It seems to me that Kelly’s most strategic course of action is to immediately start cross dressing in public, change his name to Kelli, and go for the Women’s title next year.
He, uh she, has already won 11 Men’s titles. Only the Women’s remains unconquered by the GOAT.
It’s time to change that.
The female goat is a jenny. Maybe he’ll call himself that.
My ex was named after a female goat.
Is your first name Billy?
No. She was the goat, not me.
Yea, idk Jen.
I think I might have made myself dizzy with wooz moves… hahahaha
All of a sudden the water quality in Brazil isn’t such a problem!
So the cut is good until WSL has to cut someone they don’t want to cut. Then the cut goes out the window. I’d respect Slater more if he respectfully declined and gave those wildcards to a young up and comer. No hamsammish for WSL or Slater on this one.
The lack of respect they show to their 25k fans is appalling. Who was going to get what wildcard should have been stated before the cut was made. ELO has been watching too many reality tv shows, where last minute reveals add some spice for Oprah fans! This should never happen in sports!
The real story is simple. When the Asp folded
Ziff offer a buyout, Kelly , freaking sorted a deal to gets half his investment back for his wavepool . Ziff agreed to keep it open ( pool ) for x amount years.
Kelly signed the rest of his life away to work for the man ( Ziff).
Kelly has no say in this, Elo tells him when and where to surf and what to wear.
I always thought it was the other way around. I don’t think Dirk knows (or cares) much at all about surfing and it was all about keeping his missus happy by keeping the women’s tour afloat.
When the pool came out it looked awesome (until it became boring, but that came later). So the ASP convinced him to buy out most of Kelly’s share for when it all blew up and became the next WWE. Then he could cash in his chips and walk away looking like a hero to his missus with a bunch of hot cash to show for it.
Anyway, all that is moot. What no-one at the WSL can comprehend is that it’s a youth market and even though Kelly was a demigod in the sport, he’s old and bald and all the kids think he is a kook. I remember when Shaun Tomson was still on the tour in the late 80s and even though I knew he was an ex world champ, I thought he surfed like a fucking kook – and he was 15 years younger than Kelly is now!
Only thing the ASP had to sell was the world’s most known surfer-Kelly Slater.
That’s the brand not the man.
Ziff owns him and Kelly knows that.
Elo + Kelly 4 Evah ❤️
Shamewaters over here…
Letting (e)Go!
There’s history there and these muppets don’t even recognise it… looking back on the last few years of wildcards: Ian Gouveia, Mikey Wright, Owen Wright, Malia Manuel, Sally Fitz – they all fell straight back off tour.
A better predictor of successful wildcards would be actually getting injured (or divorced).
I only watch it on YouTube so I can down vote it
Kelly, as always, only thinking about himself.
We are fully into Semi-Pro the movie territory now. The momentum is real indeed. Plummeting downwards
This was slated to happen
Maybe Slater the master and the greatest of all we see and hear will be magnanimous and turn down this generous offer and retire from all competitions forthwith. As the goat goes clambering off to pastures new his disciples spread the good news and hand out hastily scribed leaflets about an icon falling on his sword for the good of mankind.
WSElderly
FEATURE THIS.