“He’s playing mind games with the Brazilians.”

Yesterday, the beleaguered World Surf League came under fire for “passive aggressively trolling Ethan Ewing” after it posted a heat draw for September’s one-day grand final.

As y’know, the top five rated men and women will compete at Lower Trestles some time between September 8 and 16 for a one-day shoot-out that’ll decide the world champions.

 

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Ewing, as you also know, busted a couple of vertebrae in his spine while practising for the Tahiti Pro and the early prognosis was a three-month wait for surgery followed by six months out of the water.

Hence no Finals Day or swing at title for Ewing.

So why put him in the draw? Surf fans felt the same and lit up the WSL.

This is starting to feel like you’re just passive aggressively trolling Ethan

there is a WSL obscenity all over the post putting this up.

maybe they could use a nice picture from him in hospital.

So is EE going to compete as a bodyboarder or how is he supposed to surf with a broken back?

The word on the street now, if that’s what you want to call it, is the WSL were right to feature Ewing on their graphics as the world number three-rated surfer’s injury has been “blown out of proportion”, he’s “definitely mobile” and will, likely, compete at Lowers.

Already, half a score of surfers from Ewing’s island home, North Stradbroke, have booked tickets to California to watch their hero bring home the trophy.

Ewing’s own silence on the matter is, according to one observer, his way of “playing mind games with the Brazilians” in particular the reigning champ and small-wave specialist Filipe Toledo who is expected to easily retain his title in the consequence-free waves.

Ewing’s relationship with Brazilian fans has been strained ever since WSL judges preferred his velvet lines over Medina’s bag of tricks at the Surf Ranch Pro a few months back, one even threatening to murder the innocent Australian.

The shift in judging, from rewarding frenetic but unpretty airs to melting over smooth combos, suits Ewing whose surfing is so beautiful it excites the sensitive soul to tears.

“The nicest guy gets thrown around a lot but he actually is one of the most giving friends."

The creator of the beloved Drive-Thru series and former star of Taylor Steele’s Momentum rock-and-cock films, Greg Browning, is in the ring for the fight of his life after being diagnosed with the incurable neurodegenerative disease ALS aka motor-neurone disease aka Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The prognosis depends upon the person, and Browning is fit as a bull and blessed with an optimistic soul, but MND generally leads to increasing muscle weakness, loss of mobility, difficulties in speaking and swallowing, and eventually respiratory failure.

Surf stars, including Shane Dorian and Tati West, as well as his old mentor Taylor Steele have rallied around Browning.

“Hard to put into words how good of a human Greg Browning is,” writes Dorian.

 

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Greg’s pal Keith Brewer has created a GoFundMe account, this is America after all where the sick are left with two choices, bankruptcy or death, raising almost seventy k of a quarter-mill target.

Medication and therapy can slow ALS and reduce discomfort, but there’s no cure.

My brother and I grew up with Greg in the South Bay (Manhattan and Hermosa Beach, CA). We honed our surfing skills at 16th St, Hermosa Beach with the help of our good friend, Howard Eddy, who would film all of us, every day, twice a day. Not only did Greg out-surf everyone in the South Bay by winning multiple amateur contests, he went on to have a successful career as a nationally recognized free-surfer. He is a member of the Momentum Generation- with Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, Shane Dorian, Ross Williams, The Malloys, and more. He had several segments in the most popular hardcore surf movies of the 90’s.

Throughout Greg’s surfing career, he was always interested in editing surf movies, after learning from Howard Eddy. He released several local underground videotapes featuring my brother and I, along with other local rippers. He worked with Taylor Steele editing and picked it up pretty well, creating the hit series Drive Thru!

Greg is one of the most giving people I have ever met and we would love to give back to him. We would love for him to live a stress-free life and have all of his future medical bills taken care of. Please help us in raising funds for one of the best Humans ever!

Taylor Steele, meanwhile, posted Greg’s section from his film GoodTimes.

 

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“The nicest guy gets thrown around a lot but he actually is one of the most giving friends,” writes Taylor.

Two hours after calling Davo a "pedophile" Coleman, who had "swiftly punched Davidson to the jaw with his right fist", killing him, was in police custody.

Real hard to believe it’s been a year since Chris Davidson, the wildly talented Narrabeen surfer who beat Kelly Slater twice in a row at Bells in 1996, was killed in a “one-punch assault” outside the grandly named South West Rocks Country Club, five or so hours north of Sydney.

Davidson, who was forty-five, was knocked unconscious, treated at the scene by the ambos and taken to Kempsey Hospital but pronounced dead a short time later.

Grant Coleman, brother of the noted rugby union coach Darren Coleman, was arrested an hour after the attack and charged with Davidson’s death.

Earlier today, Coleman, who is forty-three, appeared in Kempsey Local Court via an AV link from jail where he pleaded guilty to “assault causing death.”

Court docs reveal Davidson and Coleman were both at the South West Rocks Country Club on the arvo of September 24, 2022. Later that night, at 10:22 pm, Coleman saw Davidson with a nineteen-year-old girl and called him a “pedophile.”

Two hours later, Davo was dead and Coleman, who had “swiftly punched Davidson to the jaw with his right fist” outside the club, was in police custody and charged with assault causing death.

The charge of “assault causing death” is one of those rare offences where minimum sentences apply, the law coming into play after a series of highly publicised attacks where men were killed after being belted, all late at night, all alcohol fuelled. 

Coleman faces a max of twenty years in prison, twenty-five if he was intoxicated, with a minimum sixteen year total sentence, eight of ‘em in full-time custody. 

Davo was anointed as a surf star in his early teens, the raw foil to Tom Curren in Rip Curl’s then cutting-edge Search advertising campaign, which was created by the writer Derek Hynd.

In 1996, aged nineteen, Davo was gifted a wildcard into the Rip Curl Bells event, then one of the most prestigious contests in surfing.

Now, you gotta remember, in 1996, Kelly was at his peak, twenty-four, unstoppable.

Dave, loose as anything, more rockstar than Hoy and co, rolled up to his round one heat with a borrowed board and no leash.

And…smoked…Kelly.

Davo, lowest seed, got Kelly, highest, in round three and did it again, Kelly so sad he gave the finger to the judges.

Recent years weren’t so kind to Davo, although let’s be frank, he did burn the candle at both ends, as well as the sides and through the guts.

In 2006, he copped a ten-year driving ban and ten years later, officially back behind the wheel, he crashed his mum’s car into a tree while pissed, cops charging Davo with high-end drink-driving.

A resident who heard the terrific noise, went outside and found Davo slumped in his seat, unmoving. Apart from internal injuries, he suffered severe damage to the ligaments in his neck and would later undergo surgery to his right arm.

If you want to see surfing Davo at his best, watch any of Sonny Miller’s films for Rip Curl or if you want a taste of the man in all his raw glory, watch this.

“Now that you’re normal let me ask you one question,” says interviewer GT.

“I’m never normal,” growls Davo.

Interviewer GT asks, “If someone wrote a book about you what would it be called?”

Without hesitation, Davo replies “Doctor Damage and his Tiger Blood!”

One of a kind.