Big-wave world champion Keala Kennelly takes sledgehammer to World Surf League over fraud, stinginess, deception!

Another nail in the World Surf League coffin.

Keala Kennelly is a multi-hyphenate trailblazer. The Kauai-born 45-year-old is an actor, a professional surfer, a big wave world champion, a DJ, an LGBTQ+ icon just to name but a very few of her talents and accomplishments. She is wildly respected in the surf world and, thus, the sledgehammer she took to the “global home of surfing,” yesterday, is significant.

In a four-part to-camera Instagram series, the platinum blonde declared she would not be participating in the Jaws event this year. Part due chronic pain, most due the “stupid” idea of the World Surf League transitioning the yearly XXL Big Wave Awards to the Big Wave Records Chase as a way to get out of paying big wave surfers. The WSL calls themselves a ‘sports league.’ They are a medium company and what does a media company need? Attention.”

Keala Kennelly Goes Ham

Kennelly digs into that attention-seeking by bringing up Laura Enever’s recent controversial Guinness record, covered only and dutifully here. She goes on to compare a monster wave she caught at Jaws with Andrea Moller’s Jaws wave, also at Jaws, with Enever’s outer reef Oahu bear, noting how similar they appear.

She then brings universally beloved Carissa Moore into the conversation, sharing how far the Olympic gold medalist was ahead in the rankings before the World Surf League magically introduced “Finals Day” for “clickbait.

As a proud and honest click farmer, I felt anger at Kennelly tarnishing the noble profession with what the World Surf League produces but carried on nevertheless.

In the last blow she details how the World Surf League keeps its proprietary wave measuring sauce secret. How the surfers asked for transparency and were denied.

Math not mathing for her.

I’d imagine much consternation in El Segundo today, the cries of dying animals drowning out a sinking feeling that the end is nigh.

But only momentarily.