Former World Surf League CEO Erik Logan (left) holding Joe Carr's place.
Former World Surf League CEO Erik Logan (left) holding Joe Carr's place.

Noxious surf journalist extends olive branch to incoming World Surf League CEO Joe Carr

Chas Smith

By

Hello Joe Carr, I'm Chas Smith...

(Update: this is a fast-moving story. Read Bombshell Twist in appointment of ex-UFC exec as CEO of World Surf League.)

Yesterday, in the midst of putting off the Hurley Sunset Beach Pro again and losing money, the World Surf League announced the hiring of a new CEO who, officially, replaced the acting “clean up crew” that was holding the office since Erik Logan’s still unexplained, but brutal and lightning quick, departure.

Joe Carr, Derek Rielly wrote, “has got a few miles under the belt. He helped steer Dana and co into a four-billon dollar buyout for the UFC and, lately, was the founder and CEO of Nitro Circus parent company Thrill One.”

While the hiring certainly looks like a move to shore up loose ends, re-engage the pool model and dump the shootin’ match on our dear friends in Saudi Arabia, history has taught us one thing.

There’s no surviving without the grumbly indifference of surf fans. Paul Speaker grossly big footed with dumb claims and was gone quick. Sophie Goldschmidt followed, felt extremely nervous around, and was gone quicker. Erik Logan felt his years in shock radio had more than prepared him for the Nerf darts that surf fans could fling.

He was gone the most spectacularly of all.

Carr can, if he wishes, believe that all former CEOs and whatever Backward Fin Beth’s title was, disappeared of their own volition instead of being pushed out by The People™ for grossly demeaning behavior toward the only audience professional surfing has.

Or, he is welcome to engage with BeachGrit and not just because it is my favorite. The facts show The Inertia is as irrelevant as it is embarrassing, Stab is openly collaborationist, hoping to be included in the Saudi buy, Surfer is robots and Surfline is already “an official partner” plus gripped by toxic monopolistic greed.

So BeachGrit is it and I would imagine Carr to be lightly scared looking out over the World Surf League executive graveyard which just so happens to be next to the pet cemetery. He, in fact, should be but we all know what not conquering fear looks like.

Filipe Toledo.

Joe Carr, I’ll be reaching out soon.

Until then, congratulations!

David Lee Scales and I discussed the hiring, anyhow, during our weekly chat but spent the lion’s share of the time on the aforementioned Toledo. Scales had seemed to pivot into an apologist. Don’t worry. I stood firm. The episode also includes a hit song on Erik Logan’s poo poo touch by our own DJ Seaweed. Worth a listen for that alone.

Kelly Slater in Abu Dhabi at Dirk ZIff/WSL-owned wave pool.
The WSL’s dubious happy talk about wave pools, an ever expanding audience, and Olympics are carefully curated to create the illusion of success in order to dump the league at a much higher price than it is worth. Given the WSL’s failure to meet any of their benchmarks in terms or viewers or sponsors, who would be so stupid as to fall for this? Was the opening of a WSL owned wave pool in Abu Dhabi, with the opening ribbon cut by Kelly Slater himself, a mere coincidence? Is the massive $750,000,000 wave park opening in October in Saudi Arabia, the new global home of surfing?

The hiring of UFC exec Joe Carr has made it clear Dirk Ziff has a WSL exit strategy

Wolf of Wall Street

By

The WSL’s happy talk about wave pools, ever expanding audience, and Olympics are curated to create the illusion of success in order to dump the league at a much higher price than it is worth.

Irrespective of WSL owner Dirk Ziff’s “Waterman of the Year Award” when it comes to surfing, he is a complete and utter kook.

When it comes to money, however, Dirk stands on much firmer ground.

Irrespective of the WSL’s greenwashing and virtue signaling about gender, at the end of the day they are a company owned by a New York City billionaire who had no roots or relationship to surfing until he acquired it in 2015. It looks likely that Ziff is preparing to sell his failed professional surfing experiment with the same ruthlessness he fired WSL president Eric Logan.

Dirk Ziff’s decision to hire Ultimate Fight Championship executive Joe Carr is a double-down on the WSL’s failed attempt to globalize and digitize surfing.

(Update: this is a fast-moving story. Read Bombshell Twist in appointment of ex-UFC exec as CEO of World Surf League.)

This winter in Hawaii, the WSL’s credibility hit an all time low.

Not only did their (Trestles) world champ fail to take off on a wave of significance during the Pipeline contest, they refused to hold the Pipe contest because the waves were “too big” for the beach break specialists they anoint as “champions” in order to “globalize” surfing. Most telling was the WSL treatment of surfing’s true female champion, Carrissa Moore. The WSL’s actions spoke volumes about their disrespect and disinterest in professional surfing.

The appointment of Joe Carr and the WSL’s failed “globalization of surfing” strategy has made it increasingly clear that Dirk Ziff has a WSL exit strategy.

While Dirk Ziff may be a kook when it comes to surfing, he is not when it comes to money.

The WSL’s dubious happy talk about wave pools, an ever expanding audience, and Olympics are carefully curated to create the illusion of success in order to dump the league at a much higher price than it is worth.

Given the WSL’s failure to meet any of their benchmarks in terms or viewers or sponsors, who would be so stupid as to fall for this?

Was the opening of a WSL owned wave pool in Abu Dhabi, with the opening ribbon cut by Kelly Slater himself, a mere coincidence?

Is the massive $750,000,000 wave park opening in October in Saudi Arabia, the new global home of surfing?

In 2023, Reuters reported,

“Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund Splashes Cash in 2023.”

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund spent $31.5 billion in 2023 and moved aggressively into the sports of soccer and golf so why not surfing?

Although slavery was legal in Saudi Arabia until 1962 although, unofficially it still exists, and women were only allowed to drive in 2017, this will pose no ethical problems to the former member of the Weinstein Company.

This is capitalism, after all.

World Surf League to thumb Hawaiians directly in eye by openly celebrating Presidents’ Day!

Chas Smith

By

Extremely provocative.

The World Surf League is, officially, entering a new era. Just-announced CEO Joe Carr taking the reins of the beleaguered organization from the “clean up on aisle six” interim CEO team of composed of the head of legal and the head of PR who were forced into the role after the sudden and brutal firing of “whacky” Erik Logan.

The Oklahoman with a magical wetsuit of armor had reached that powerful perch after failing upward from a disastrous run as chief of the quickly shuttered WSL Studios after Sophie Goldschmidt, his predecessor, fled as quickly as she could into the arms of skiing.

Paul Speaker came before her, the very first to taste the reaper’s scythe.

The one thing they all had in common?

An open disdain for Hawaii.

Goldschmidt viewed the actual home of surfing, as opposed to the World Surf League’s self-given tag “the global home of surfing,” as a puny backwater that needed to be pushed around, forcing a calendar change that manifests today as the championship tour starting at Pipeline, ending at Lower Trestles. Reports of her sneering dismissive attitude in meetings with local government officials and organizers legendary.

Logan brought Covid to Oahu in the early pandemic days like a pox to the indigenous.

And now?

The World Surf League has declared it will officially Presidents’ Day this Monday, February 19 by calling off the Hurley Pro Sunset Beach on that day even if the waves are pumping and ono kine.

As surf fan students of history know, the Hawaiian islands have a… troubled relationship with the United States of America and its presidents. The Queen was overthrown by a gaggle of meddling mainland sugar and pineapple barons using the U.S. military in 1893. The government, in Washington D.C. and Chief Executive’d, at that time by Grover Cleveland, refused to intervene and, almost 50 years later, the gorgeous and proud archipelago found itself annexed and the 50th state.

Forcing Hawaiians to stand and pledge allegiance to the flag of their oppressor is very much in line with the World Surf League’s not so subtle admixture of ignorance and arrogance. While incoming Carr, likely, did not decide on humiliating the local population, might he have enough power to change course and trot our brave surfers into the surf as a rebellious cool surf act?

Thoughts?

More as the story develops.

Joe Carr, not new head of WSL
Joe Carr, is…not… the long-awaited replacement for Flim-Flam man Erik Logan.

WSL annoints UFC exec Joe Carr as new CEO six months after unexplained disappearance of former head Erik Logan

Derek Rielly

By

Mission: pivot hard into wave pools.

(Update: this is a fast-moving story. Read Bombshell Twist in appointment of ex-UFC exec as CEO of World Surf League.)

After an eight-month search, the World Surf League has chosen a former UFC exec Joe Carr to lead the beleaguered organisation back into the light after the sudden disappearance of whacky frontman Erik Logan. 

Chas Smith, you’ll remember, covered Logan’s sacking from all angles. 

Idiotic silence from the World Surf League (WSL) ensued, and hovers to this day, but intrepid surf journalists have uncovered Logan making surfers “feel uncomfortable” and, today, his wild rage exploding all over them.

We, of course, recall when the Oklahoman with a wetsuit of armor savaged a young woman named Taylor Swift, penning, “For someone who draws such power from being the ‘voice’ and against all the things you talk about, I’m watching you violate what you allegedly stand for. You’re the real bully.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that Logan brutalized the entirely lovable Conner Coffin, who had the unfortunate task of being the surfers’ representative ahead of the pre-season cut. According to fresh information, Logan would berate Coffin on phone calls after the near-perfect Santa Barbran shared discomfort amongst the ranks, telling him to get the surfers in line, telling him he’d “ruin him” in rage-filled tirades that have, allegedly, been recorded.

Joe Carr has got a few miles under the belt.

He helped steer Dana and co into a four-billon dollar buyout for the UFC and, lately, was the founder and CEO of Nitro Circus parent company Thrill One.

He was also Chief Strategy Officer for the WSL under Logan for eighteen months in 2017-18 and president of the WSL for seven months in 2019. 

As Longtom wrote at the time, 

No doubt UFC is the business and business model the WSL seeks to emulate. No secrets there, they bought on former UFC exec Joe Carr in 2017 to drive business development.

Carr was best known for driving the sale of UFC to WME-IMG for $4.2 billion. Yep, billion. A tasty prospect for Ziff, who got the ASP for nix.

Are there parallels?

Can the wozzle crib the UFC playbook and fatten for sale?

Joe Carr said in a 2017 interview he sees a “ton of parallels between both companies”. It took him two years to get there but he foresaw back in 2017 that the Kelly Tub would offer content creation opportunities like “reality programming and social media possibilities”.

(Editor’s note: this story has been sliced and diced ’cause your ol pal DR, in a bit of a rush before a dinner engagement last night, grabbed what I thought was the CEO press release, didn’t read real close, and posted. Thanks to the readers for the gentle explanations below the line.)

John John Florence and brothers bathe in the ambience of wealth and privilege after a day spent in the Pipe cupola.

Reclusive John John Florence releases gender-bending coming-of-age surf film, “I am Disco Boy!”

Derek Rielly

By

Florence brothers' jaw-dropping Pipe performance can’t be overpraised.

The reclusive North Shore world champion John John Florence has given surf fans a glimpse into the rarefied ambience of his wealth and privilege with a seven-minute clip of he and his brothers inhabiting the Pipe cupola on a day he calls “best of the winter.”

“This was easily one of the most fun surf days we’ve had so far this winter. The whole day was just non-stop barrels,” writes John John. “I surfed pretty much as long as I could, with a break to eat lunch. It was just my brothers, Eli in the water along with a few others.”

Midway through the edit, John John explains: “We thought the winds would change or it would end at some point, but the waves just wouldn’t stop. Good waves with friends, fin design theory, testing new boards…all pieces of why we love surfing.”

Gorgeously photographed, it is Nathan Florence, overwhelmingly regarded as the best surfer in the world, and not John John Florence, who dominates every scene until you anticipate his every return.

The depraved limits to which Nathan Florence will go to has no limitations.

Despite recent revelations Kainoa Igarashi has started to read, Nathan Florence, who is almost thirty and named after the son of the Hebrew King David, is also widely regarded as the “world’s smartest surfer”.

Nathan Florence likes to be out there at the edge of things. He approaches big waves with steady unfaltering movements for he knows fear releases power. 

Of course, John John, thirty-one and who also has the same reddish brown eyes like dried blood as Nathan, ain’t no slouch when it comes to cupola hunting, although he applies a little more caution now that his first-born, a boy, is set to arrive in May.

A sumptuous and elegantly polished jewel that is not to be missed.

Photo: Justin Jay/@justinjayphoto
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