It’s been a while since any really great wipeout footage emerged from California’s most terrifying wave. That’s why we thought we’d comb the Big Wave Awards archives for five of the greatest wipeout videos from Maverick’s.
1. Jamie Mitchell and Chapman Murphy have a twofer.
Jamie and Chapman come from Australia’s Gold Coast and San Diego, respectively. Things went awry for the pair when they party-waved a monster.
2. Nic Vaughan gets winded.
Nic Vaughan’s a Maverick’s regular, so he’s used to this kind of thing. Sometimes, though, you just can’t beat Mother Nature. In this case, she huffed and she puffed and she blew Nic right off his board, despite his best attempts at not getting hung up in the lip.
3. Joshua Ryan skips like a stone.
Sometimes you just can’t avoid a wipeout, no matter how hard you try. They’re part of surfing. When that gets bad, thogh, is when you’re surfing waves like Maverick’s, where the water’s so hard you bounce right off it.
4. Dave Wassel: Cool guys don’t look at explosions… because they’re inside them.
Wassel has had more than his fair share of massive wipeouts. He’s a legend. This one, though, has to be one of the worst. How’s that whitewater explosion on his head?!
5. Matt Becker’s fat lip.
Most surfers know the feeling of getting hit by the lip. Generally it’s just a bit of a surprise, and you come up laughing. Not so at Maverick’s. The lip there isn’t one to mess with… but mess with it Matt Becker did.
