Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
I’m very tired. I’m sitting in an airport in China, and I haven’t slept in a long time. The smog outside is so thick I can’t see beyond the nearest runway. Disgusting airline food sitting in a rancid lump in my belly, eyes burnt from lack of sleep, and giant screaming families of people are taking thousands of selfies. A disembodied Chinese woman’s voice is blatting out of crackly speakers, and somewhere nearby someone is eating something that smells like a dog ate so much shit that it puked it up, then ate it all, shit it out, ate it again, and puked it back up. It’s hot, I’m sweaty, and everything is gross. I started thinking about how how nice it would be to jump in pool, which got me thinking how nice it would be to paddle out, which got me thinking about Rio, which got me thinking about shitty waves, which got me thinking about a pool again. Kelly’s pool, though. Kelly’s pool and the WSL. I’ve come up with an unlikely theory: The WSL isn’t actually the NFL of pro surfing. It’s all a front for a global wave pool monopoly… and Kelly Slater owns the whole damn thing. But pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
Think about it: Kelly went on a spending spree a few years ago, starting or buying Purps, Firewire, Outerknown, Slater Designs, etc. When the ASP was bought out and changed to the WSL, you’d better believe that Slater’s now-famous wave pool was already well under way. That kind of thing doesn’t happen overnight, and I’d wager that even a few years ago, he knew they had something that could change pro surfing forever. Slater, in the midst of his spending spree, hemorrhaged out a few mil and secretly bought the World Surf League with the intention of phasing professional surfing out of the ocean and into his pools exclusively–he is surfing’s king, after all, and his wave is far superior to any other man-made wave ever created. After a few pools are built around the world, there’ll be no need to spend fortunes setting up event sites each year, an entry fee to would-be spectators when the contest is on, and a pay-to-play when it’s not. Jerseys and screaming fans and collectible playing cards. Slater Designs makes Kelly Slater Wave Co exclusive surfboards, complete with weird tails and futuristic do-dads. It’s like a license to print money! And that’s not all, either. It would actually improve pro surfing. All of the judging problems go away, the surfers finally have a level playing field, and best of all, the surfing turns into two distinct sports: pool surfing and ocean surfing. More in the pool equals less in the ocean. It’s a win-win situation!
Of course, there’s already the rumor floating around that Dirk Ziff, the man behind the curtain at the WSL, is actually the one who owns Kelly’s wave, so these could all be his intentions… but this is all just a theory, and I’m very tired.
