Slater vs. Irons 2007
Feb 21 2007 / Los Angeles, CASlater/Irons Celebrity Deathmatch A Highlight of the 2007 Foster's ASP World Tour
Think of the emotions behind Star Wars. Think of the epic Battle of Naboo in Episode One: The Phantom Menace. Young Obi Wan Kenobi is in a battle to the death with Darth Maul - the deadly, red, tattooed, horn-headed Sith who has already killed Qui-Gon Jinn with his double light saber. Obi Wan is blinded by his rage and emotion at the death of his master, and that emotion interferes with the Force and puts Obi Wan at risk of losing to the Sith – who feeds on sheer emotional rage. Obi Wan and the Sith Lord are motivated by different forces, but evenly matched and they fight a battle that is interrupted by a kind of force-field gate that separates them for a moment. They cannot fight, so the Sith paces back and forth, all emotion and rage, his face getting even more red - while Obi Wan chills out, sits down, assumes the position, oms out, and does some spiritual Pilates, clearing his mind of rage and letting the Force flood back in.
And it works. Obi Wan gets his wits about him and unseams the Sith “from the Nave to the Chaps,” as Shakespeare would say, getting instant payback for his Master and paving the way for the Force to save the universe.
Kelly Slater and Andy Irons have been kept from each other by islands and oceans in the months after their epic battle at Pipeline, and there are similar emotions at work. Like that Sith and Obi Wan Kenobi, Kelly and Andy are very closely matched, both of them awesome talents running on different kinds of emotional fuel.
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Most would agree that Kelly is Obi Wan - a cooler head, whose steady ability sometimes seems fueled by supernatural forces beyond common human experience – but is really just extraordinary talent tempered by experience and success and maturity.
And while Andy Irons is by no means evil, because of his youth he is the one who is running on emotion, even rage. channeling chaotic feelings into his side of the greatest rivalry surfing has ever seen.
At 34 years old, Kelly Slater has seen it all and done it all, been there and done that there and back. He has slayed his dragons, breathed and pleaded them back to life them slayed them again. He is a polished human being burnished by talent and experience and success and maturity and is a fairly unflappable sort, but if you want to have a go at getting his goat, you can:
1. Tease him about Baywatch.
2. Tease him about his singing.
3. Beat him by getting a lucky card on the river playing Texas Hold ‘Em.
4. Break up with him.
5. Light off an M80 when he’s putting.
6. Beat him at Pipeline.
The Slater/Irons rivalry has been bubbling since the two first met at Pipeline in 2000, with Irons having the audacity to beat Slater. Pipeline means a lot to Kelly Slater. If you read Pipe Dreams by Jason Borte, Pipeline is to Kelly Slater what the whale was to Captain Ahab. Pipeline is the placed that trounced and scared Kelly on his first trips to Hawaii as a boy then a young teenager. And then in 1991, it was the wave he began to conquer. During his eight-year run from 1992 to 2000, Slater won six World Titles but almost as important he won the Pipe Masters in 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1999.
By the time he was 27 Kelly Slater had six World Professional Surfing Titles. He won his first in 1992 at 20 years old – the youngest ever – and won again in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998. With six World Titles on his mantelpiece, Slater retired in 1998, the same year Andy jumped on tour, a wound up wildman from Kauai who won the Huntington Beach event and probably could have done more if he hadn’t partied so hard.
Irons struggled for the next two years, winning no events in 1999 and only one event in 2000. Irons was partying too hard and needed something to clear his head. Slater was in retirement and needed something to light his fire.
Then they found each other.
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Slater was retired from full time competition at this time but he jumped into events that interested him. Pipe Masters has always interested Slater, and he first met Irons at the 2000 event. Slater lost, and for all his wins and his success he is never one to take defeat well: '”Yeah, I guess everybody thinks it's Andy's time now,” Slater was quoted by Dan Duane in the New York Times. “like it’s Y2K, the world’s changing.” A clever thing to say, because Slater is closer to Plato then Spicoli, but Slater was not content to let the world change without him.
Irons won that Pipe Masters battle, but like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, all he had done was to wake the Sleeping Giant.
Since 2000, Andy and Kelly have surfed against each other seven more times. Andy has won five of those meetings, and four of them have been at Pipeline and that is enough to turn even Yoda into a Sith.
The Slater/Irons rivalry was as good as it gets through the 2007 Foster's ASP World Tour season and then in the final heat of the final contest of the year, at Pipeline, it got even better.
Slater and Irons were the two regularfoots in a heat with goofyfoots Cory Lopez and Rob Machado. Pipe was five-star going both ways, and by halfway, the final was over. Slater came out swinging and went berserko, while Andy Irons – who had pooped out in the final at Sunset a week before – looked to be pooping out again. But with only a few minutes remaining in the heat, Irons pigdogged a big left barrel and ended with a floater over the sandbar that should have splintered his board, and Irons. And then with 1:19 left, Andy and Kelly were sitting on top of each other when a big lump came though. If it had been a left, Kelly would have taken it home. But it was a right, Andy could have kissed Kelly he was so close to him, and Andy pulled into a barrel that scored him a 10, the heat, the contest and the Triple Crown.
To fully appreciate the latest round in the Kelly/Andy showdown at Pipeline in December of 2006, you should check out the documentary Letting Go, which details Kelly Slater’s pursuit of his comeback seventh Foster's ASP World Tour title in 2005.
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Letting Go spends no small amount of time talking about the Andy/Kelly rivalry and during the video, Kelly talks about it: “As soon as this whole competition thing is done we could be friends, you know? It’s sort of like, in a way people don’t want us to be friends, because it is good for the rivalry, and that kind of is where people are writing from and talking from and stuff like that. But there is a truth to that. There is a friction to that. When you have a friction like that it makes all this good and bad, right and wrong, black and white. Everything’s opposites. I think we could take that and have a lot of fun with it.”
The title of Letting Go is all about what young Obi Wan was doing when he sat and meditated as Darth Maul let his emotions rage. What Kelly Slater learned during the 2005 Foster's ASP World Tour season was essentially what Obi Wan would teach Luke over and over: “Let go of your emotions. Let the Force be with you.”
On the second weekend of February, Kelly and Andy were separated by the Pacific Ocean as Slater took his almost scratch handicap to California, where the “World Surfing Champion” joined celebrities like Rush Limbaugh, Carson Daly, Glenn Frey and Kevin Costner to compete in the Pebble Beach Pro/Am – with Jeff Clark as his caddy. "In the first couple weeks of February, Slater made the funny papers when he was seen golfing with caddy Jeff Clark at the Pebble Beach Pro Am, a spectacular golf course in Carmel, California with good waves a bad slice away from some of the greens: “Beautiful place,” Slater said. “But I didn't play all that well. Next year.”
On Valentine’s Day, Slater celebrated his 35th birthday party in Marina del Rey, California. Among the elite invitees was his old flame Pam Anderson and current person of interest, Cameron Diaz. Although Slater has been waving off the relationship in the press - "We're just friends" – Diaz was seen provocatively holding up a nine-inch breadstick in a posh LA restaurant and bragging about "her new lover."
Putting low scores on world class golf courses and chasing high-profile actresses sort of lifestyle can relax a fella or drive him to distraction, so the world we'll see if it's a relaxed Kelly Slater or a distracted Slater shows up at Queensland to defend his title.
Meanwhile, behind the Garden Curtain, on February 10, Andy and Bruce Irons hosted their Sixth Annual Pinetrees Classic on the North Shore of Kauai and after that it was time to punch the clock again. Andy flew to Australia early to attend the wedding of ASP pro Luke Egan on February 17th. Slater wasn’t there.
On February 24, the ASP will hold its crowning banquet for the 2006 Foster's ASP World Tour on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia. There, Andy and everyone else will be reminded that despite how the 2006 season ended, Kelly Slater won his eighth Foster's ASP World Tour title. Andy Irons will be there, maybe smiling on the outside, maybe not, but most certainly fuming on the inside, his face going red like a Sith, because what Slater has, Andy wants.
And then, three days later, the Quiksilver Pro will start, that force field gate will shut off and Slater and Andy will take up their high-tech light saberboards, and go at it for Round Eight of the Greatest Rivalry in Surfing.
Can’t wait.
