Bobby Martinez warned them.
He had won his first heat in the Quiksilver Pro New York 2011 on Long Island’s Long Beach when Todd Kline, Quiksilver’s global-sports-marketing manager, pulled him over for an interview for the company’s webcast.
“The ASP and you guys aren’t going to want this interview,” he told Kline, referring to the Association of Surfing Professionals, the sanctioning body of surfing’s World Tour. Though he’d put on his sponsor-logo hat, his personal emblems—the glorious tats that unfurl across his back—were hidden by the long-sleeved, colored jersey surfers wear so judges can identify them on the water.
But Kline waved the words off. When the mic went live, the surfer let loose for one minute and seven seconds. By the time Martinez was done, F-bombs littered the sand as though they were trash on the beach after Memorial Day.
Seen live on the net and on huge screens at New York’s Long Beach, the 29-year-old Martinez hammered the ASP, the World Tour and his competitors, starting slow but gaining momentum as he leaned toward the camera, his board next to him. “I don’t want to be a part of this dumb, fucking, wannabe-tennis tour,” he let them know. “Fucking surfing’s going down the drain thanks to these people.”
Martinez had a case to argue: The tour's recent adoption of a rolling world-ranking system, similar to the one used in competitive tennis, meant the tour's top 34 surfers could be outranked by competitors who had never surfed against them. "Come on now. That's bullshit," he scowled. To many, his ferocity was unintelligible.
Quiksilver's Kline froze. His mouth gaped open.
The ASP didn't hesitate to react. Martinez had been jabbing it with fucks on Twitter for months. Even before the interview turned into a global blow-up with thousands of downloads, its Rules and Disciplinary Committee disqualified him and suspended him from the World Tour.
