Whats eating Bobby Martinez? Starting with the “One World Rankings” he is in protest of the new format of ASP rankings that allows surfers on the World Qualifying Series to enter the world tour half way through the season. The one world rankings went into effect last season, limiting some hard-earned Dream Tour careers (think Nate Yeomans) to 6 events. Bobby prefers the traditional format of 45 surfers completing an 11 event season.
But his hostile outspokenness overshadowed his argument in his post-heat victory interview:
“They want to do a halfway cutoff. How the f*** is somebody who’s not even competing against our caliber of surfers ahead of 100 of us on the one world ratings. They’ve never been here. They’ve never f***ing made the right to surf against us, but now we’re ranked upon them. Come on now. That’s Bullshit. That’s why I ain’t going to these stupid contests no more.”
After making those comments, the ASP had a meeting and suspended Bobby from the remainder of the competition and therefore the rest of the year.
It appears that Bobby is having an identity crisis, and he admits that constant competing and traveling since he was 15 has taken a toll on him. Some people are baffled that someone would piss away a life of paid-surfing to exotic places, but the origins of the sport sprouted from guys who rejected the status-quo. His new sponsor “FTW” celebrates anti-establishment lifestyles, and the amount of mentions Bobby gave them makes you think his contract is rich enough to float him after his days in the singlet. Plus is hard to pity a guy who gets 14K just for showing up to the event.
In the ASP’s press release, they claimed Bobby’s was disqualified on the following grounds, “Article 151 has been breached as a result of the numerous comments you made publicly in an interview on the webcast of the current ASP World Tour Event in New York City. The interview was conducted on the event live webcast being watched by a global audience, which includes many young children.”
He’s been ranting about the ASP for months on his all-caps twitter and interviews, but it was his profanity on the live web cast that couldn’t be ignored by Brody Carr. You think they’ll have a 5 second delay next time?
Fans are protesting his dismissal from the event, but he obviously doesn’t want to “bleach my hair blonde, wear tight skinny jeans and put in blue contacts and become a “yes” man” as he ranted on the Channel Islands Blog. Take his world view with a grain of salt because after all, his last pro heat was against Slater, so he put FTW on the map while he could.
Publicity Stunt…What’s your take?
