Sometimes, it really feels like surfing turned the page on that sad autumn day of November 2, 2010. The day Andy Irons (AI) died, part of the core soul of the competitive side of the sport was buried.
It feels like yesterday, but the years burn quickly. In 2010, we were all still discovering the wonders of touchscreens.
It was the launch year of the iPad, the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, and the beginning of a financial nightmare for many world economies.
In competitive surfing, the ASP World Tour was still the entity ruling the professional circuit.
Kelly Slater was enjoying his second wave of success. Somehow, it was the Floridian's decade. Between 2000 and 2010, he won four titles.
His longtime Hawaiian rival, Andy Irons, had been able to snatch three consecutive trophies between 2002 and 2004, and Mick Fanning was getting in the mix with his all-around power surfing skills.
It was yesterday, and everything was so different
Online broadcasts were getting more and more viewers.
For the good and bad, but mostly for the good, commentators had barely any filter and were not chained to strict woke rules or executive orders.
The iconic multinational surf companies were still putting money into pro surfing, and each event somehow had its own flavor regarding image, branding, and onsite aesthetics.
Also, spectators were assured that Banzai Pipeline was the last event of the season for very good reasons.
The scoring system was also substantially different, and surfers were allowed some liberties that today would be deemed unacceptable.
Webcasts were fun to watch and kept people from all over the world glued to their desktops, anxious for the heats to end and their favorite surfer to go through or win the competition.
Can we still feel that for any surfer on tour?
Anyway, we really had an incredible roster of pro surfers that were authentic, vibrant, and armed with a killer instinct.
They were not tied to the dictatorship of social media and hyper-short clip cuts for instant gratification of the masses.
At most, we knew there was a thing called YouTube where we could watch a few replays in questionable video resolution.
It seemed like each surfer had a completely different personality. And that reflected on their surfing as we had all sorts of styles and approaches to wave-riding coming out of the computer screen.
And the best thing of all, any Championship Tour elite member could win an event.
Andy vs. Kelly vs. Andy
But then, obviously, we had Andy and Kelly, Kelly and Andy, and everything they could put together for us.
It was a raw rivalry with occasional bursts of harmony and mutual respect. Actually, you could pour nearly all human feelings into that relationship of theirs, even those we are normally told to repress.
It was surfing in its purest state, with unfiltered and uncontrolled displays of vanity, ego, and rage. And we would ask for more.
Here and there, we would love, hate, or condemn it. And then, we would reset our values for the next competition and forgive those who had to be forgiven.
Andy Irons, the original AI, and not this synthetic and bland creation of itself we have today that goes by the name of artificial intelligence, was the ultimate ambassador of passion and verve in competitive professional surfing.
It was impossible not to love his attitude toward the wave. Andy Irons was visceral with the surf, and with himself.
You could witness him feeding himself confidence before falling into his own demons.
You could observe his kindness and generosity, and then watch him tear down the pillars of common sense and urbanity.
Irons' inner yin and yang mirrored the opposing yet complementary forces he was part of in the play with Kelly Slater.
A rebel in the golden age of pro surfing
The world's one and only AI was a flame that boosted surfing's visibility with the turn of the millennium and got his sponsors sitting on the verge of exhilaration and despair.
The 2010 ASP World Tour roster was just phenomenal.
The list of 48 surfers included names like Irons, Slater, Fanning, Dane Reynolds, Taj Burrow, Owen Wright, Adriano de Souza, Damien and CJ Hobgood, Jeremy Flores, Taylor Knox, Bobby Martinez, Joel Parkinson, and many other star surfers.
It was a stellar lineup.
Andy's last living year with us was a season of contrasts, mixing 25th-place finishes with a win against Kelly at Teahupoo.
Watching that duo deciding finals in waves of consequence around the world was one of Earth's greatest sports showdowns.
Andy and Kelly delivered, by far, the most exciting collection of clashes in the history of surfing, whether in Round 1 heats or the final stages of a comp.
Where in the world can you find a sports rivalry, swinging from moods of mutual near-hate feelings to public acknowledgements of mutual respect and admiration?
Irons and Slater shared surf trips together and VHS time in some of the most iconic surf videos and movies of the 1990s and early 2000s.
And fans would replay those moments endlessly until their next duel made everything even more memorable.
A unique character and personality
Interestingly, the rawness of Andy Irons had a genuinely warm and soft flipside. That's how he was with his fans, friends, close ones, and young groms.
In candid interviews, the Kauai-born regular footer opened his soul to the most intricate and intimate details of his feelings and personal life.
The surfer with a street skater's blood also never hid his emotional struggles and substance abuse.
Andy Irons was the people's surfer stretched to the extreme, even if you sometimes cheered for another guy in the water.
Watching pro surfing was like experiencing a roller coaster of emotions in real time. And we owe most of that to AI, too, allowing us to compare those days to what we have now.
Andy was also probably the last authentic pro surfer to ever reach the elite of the sport. One of the first to speak openly about the need to address and take care of our mental health issues.
Missing the original AI more than ever
The strict rules imposed by WSL on its athletes drained the genuineness that spectators so much cherished in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
Today, if a pro surfer misses the official script, they will be fined. At best, the golden age of surfing heroes was put on hold.
Nowadays, everybody says the same thing in post-heat interviews; everybody posts the same content on social media. The sterilization of pro surfers' voices and the need to abide by the established rulebook are a reality.
How would Andy Irons cope with today's pro surfing world? Would he go the Bobby Martinez way, or would he settle and enjoy his free surfing time more than ever, and under the radar?
While we will never know the answer to those - and many more - questions, it's always gratifying that AI's legacy lives and keeps surfing's original compass pointing us to the true north.
Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com
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