Over the last year I ended up sort of reducing the amount of blog posts I was putting out about skate industry wide news and controversies. As I have mentioned elsewhere, wading into the biggest issues facing skateboarding doesn’t really give me anything but a bunch of angry comments. Despite people who state the contrary, I don’t believe “all publicity is good publicity”, and I always try to ensure the interactions I have from this blog are positive.
There is a really controversial subject I want to address here though, and it is something that has rocked the skateboarding world to its core. I am, of course, referring to Tyler Peterson’s blatant and shocking toe drag in his game of SKATE against Chris Joslin in the current Battle At The Berrics.
I am showing my age by saying this, but I was watching BATB when it first started. Back then it was a fun little competition designed for the pro’s to have a bit of a laugh, and the general tone and vibe was light hearted and comical.
This tone gradually gave way to a more serious and competitive tone, starting with the competition outlawing certain trick types, and introducing the idea of offensive and defensive toe drags to call into question sketchy landings. Overall, the status of SKATE as a premium event in the competition circuit has increased with big money on the line for winning games. BATB itself has become one of these, with major sponsorship and prize money attached for anyone who comes away with the champion’s title.
The popularity of the competition has created a new breed of flatground skateboarding wizards who perform previously unseen bizarre flip trick variations that exist purely to dumbfound and trip up another skateboarder in this specific scenario. The general opinion of these skaters are that they are purely focused on games of SKATE, they take the games far too seriously, they don’t drop street parts like other “legit” pro’s who are in the comp, and that in general their inclusion is a way to pander to social media influencers.
This is in stark contrast to what the competition originally was, which had an element of surprise where you found traditional “jack of all trades” pro skaters like Eric Koston pulling out weird late flip variations and showing their flatground chops – the winner wasn’t always easy to guess, as the skill level was more of a mystery.
The Berrics encouragement and promotion of the “Instagram flatground wizard”, who operates on a social currency of followers, and the simultaneous partnering with (“if a soulless silicon valley startup was a skate shoe”) brand Cariuma, has changed the landscape of what BATB was, and what it now finds itself to be.
And that leads us up to the current season of BATB. If you follow Dumb Data, there’s plenty of evidence to back up a conspiracy that (“The skate shoe equivalent of Kombucha”) brand Cariuma is pulling the strings behind who is winning games in the current tournament. All of this is adding weight to the most damning moment in the season.
During a quarter semi-final game between Tyler Peterson and Chris Joslin, Joslin lands a Switch Backside Heel. Peterson’s defending land is disgusting, and his whole front part of his foot makes clear, undeniable contact with the floor. This isn’t a toe drag, this is a straight up failure to land. The honourable move for anyone who does this is to hold your hands up and say “My bad, is that a redo or a fail?”. Peterson tic-tacs his way out of the trick, looking around like a panicked toddler trying to make sure nobody saw him steal a cookie from the cookie jar.
The guest referee, Justin Ladner, declares the land as “good”. Joslin instantly challenges this. The Berrics have seen fit to introduce a challenge flag rule specifically for moments like this, and Joslin takes full advantage. The ref instantly refuses to accept the challenge, saying the land was in defence… Therefore utterly shit landings are allowed. And with that, any form of legitimacy BATB had disappeared.
Now I don’t instantly buy into the conspiracy angle. If (“The skate shoe equivalent of a trust fund hippy who drives a Tesla”) Cariuma and The Berrics have gamed this to serve the sponsor’s needs, then they are being incredibly obvious about it. In the way that everyone who watches professional wrestling knows it’s scripted, and enjoys it anyway for the entertainment, BATB being effectively fixed to put two ludicrous flatground trick machines against each other in the final is perhaps an open secret we all fail to acknowledge.
But, say I don’t buy the conspiracy. Say that this is just a bad call, in an increasingly poorly ran competition. My first thought would be that if The Berrics want us to take this competition seriously, they need to be consistent with their referee’s calls. No serious professional skateboarder would accept Peterson’s land as a legit roll away. If this really is a test of professionals, they need to start judging it so.
This means no favourites, no bullshit about “defence” when someone lands poorly, this means maybe even having multiple referees to avoid conflict of interest. The current system of “let a random skater who happens to be in the building be a ref” is hurting the legitimacy of this comp, and is clearly pissing off the viewership. I tell you what, it certainly ain’t helping the reputation of (“Vans if they spent more time huffing their own farts than making decent skate shoes”) brand Cariuma.
“But Ade, it’s just for fun, stop taking it so seriously” – You don’t need to tell me that. Remember I told you I was watching this comp when The Berrics first started it. Arguably this would be so much better if this was still 100% played for laughs and just for fun. The problem is The Berrics have amped this up as a proper competition.
They have turned the likes of Tyler Peterson into names you should watch out for specifically for competitions like this. Nobody is expecting a Jamie Griffin part, but they follow him on Insta in droves to see him do a near impossible flip in his garage as he practises to face a similarly dextrous flatground aficionado. This isn’t just two handrail skating juggernauts dicking about with Nollie Late Flips, this is two honed wizards of flatground skating battling with Double Dolphin Flips and 540 Laser Flips.
The Berrics want this to be a big deal, because the bigger this is, the more viewers (and money) they get. The reason why this is serious, and should be taken seriously, is because if The Berrics want us to tune in to see one of these flatground Jedi’s absolutely trounce a legit legend in skateboarding, and make a ton of money off of our interest, as well as pay out money to the winner of the tournament, the least they can do is make sure the competition makes any kind of actual sense, and that these professional skateboarders land a Switch Back Heel properly. I don’t think that is too much to ask.
The Terrible Company 