Fragile egos and a lack of self-awareness go hand-in-hand with professional surfing. Which makes it even more hilarious when the more irreverent members of the community decide to poke fun. Sterling Spencer has gladly taken on that role, but being professional surfing’s enfant terrible comes with its downsides – as he detailed in his latest podcast.
The moment came out of the latest episode of Pinch My Salt, in which Morgan Maassen reminisced about the time when Jeremy Flores drunkenly choked out Sterling at the 2016 Surfer Poll awards, due to a simmering beef between the two that all began with a video. In the now-classic clip, a child unsuccessfully attempts to get an autograph from the Frenchman, with Sterling adding his own comedic voice over.
Maassen set the scene: “It was either before or after the [Surfer Poll] major event,” he explained. “Everyone’s drunk already and everyone was in the big foyer and you and I are just hanging out and I think we’re both wearing horrendous Hawaiian t-shirts, just kind of rabble-rousing people. Jeremy walks by and I’m like, ‘Jeremy, let me get a photo of you and Sterling together.’”
This was one piece of rabble-rousing that would instantly backfire. “So Jeremy (and his eyes are a little bit crossed), he puts his arm around Sterling and then just keeps squeezing and squeezing and squeezing and all of a sudden Sterling’s eyes are bulging out,” continues Maassen. “Sterling’s like, ‘I can’t breathe.’ It was actually kind of amazing, because I think Jeremy didn’t even know he was killing [Sterling], but he had also been training to kill [him].”
“He was hammered and I think he didn’t realize he literally was choking me out,” clarified Sterling. “My head dropped and [the crowd] couldn’t tell if I was kidding or not. Then I like kind of came up and then the crowd got near, ‘cause they were like, ‘Oh, wait. Is this like weird beef?’
“But he wouldn’t let me go. He was talking to people and kind of like yanking my head around. I was so out of it. It was like, ‘Is he trying to kill me?’ It was super weird. Then he gave a speech and he kissed me on my cheek.”
It was only the intervention of Michael Ho that stopped the whole debacle. Then it wasn’t until the next day that the pair would finally make amends at the premiere of Spencer’s film Surf Madness. And the rest is history.
