Makua Rothman getting ready to talk story on Pinch My Salt. Photo: Sterling Spencer // YouTube
Surfing is full of beef, whether it’s shade thrown over social media or actual physical confrontation in the lineup. However, in the history of surfing-related altercations, one dustup between Makua Rothman and TJ Barron stands out. The 2011 brawl at the Billabong house, between two Billabong team riders, no less, was the stuff of North Shore legend – and fueled plenty of speculation at the time. And in the most recent episode of Sterling Spencer’s podcast Pinch My Salt, Rothman went down memory lane to tell the tale of how it all went down.
It was the night of the SURFER Poll awards. As Spencer explains, he had already been having a rough night, on account of Jeremy Flores literally strangling him over a comedy video he had made. So he retreated to the Billabong house, where he had just begun to live. Unfortunately for him, Makua Rothman and his retinue were also on the way there to settle an unresolved dispute he had with TJ Barron in the Pipeline lineup earlier.
“The only reason I actually came back with all the boys is because [I was] surfing Pipe and he burned me,” explained Rothman. “So, I burned him back. I called [RVCA co-founder] Pat Tenore that night. I said, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on. I’m going to go to the Billabong house. If anything happens, you make sure I don’t get fired.’ And he goes, ‘No problem.’ So I go over there that night. I jog from my house all the way to the Billabong house by myself. I jump the fence, go inside, walk right in the house [and say] ‘TJ, let’s go.’ Right in the middle of the house. So me and TJ start beefing in the house.”
As Rothman tells it (and Spencer wholeheartedly backs up), it was instant chaos. “The Aussies and Billabong guys, they just see TJ fighting with somebody, so they all pile on me,” continued Makua. “We’re going down to the ground and guys start nailing me. I give it to the Australians, they’re some of the toughest fuckers I know. They like scrap, you know what I mean? You can say what you want about them, but I’ll tell you what, they’re some of the toughest buggers around. So I don’t blame them, actually, but at the time, I was like, ‘You know what? They’re going to pile me like that. I’m gonna get the boys and we’re gonna gonna do this, right?’ So I went to the SURFER Poll Awards and rounded up the boys. I come back and just kind of cleaned house. The boys didn’t care who was who.”
Once again, the house descended into chaos and violence. As Spencer tells it, he saw the writing on the wall and immediately jumped over a wall, out of the property. But others didn’t manage to escape unscathed. “I really felt bad for Alejandro Moretta because I think he had broke ribs,” said Rothman.
Though Rothman and TJ had already fought a second time at the house that night, it somehow was still not the end of the saga. Later on, after returning home from a night of partying, Rothman was confronted by his father, legendary North Shore enforcer Eddie Rothman, and told that they were going to finish the whole thing, once and for all. “I came home and it was like 9:00 a.m. and my dad goes, ‘Oh, put your shoes on,'” describes Makua. “I’m like, ‘For what?’ And he goes, ‘You and TJ’s going to beef again at the park.’ And I’m like, ‘Again?'”
Rather than a third melee at the Billabong house, this fight went down in a nearby park. “I choked him out and that was it,” concludes Rothman. “We scrapped for a while and I hugged him. It took a little while for the tension to go down but I said I love that and I wish him and his family nothing but the best. Those are the kind of things that, you know, was pretty pretty standard on the North Shore.”
