Filipe’s Final 5 world titles will still be viewed as just that: world titles. Photo: Pat Nolan//World Surf League
In 2026, when the WSL reverts back to its long-time formula of crowning world champions via cumulative point total, how will we look back on the five-year anomaly of the “Final 5” champions? Will they blend in with the rest of the title holders over the last half-century? Or will they forever be marked with an asterisk – world titles that “don’t really count?”
I suspect that in the short term, there will always be “asterisk” talk among the pundits and fans. However, in the long term, any differences from the world titles won between 2021 and 2025 will be long forgotten, as they should be.
I drew this conclusion by looking at similar scenarios in other sports leagues with which I’m familiar. For example, the New York Yankees are touted as the most storied and successful franchise in Major League Baseball. They have 27 world titles; no other team has half as many.
But 11 of those titles were won when the league was segregated. Baseball changed forever in 1947 when it opened to black players, and today, players of “diverse backgrounds” account for 40 percent of the league. But 78 years later, no one is lobbying to invalidate those titles from the segregated era, as many have done to surfing’s Final 5 winners. Albeit an aberration from the current format of baseball, the titles are accepted as equal – just part of the sport’s history.
Plus, the Yankees’ legendary slugger Babe Ruth, who currently sits in third place all-time with 714 home runs, never had to face the best black pitchers of his time. And again, no one slanders him for having success in the environment in which he played.
On the other hand, looking at the short-term perception of “irregular” titles, let’s take into account the COVID-shortened 2020 NBA season. All-time great LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers won the title in what was referred to as “The Bubble”: 22 teams were sent to finish out the season locked in a quarantine zone at Disney World in Florida without the presence of fans – a major deviation compared to previous championships.
And similar to surfing’s Final 5 debates, players, pundits, and keyboard warriors are still debating five years after the fact if the Laker’s 2020 NBA title was as meaningful as other years.
In the MLB, perhaps the biggest “asterisk” ever is the literal asterisk that was branded on the record-breaking 756th home run ball of San Francisco Giants legend Barry Bonds. Bonds still hasn’t been elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame because of his alleged steroid use and the bad taste that lingers in people’s mouths (he was never especially accommodating to baseball writers either, who vote on Hall of Fame entry). But in the long-term, when we examine his outstanding career, and people whose opinions matter cycle in that never saw him play, PEDs or not, could the perception of Bonds change for the better? Absolutely.
I surmise that surfing’s Final 5 titles will play out similarly. In the short-term, people will continue to discredit Filipe Toledo for winning his two titles in the Final 5 era at Lower Trestles. People will continue to say that Carissa Moore was robbed of two titles for not performing well in the new format. But in the long-term, that discourse will fade into history.
When surfers of 2055 are perusing the list of world champions, they won’t get caught up in the difference between Italo Ferreira’s 2019 cumulative point title and Gabriel Medina’s 2021 Final 5 title. They will be viewed equally, which I agree with. Every surfer knew the rules and the formula for winning a title during the Final 5 era. The surfers who played their cards right should not be viewed as inferior for adapting to the new format. History’s opinion will trend in that direction as well.
