Ian Walsh is one of the most respected big wave surfers on earth. He lives and breathes big waves, training his mind and body year-round. But it’s not just big waves he enjoys. “My favorite kind of surfer is the one who can go out and have fun in anything,” says John John Florence. “If it’s two-feet or a hundred feet, he’s still able to go out and have fun. Guys like Ian are the guys that I really look up to because of that.”
John, of course, is one of the most respected surfers on earth, but he’s not exactly known as a big wave guy. Sure, he can do it, but he’s not one of the people out at Jaws every giant swell. John and Ian are good friends, so they shared a section in 2016’s Distance Between Dreams, a film that followed Ian Walsh through one of the most historic years in big wave surfing. The section you see above was filmed in near-perfect El Niño conditions at a dream-like reef pass in the Pacific. In it, Walsh and Florence trade barrels… and it’s hard to say who got the best one.
