Kelly Slater and John John Florence are, without a doubt, two of the best surfers on earth. John John was born in 1992, the same year that Kelly Slater won his first world title. Slater was 20 years old at the time and heading into the best competitive years of his life. John, of course, was just heading not into any kind of competitive years, but simply into the first years of his life, learning to crawl and walk and talk and all that baby stuff. But Kelly? Kelly was in the process of writing surf history. Unbeknownst to either, however, John was also in the process of doing the same thing. Somewhere along the way, it became apparent that John John Florence was likely going to be a person who might become a very, very good surfer.
Maybe it was the fact that he was just a little kid surfing pumping Pipeline, or the fact that he was the youngest to ever compete in the Sunset event. Whatever it was, John’s path was clear: he would, like Kelly, become a world champion. The two are close friends, as you likely know — close enough for it to be okay for Kelly to burn John at Pipeline as a joke and get away with it — so whenever they run into each other in a heat, it’s a heat worth watching. Twice, even. And, thanks to the World Surf League, we can do just that.
“From beginning to end, Florence was not to be denied,” the WSL wrote about the semifinal heat replay you see above. “He was in rhythm all event, but it was the semifinal against Kelly Slater that he really went next level. In the opening exchange, on two of the best Pipe waves of the day, Florence got the edge by one point. Then he went to work against the GOAT. He backed up his Pipe barrel with a calculated, fall-from-the-roof bomb at Backdoor. By heat’s end, all Slater could do was drop in on the ‘grom’ and try to steal some of the limelight.”
See more from the World Surf League here.
