Szekely is now a surfboard free agent. Photo: Jacob Szekely//YouTube
Pro surfer Jacob “Zeke” Szekely will no longer ride Rusty Surfboards — or he’ll buy them with his own cash if he does. Rusty Surfboards issued a press release Sunday night announcing that the two parties were separating.
In the statement, the San Diego surfboard brand said the break was “effective immediately,” thanking Szekely for his service as a team rider. However, the company didn’t disclose the reason behind the split.
When The Inertia reached Jen Preisendorfer, Rusty Surfboard’s Global Managing Director, she said the “overall direction with the (brand), and long-term goals just don’t align,” noting that the change does not affect Szekely’s status with the Rusty apparel brand.
“Unfortunately, this had been coming for a while,” Preisendorfer said. “The message and the optics just don’t represent the message for a legacy brand like Rusty Surfboards.”
Szekely told us he suspected that Rusty Surfboards was “not too stoked” that he had been testing out Sharp Eye boards shaped by his childhood friend, Taylor Clark. He has noted in his vlogs that he’s been testing them out.
“The boards (Clark) made me went insane,” Szekely said. “(He’s) been teaching me a little bit more about concave, thickness, what volume might actually work better for me, being able to ride thinner rail, thinner tail boards.”
“I am still super good friends with Rusty,” he added. “Love the brand. Love everything they’ve done for me. I thought it was a good time to try some other technology. No bad blood there.”
Szekely has carved out a niche for himself as a wave pool savant, OnlyFans creator, and surf industry rebel. He’s been open about his legal and alcohol issues in the past, which resulted in run-ins with the law. Rusty, who had sponsored him as a teenager, dropped him from the team, and later picked him up again when he got his act together.
Szekely has amassed a valuable social media following of nearly 230,000 on Instagram and 118,000 on YouTube. But his style of content isn’t for everyone. The WSL partnered with Szekely to create vlogs at the Gold Coast Championship Tour stop this year, then regretted the decision when he strayed from his pre-approved questions.
If his viewership hints at the content his fans want from him (or maybe his headline use is just on point), his most-watched YouTube video is of a surf fight. Another video on Instagram with 1.3 million views shows Szekely jostling with another surfer in a left-hand tube. “I’d rather people know me and hate me than not even know me at all,” he wrote in the caption. Objectively, that’s not a terrible way to look at the world when you’re in the surf-content creation business. But at least for the time being, Szekely will be doing that content creation without Rusty surfboards under his feet.
