Mick Fanning and Kelly Slater battling for a world title on the last day of the last event of the season? That's a showdown. Put 'em out in 12-foot Pipe with the occasional Second Reef roll-in, and now we've got a showdown with drama.

Maybe I'm getting a bit feverish here with what's about to happen on this final day of the 2013 tour, but it seems like a distinction can be made between Pipe contests that brought us a showdown and Pipe contests that were dramatic. It's not science, I know, but here's what I'm talking about:

1973: Lopez vs Russell. Mini-showdown, no drama


You really have a real honest-to-goodness showdown without a world title on the line, and in '73 the world title didn't exist. The surf was middling this year too, so no real drama. Still, the two top Pipe aces went out there and finished according to the form book: Lopez first, Russell second. Three years later, in similar conditions, it was Russell first, Lopez second. Russell, by the way, starting in '73, had a pretty damn incredible six-year Pipe Masters run: 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 1st, 1st, 2nd.

1983: Dane Kealoha vs ASP. No showdown, blood-and-guts drama


No, actually, wait. Change the criteria to politics, and this was a big-time showdown. Ian Cairns, having defeated Fred Hemmings earlier in the year for control of the world tour, removed the Triple Crown from the tour schedule 

 declared all three events off-limits to the top 16—the most vindictive and small-minded power play in the history of organized surfing. World title contender Dane Kealoha crossed Ian's line in the sand, won the event and the moral high ground, but ruined his career. (As a side note, Kealoha also won the '83 Duke contest—meaning he took two of the three events that year in Hawaii—but lost the Triple Crown to Michael Ho.) This was also the event where Steve Massefeller and Chris Lundy, in the prelims, in 

, were both pulled from the water with horrific injuries: Massefeller nearly died from a skull fracture, and Lundy blew his knee out so badly that his foot was pointing behind him. A gruesome day at Pipe.

1988: Tom Carroll vs Barton Lynch vs Damien Hardman: blunted showdown, big drama


More accurate to say Tom Carroll vs Tom Carroll. This was the only year, ever, that two of the Triple Crown events were held at Pipeline. The Masters went first, in modest waves, with Robbie Page taking the win, and Tom Carroll all hopped up on cortisone as he fought off a bronchial infection. That left just the Billabong Pro, the final event of the season, also held at Pipeline, in big, good, glassy, grunty conditions. Hardman led the ratings, but was a washout on the North Shore; in a way, he was the longshot. Lynch was third—not out of sight, but pretty far back. Carroll, who'd already won the World Cup, was in second, and so much the favorite once everybody got an eyeful of Pipe that final morning that running the event itself seemed like nothing more than a courtesy to organizers and fans. Hardman went down early, as expected. Lynch advanced, but the title was Carroll's to lose. And that's just what he did, shockingly, in his second heat of the morning, picking up an interference against Todd Holland in the dying minutes of a match that he had well in hand. It was a bullshit call. Carroll wasn't close to getting in Holland's way. On the other hand, judges had been enforcing the interference rule with that kind of rigidity all year. You basically couldn't look at a wave if a surfer with priority was paddling for it. Carroll knew this as well as anybody. He wept on the beach in frustration. He fired his manager not long after. But he also owned up to the mistake. "The error was entirely my fault," he later said. "Just a lack of concentration." Great moments were still to come in Carroll's career (see below), but that was the last best shot at a world title.

1991: Derek Ho vs Tom Carroll. Major showdown, high drama


A world title wasn't in play for either surfer this year, but the unofficial "King of Pipeline" title was. Carroll had already won the Masters twice ('87, '90), Ho once ('86), and at that point there really wasn't anybody else in their league at Pipe. On finals day, the waves were massive, throaty, consistent. Carroll pulled off "the snap" in the prelims, but that was just a warm-up to a finals performance that included what Wayne Bartholomew called "the best ten minutes of competitive surfing ever seen." The heat was half over when Carroll and Ho scrambled up the face of a huge set wave, with the nose of Ho's board nearly touching Carroll's feet. The wave feathered. Ho, on the inside, momentarily turned for shore, then slid off his board and pulled back through the lip. Carroll two-stroked the takeoff, went vertically down the face, turned, disappeared, and was spat out the end. Perfect 10. Notched another 10 a few minutes later. Won the final going away. "Carroll is 

 Pipe Master," Derek Hynd wrote. "The one and the only."

1992: Sunny Garcia vs the Pipeline reef. Minor showdown, heat-butting drama

 How weird and wrong that Sunny, with all his Triple Crown titles, never got a Masters win.


Three-way showdown, friendly drama Machado had the rating's lead going into Pipe, but Sunny wasn't far behind, and in a SURFER interview he said: "I wouldn't bet against me." Slater was third in the ratings, but looking too far back to be a real contender. On the final day of competition, Garcia met Billabong teammate Mark Occhilupo, who just prior to the heat said publically that he would "give Sunny any wave he wants." Occhilupo went further. He paddled for waves he didn't intend on catching, just to give Sunny priority. And Sunny flat-out had the worst heat of his career. Took off on bad waves, wiped out, broke a leash. Lost. Smacked a cameraman with his board as he walked off the beach. Amazing that he didn't simply explode into a smoking ball of carbonized flesh on the spot. Later that day, Slater and Machado had their famously friendly semifinal match, in perfect double-overhead waves, with the smiling and the high-fiving, and Slater posting a 29.7 (out of possible 30) to advance. Slater still had to take out Occhilupo in the final, but by then it was all but written that he would do so, easily. On this day, Slater won the Masters, the Triple Crown, and the world title.

2003: Slater vs Irons. High-noon showdown, fizzled drama


Slater was back to peak form after a three-year world tour break and a sputtering return to full-time competition in 2002. Irons, reigning Pipe champion and world title holder, was the only surfer that had ever matched—then 

matched—Slater in terms of drive and talent. "It was a rivalry surfing seemed to need, and it grew throughout the year," Nick Carroll wrote. "By Pipeline time it'd become positively Shakespearean." This one was more about build-up than the actual event itself. The high point, and it was sublime, being the moment when Kelly sidled up to Andy on the beach just before the four-man finals heat—the last heat of the last event of the year; whoever came out would take the crown—threw an arm around the Hawaiian's shoulders, leaned in and said "I love you." The waves, unfortunately, sucked. Junky onshore rights across a massive sandbar. Irons got out to an early lead. Joel Parkinson (Irons' Billabong teammate) tactically prevented Slater from taking off on the best wave of the heat. Andy spent the last 12 minutes sitting on Kelly. Over and done. Irons scooped up every prize on offer—Masters title, Triple Crown, world title—and Slater licked his wounds for more than a year. "Andy surfed like the surfer he is at 25 years of age," Carroll wrote, summing up Irons' overall performance that year. "A white-hot, forceful, reckless, nervous and profoundly skilled athlete. Kelly's still the best ever. Andy's absolutely the best right now."

[Photos: John Seaton Callahan, Jeff Divine, Tom Boyle, A. Sodre, Don King, Tom Servais]

SHOWDOWN AT THE PIPELINE MASTERS: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

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