Excerpt from “Amplified,” by Matt Warshaw, published in the January 1989 issue of SURFER. This version has been slightly edited from the original.


When I have a shaved head it feels like I can think better. When I’ve got the hair it feels kind of like a helmet keeping everything inside my head sort of trapped.


He’s the world champion but he didn’t surf big waves last year, so I figure he’s missing a third of it. He’s a two-thirds’ world champion. If I won the title but I surfed like that in Hawaii, I would tell the magazines, “Look, I’m world champion because have the most points, but so-and-so″—whoever did best in Hawaii—”he deserves to be world champion, too.”


When you go into my room there’s not one picture of surfing on the walls. It’s just clean, white walls. I think about surfing so much that sometimes I hate the whole thing by the time I get home. I just want to go to my room and lay my head down, with nothing on the walls, and think of anything besides surfing.

 I’ve tried it before. I’ve kicked back and looked at it, and I usually just go, “This is fucking boring.” I mean, just sitting around and looking at things? Yeah, right.


When I’m out at Blackies, say after a heavy-duty storm, when it’s all gnarly and nobody else is out, and the sky’s all purple and red—I get into that. I flash on how beautiful God made all this.


Guys are going, “Hey, let’s go look at this, or let’s go look at that.” And I’m going, “Hey, I’m not here to be a tourist. I could care less about what this place has to offer. I’m here to do a job, I’m here to surf a contest, then I’m going to get my ass out of here, over to the next contest.”


I don’t get along with anyone on Tour if we’re together too long. They can’t handle me for more than a week, and I can’t handle them. I try not to hang with anyone.


You get it the way I shape it, or it’s no dice. You don’t tell the shaper how to shape the board. You tell the shaper how you want to surf, then bail and let him do it.


I’m scared pissless pretty much anywhere on the North Shore. But I’ll get there. I want to do something at Sunset that no one’s ever done. I want to get radical at Sunset. I’ve seen Occy get radical, Carroll get radical, Potter and Curren—but I want to get 

 radical. I want to go beyond imagination.


I’m friendly with people I know, and people I don’t know I don’t talk to. What am I supposed to say? I don’t know what to say, so they think I’m an asshole. Once someone gets to know me, it’s cool. But it’s one way or the other. My Dad’s the same way.


Point waves, being with family, and finding out how to know God better.

Excerpt from “Changing Shades of Soul,” by Matt Warshaw, published in the September 1988 issue of SURFER. Text has been slightly edited.


I can’t because I’m not a soul surfer. From what I’ve heard, soul surfers are these guys who just go out there and cruise and don’t worry about competition, or anything. I only surf for competition. I like to surf for the fun of it sometimes, but I really only surf for competition.


Turning pro when I was 14, with everybody flipping out and saying I was blowing it. Here I am now, and I don’t think I blew it at all.


More money for contests, and better representatives, so people think better of the sport—the way they think of football. We should get more respect, instead of people thinking we’re trash.

Excerpt from “Be There Now: Thoughts, Views and Predictions for the Future,” SURFER, December 1989.

The future is no big deal. The only thing I fear is God. He’s going to come back, and that’s it. I don’t know when it’s going to happen—probably not within my lifetime—but I’m not going to take any chances on Him coming back tonight, and me not following Jesus Christ.

The one thing I’d like to see for the future is getting rid of rights for criminals. Look at all the people who’ve killed someone and gotten off. I could kill five people today, and tell the judge, “Aw, man, it wasn’t really me, I was taking drugs,” and I’d get two years, big deal, then I’d be off on probation and walking the streets again. I should get the electric chair, right off the bat. I mean, look at what God used to do in the old days: He used to go, “I am,” and 

, people would fall down dead. You guys out there who don’t believe should read the Bible and see what God used to do; how radical He was. All you gotta do is read the book of Joshua. God used to take 40,000 believers, march into a city of 80,000 and wipe ’em out: kill everything, burn everything, families and children, ’cause they were sinners—they were dirty.

As for the future of pro surfing, all I gotta say is, why doesn’t every country build an unreal wavepool? The United States, Australia, Japan, Europe. Why doesn’t each one of them make a five-million-dollar wavepool that has a perfect 4-6′ wave? Why not? ‘Cause they’re stupid. What we get instead are these gay little pools with weak, dribbly waves. It makes me sick.

[Photos: Mike Moir, Rob Gilley, Peter Brouillet]

Richie Collins

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos