Yago Dora

Miguel in a world, in a word, I think style matters and he's not the only person who has style on tour.

I think if you look at the current world champ, Yago Dora, Yago did a phenomenal job of blending style with progression, with core fundamentals.

And so we saw that and we're still seeing it from Yago.

When you take somebody like Italo, he's a little too frenetic where he has this explosiveness, but it may be lack style.

doubt there won't be a washing machine.

I reckon it'll be bracket stage and he's probably going to cop a, a Yago Dora and Yago is probably going to be pretty stressing about that.

Um, if you look at.

Even like a Matthias.

You're a disgrace.

All right, men's side.

Yago Dora, first.

Sorry, can we go back? What?

Mate, what a snapshot of the times it is when the world champs and the best surfers in the world on the WCT felt obliged to go down and tackle this beast of a wave.

Like, can you imagine Felipe Toledo or Yago Dora or Idolo Ferreira or even Medina, like, doing that today? Like, you can't.

Like, they're just...

It's just a different time now.

And I really admire that generation.

because that was what was considered, essentially, if you wanted to be taken seriously as the best surfer in the world, you had to showcase your skills in the full variety of conditions.

Well, you know, in saying that, I would love to see like the Yago Doras, the Italo Ferreros come down and try and surf it because you never know what those maniacs are going to do off the step.

You know, they're aerial surfers at the end of the day.

We're going to take a look at them because that's starting to become this really fun race to the finish line.

Yago Dora moves to number one in the world.

Migi Pupo with his win goes to number four in the world.

And that gap between Italo and Migi, Italo and Yago actually gets a lot closer, Tana.

But there's been some wild upsets, and...

The biggest thing of all, though, is that Yago Dora's world title campaign, which has just been in a beautiful state, just not high revs, like not low revs, just trucking at a perfect speed.

He's on the live ranking.

He's gone back to world number one, the reigning world champ.

If he gets through Miggy, then he'll get either Cole or Jake and then come up against the left-hand side of the field.

So, mate, it's possible.

So, for Miguel Pupo and Yago Dora, this comp just couldn't have gone any better, mate.

Medina getting done by Mateus is just...

Ball says, "Outlook good."

In the men's, uh, yeah, defending champs, Yago Dora- Uh, sorry, defending champ Yago Dora, he defeated Kanoa Igarashi here last year.

Uh, but really, I, I think, uh, you know, Leo Fioravanti is, is gonna really fancy himself here, um, uh, to, to hold onto the world number one spot.

His surfing is just so perfect and composed, and the consistency of this canvas is gonna favor his approach, uh, which is also, you know, uh, unbelievably consistent and heat savvy.

So you'd be definitely having a sniff at her.

The other side of the draw on the men's, you've got Yago, similar to Betty, 100% strike rate at this event.

One time surfed for one win.

And then on the men's side, there's no one better than Philippe at this venue.

jolly vaughn or oscar berry oh

it's ob and ob beats yago dora hands down walk through

yeah walk through it trestles uh look i think yago wins regardless of who he gets there i think If they're going punt for punt, Joel's not as good as Yago, but he's pretty bloody good as we've seen at Stab High.

Real good.

Who do you have to go through? I mean, a who's who of great surfers.

Of course, last year's world champion and the winner right there in Fiji, Yago Dora in the semifinal.

Current number two in the world, Leo Firavanti.

and beating, in my opinion, the greatest goofy footer of all time in Gabriel Medina in the final.

He was surfing unbelievably well in Raglan as well.

and kind of the common denominator there is he came up against probably the best goofy foot in the world, maybe the best surfer on tour right now in Yago Dora.

Yago got him in Raglan on the buzzer with a 10, but he wasn't able to get him here.

And yeah, I think we talked about that in the pre-event pod that whoever wins that quarter could very well go on to win, and he sure did.

I will say, though, there were two big call-outs on social media that I think are worth noting.

One was Kelly against Medina saying, how can they give him a 10 if he's kicking out when there's still all that wall left and he could fucking just rip into it, which I like Kelly doing.

getting in the mix and having that opinion and i think kelly is way more of a purist surfer when it comes to that sense like yes he's obviously like insanely competitive but kelly also is the type of person that as you heard in that conversation uh with taj burrow like instead of going partying with uh paris hilton and co in vegas he's looking at a swell and jay but like he just can't help it he's a pure surfer when he sees a good section or a good wave he wants to surf it to the very end and i love that about kelly that it kind of like sets him apart from some people who might just be thinking about the the dollars and the points um and the other big call out was yago dora against cole haushman after their heat and they had a few really close situations one in particular where yago went on the first wave of the set did five really nice turns all the way to the end super critical committed cole was on the next wave got barreled into a big grab rail carve and they basically gave him the same score i think it was like 0.03 apart maybe colt just got him but they looked really similar to my eye as well i think the judges did a good job but cole came out on social media and he said i love cole but just not deep enough to get those scores today usually judges are more critical with depth and barrel waves but we keep working so i found that interesting that the world champ is um he's not just lying down after a loss

Yeah, no, for sure.