This past weekend, the World Surf League held its annual XXL Big Waves awards at the City National Grove of Anaheim to celebrate the best mega-riders of the past year. History was made when Keala Kennelly became the first woman ever to win the Pure Scot Barrel of the Year Award for what the WSL described as “the biggest tube ride of the year.” Kennelly was visibly moved during her speech, telling the capacity crowd, “When I was a little girl, I kept getting told I could not do things because I was a girl. I was told that women can’t surf…So who I really want to thank is everyone who told me you can’t do that because you’re a woman. Because that drove me to dedicate my life to proving you wrong, and it’s been so damn fun.”
Yay, woman power! Later on, the crowd heard from surf stars Courtney Conlogue and Andrea Moller during the Women’s Performance Award, keeping up the positive vibes going on that evening. And then surf legend Greg Noll, a pioneer big-wave rider and longboard shaper, went on stage and brought the house back to surfing’s sexist-AF bro mentality with an eating-pussy joke. Roll the tape!
We had a previous clip of Noll’s speech, but it was mysteriously deleted; above is the whole awards ceremony off the World Surf League’s YouTube channel, so you’ll have to skip ahead to 2:08:10, when he starts it (and you should also check out Kennelly’s great speech). In case WSL scrubs Noll’s part, here’s the joke: he tells a story about a buddy who had a throat operation. Afterwards, Noll got a call from a nurse telling him that while his buddy’s surgery was successful, they had “to remove a rather-large hairball from his throat from eating too much pussy.”
Though you hear hoots and hollers from the audience at the end, female attendees who spoke to the Weekly were disgusted. “It was such an insult to Keala’s speech to have Greg say his stupid joke,” one surfer said. “Here she was pouring her heart out, and then she was so disrespected.”
“Typical OC surf bro mentality,” another added. “They couldn’t be serious for an evening, or let us ladies have the spotlight; they had to just make us out to be tits and pussies as always.”
Stay classy, Greg! Fuck, even Jackie the Joke Man doesn’t do jokes that lame…
