Carlos Muñoz just won the Hurley Pro Video Trials

Carlos Muñoz really did just win the Hurley Pro Video Trials, in wildly-convincing fashion: He beat Dusty Payne in the final by close to 12k votes. He straight up schooled Cam Richards at his own game, too, worth mentioning because last year Cam nearly took down Dane Reynolds with the wildest social backing ever seen behind a relatively-unknown surfer and holy shit the surfing world is still talking about that day.

But anyway, Carlos is the man you’ll see in a round one heat against two of the top 34 best surfers in the world on September 9.

Hurley had more than 400k visits to the voting site in the past week. And more than half of those were (individual) IP addresses from… Costa Rica! No surprises there, except for the overwhelming warmth we feel toward the Costa Rican surfing clique’s togetherness.

Carlos beat Matt Banting in round one, Cam in the quarters, Patty Gudauskas in the semis and Dusty Payne in the final.

Plenty have, and will continue to, call the Hurley Pro Video Trials a popularity contest. Regardless, it’s capitalising on the digital age and bringing more attention to the trial round of a contest than any other before. Those are our feels, anyhow.

Also, here’s what Ian Gentil wrote on his Instagram following his loss. It’s a little hard to decipher what his point is, but worth reading for some reason that we can’t quite put our finger on…

First of all, I’d like to point out that clip for clip @dusty_payne absolutely destroyed me and deserves to be in the final hands down. However, it seems a little too coincidental that right before (minutes away) losing to both Albee Layer @hipstersurfer808 in the quarters, and myself in the semis, he miraculously came back just in time to seal it. How convenient! I mean come on, they’ve gotta keep it exciting right? It just really sucks how even Surfing has major politics (or whatever you wanna call it). Also, although I really wanted to be in the Hurley Pro, I don’t feel that I was the most deserving from the top 16…at least they got that right. Still, it’s kinda funny how me losing out along with Albee (and maybe even Cam Richards @camrichards last year) am just another example of what “YOU BE THE JUDGE” really means. We all witnessed it. That’s not the shitty part though: what about all the supporters? I know my sister @joyjoygentil for one pretty much didn’t sleep trying to contact every possible voter/promoter she could in time to help me get through. That being said, I’m really not the one who was wronged, at all. I’m sure it wasn’t any different for the rest of the top 16 who had their families and friends helping out. I say it’s time for all of us to have a week long insta cleanse! Wooooooo