Which Surfer Pulled Out Of Tahiti Allowing Mikey Wright to Keep His Perma-Wildcard?

Via the WSL Instagram, Kelly Slater has officially scraped his name from the 2018 Tahiti Pro roster, again citing his latent foot injury. 

After surfing in the Corona Pro J-Bay — his first CT event since the 2017 Pipe Masters — Slater has either further injured his foot or determined that it’s not ready for competition after all.

It’s worth noting that back in 2003, Kelly won the Tahiti event with a broken foot, after which he stated it’s one of the few venues at which a person could achieve such a feat, because you essentially just have to “drop in and go straight”.

With this information in mind, one could speculate that despite his year of recovery, Kelly’s foot situation remains quite serious. However, one could also look at Teahupo’o’s dire event forecast and draw a different conclusion entirely.

Regardless of reason, Kelly is out and will be replaced by perma-wildcard Mikey Wright, who currently sits at number 9 on the Championship Tour rankings. 

Known for his frontside turn, air, and tube abilities, it will be interesting to see how Mikey fares at Teahupo’o, especially given the less-than-ideal forecasted conditions. The Australian did make it all the way to the semis at Ulus this year, leading us to believe that his backside snap is also fearsome.

The real question, however, is what sexual innuendo Mikey will use on Instagram to reference his Teahupo’o inclusion.

Our money is on the simple but impactful “wet hole” analogy, but take a peek at some of his recent posts and see if you have a better guess…