Surf100 Challenge Series Presented By Pacifico: Episode 1

Our first loser goes home in this “king of the hill” showdown.

cinema // Jun 12, 2025

Words by Stab

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Welcome to the first episode of Surf100 Challenge Series Presented by Pacifico, the opening salvo in our most ambitious (and risky) video series to date.

Eight surfers enter. Only two will survive into Episode Eight’s classic Surf100 finale, where they’ll face off against two mystery invitees with Stab Premium Members voting for a chance at cash: $100,000 to be exact.

For the fat skinny on how this project works, you can review “Everything You Need To Know About The Surf100 Challenge Series Presented By Pacifico” or Stab co-founder Sam McIntosh’s write-up, “The Return of Surf100: Raw, Unfiltered, Serialized”.

Put simply, there will be eight episodes total in this series. The first seven episodes will be performance challenges, where one surfer is eliminated at the end. Episode eight (the finale) will just be a classic Surf100, where the last two surfers remaining will face off against two special invitees. Stab Premium Members, along with our judges, will vote live to determine who will take home the $100,000.

Now, let’s reveal the first challenge. You’ve heard of survival of the fittest. But what about survival of the least worst?

With $100,000 you can buy a fairly comfortable house in Cleveland, Ohio. Dream on, boys.

Episode One: King Of The Hill:

The first episode’s format is a riff on the schoolyard “king of the hill” game. It’s structured as follows:

7, 15-minute heats.
Unlimited waves.
The surfer with the best wave in each heat is safe.
Everyone else? Still vulnerable.
This continues until only one surfer remains… and is eliminated.

In our head judge Yadin Nicol’s words, “They should just treat this as a video part and try to get a clip, I’m not giving out QS scores.”

The Crew:

The cast was selected through a surprisingly democratic internal process. We were hunting for surfers who make our audience feel something with a penchant for making interesting decisions under duress. The final lineup:

Ian Crane
Mateus Herdy
Noah Beschen
Rasta Robb McCormick
Jacob Willcox
Cam Richards
Sebastian Williams
Eithan Osborne

Perennial CT off-and-on-er, Jacob Willcox in waves orders of magnitude worse than he’s used to in West Oz.

These surfers lived together in rented houses. They shared meals, Pacificos, and in a few cases — minor psychological breakdowns.

This whole process strained our crew’s patience too. “We woke up every morning not really knowing where we were gonna film that day,” Surf100 director Will Stiles said. “This project is made or broken by wave quality so everything depended on the conditions.”

Making sure every wave got captured was a battle too. “Even with eight cameras, it was hard for the crew to spot all the surfers out there, especially in this first episode with the H.B. crowd,” Will continued. “For example, one of these surfers’ winning waves was missed by every single filmer except our intern, Cameron Winkelman, who got it just in time.”

We hope you love this series like we do. In Sam McIntosh’s words, this might be the “best thing we’ve ever made.”

Is “haha fuck you guys I’m taking the 100k” ringing in everyone’s head here?

Here’s the full Surf100release schedule:

Here’s the full release schedule:

Episode 1:

Stab Premium release: Thursday, June 5th at 5 PM PDT on stabmag.com. Subscribe to Stab Premium here.
YouTube release: Thursday, June 12th, at 5 PM PDT on Stab’s YouTube channel. Subscribe to the channel here.

Episode 2:

Stab Premium release: Thursday, June 19th at 5 PM PDT
YouTube release: Thursday, June 26th, at 5 PM PDT

Episode 3:

Stab Premium release: Thursday, July 3rd at 5 PM PDT
YouTube release: Thursday, July 10th, at 5 PM PDT

Episode 4:

Stab Premium release: Thursday, July 17th at 5 PM PDT
YouTube release: Thursday, July 24th, at 5 PM PDT