Could Buddhism Have Saved Gabriel Medina’s 2019 World Title?

BDPS investigates.

style // Dec 24, 2019

Words by Stab

Reading Time: 4 minutes

The concept of karma was invented in the traditional Buddhist colony of Byron Bay, Australia approximately fifteen years ago.

In its most complex and authentic form, karma is the belief that if you do good things, good things will happen to you and if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you.

And if you ask any social media commenter other than Neymar (who’s not even Pele by the way), KARMA is the reason why Gabriel Medina lost the 2019 World Title race.

Karma top paragraph

You know the story. The whole Caio Ibelli thing. I’d like to be the first to point out that Gabriel wasn’t even being a good Christian because if he was, he would have crucified Caio instead of simply burning him.

Which begs the question: Could Buddhism have saved Gabriel Medina’s World Title?

It’s hard to argue against it when you think about him accepting karma. And on top of that, Buddhism could have introduced Gabriel to other ways of thinking such as abandoning his ego which seems to have worked for Kelly Slater as he didn’t drop anything to steal the attention from Italo (yet).

With all that considered, I hereby advise Gabriel to spend his offseason at the Byron Bay drum circle, where the women can show him what a real armpit looks like.

Onto the ratings.

#69 The System

Don’t you miss the days when the WSL got pressured into letting pretty much the entire island of Oahu compete in the main event of the Pipe Masters? That was cool. I’m not saying that putting Braden Diaz in this year’s event would have changed anything, but I’m also not saying that putting Mikey Bruneau in there wouldn’t have.

#33 Peterson Crisanto

I can’t tell if love or hate the fact that he surfed Pipeline for the first time during the Pipeline Masters. At first, I thought I hated it but then I realized maybe I kind of like it?

Conclusion: Nah fuck that, I hate it.

Human Potential

#27 Human Potential

Turns out 1.13 is less than 4.23 after all. It’s pretty wild to live in an age where we have brilliant mathematical minds capable of deep equations like this.

#24 Alex Knost

Nothing against him, but I don’t think people should be allowed to call him Al because the lowercase L sometimes confuses me as an uppercase i and then I think someone’s talking about Andy Irons. That’s not fair for any of us.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/zbrrtuTD8-E

#23 Jamie O’Brien

There were a few years when he was the King of Pipeline. Now he is the king of Vlogs. That’s like going from being the president of the USA to a reality TV star so to speak.

#17 Ricardo Christie

After getting a pair of 33rds in Europe, Ricardo got a 9th here which I’m pretty sure evens us back out to 17th. Thank you for the good times, Ricardo. I wish you the best of luck in the future. Mahalo.

#15 Vali Wright

Congrats to Vali for becoming the youngest Wright to surf Pipeline.

PS – Can we get an ID on that guy he’s with? He seems like a genuinely good dude.

#13 Jadson Andre

Some key takeaways from his performance in Hawaii this season. He started wearing a suit with floatation when Haleiwa was big (vest big tho?) and kept it on all the way through. We can all learn something from this tactic. If you wear floatation when it’s kind of big and then just pretend that you only have one suit, you can wear it all the time and nobody will think you’re a pussy.

Long Dong

#10 Long Dong Florence

Looks like that partnership with Lei Leis has really been paying off throughout this injury.

#9 The Olympics

It was initially hard to imagine the Olympic Committee “getting” surf culture, but it seems as though they’ve made great progress by already deciding to send it as far away from the rest of the Olympics/entire world as possible in 2024. You love to see it.

Griffin

#8 Griffin Colapinto

Great shirt.

#5 Kolohe Andino and Jordy Smith

They approach World Titles like the rest of us approach New Year’s resolutions.

Next decade for sure though.

#3 Kelly Slater

Let’s take our clothes off and protest if he doesn’t win an event in 2020.

#2 Kamalei Alexendar

“Took off behind me” is a very inspirational way of looking at things and is something that we can all apply to our day to day surfs. If I wanted to be serious, I’d say that this post provides an interesting perspective on how Hawaii has changed. However, this is the SPF rankings so instead, I’ll say that not being able to punch people in the face anymore is responsible for climate change.

#1 Italo Ferreira, Caio Ibelli and Mark Occhilupo

Your official 2019 SPF World Champions.

And now, your official 2019 SPF Awards