Mick Campbell would not agree, but I think Fate did the right thing by pulling a world title out from beneath his well-freckled feet. Remember? Pipeline Masters, 1998. Final event of the year, big clean waves, and a showdown for the ages, with Campbell in first going into the contest (despite having no event victories for the year), fellow Aussie and good mate Danny Wills in second, and Kelly Slater in third. All three tightly bunched. 

Mick won his opening heat, but in the next round, against 18-year-old Bruce Irons, he posted a best-three-waves heat total of 1.9, and was out. Wills went a round further but also self-destructed. Slater beat Machado in the quarterfinals for his sixth world title win, then lost his semi against Jake Paterson. Slater’s 38-point margin over Campbell in the final rankings is still the smallest in world tour history. (For comparison, in 2011 Slater put a horizon-bending 12,000 points between himself and runner-up Joel Parkinson.)

Anyway, my point is this. Had Campbell won in ’98, he’d belong to that category of damned-with-faint-praise world champions, like Peter Townend and Damien Hardman and CJ Hobgood, stamped with all those flaccid adjectives like “consistent” and “determined.” Twitter hacks right now would be shit-talking his championship, or at the very least saying that a world tour capable of putting Mick on top without a win in 1998, rather than Slater or Occy or Sunny, wasn't up for the job.

 winning the title, on the other hand, Campbell’s reputation is a perfect, even poetic, reflection of the man himself. Campbell is one of the great scrappers in pro surfing history. He’s the feisty gamecock with the wide grin and smart mouth, and an even smarter right hook (which he used in 2000 to take out Andy Irons with a one-punch blink-and-its-over post-heat brawl in France), who fell steadily down the ratings after his big title shot, dropped out of sight for a couple of years nursing a crick back and raising a 25-pound beer gut, then returned in ’07, fit as a flea and surfing better than ever, for a three-year WCT encore.

Campbell set a high standard for how to process and own a tough runner-up finish. “You can look back and say, ‘Yeah, I shoulda done this, I shoulda done that,” he told 

 in 2006, skipping right past all the bitter-pill-swallowers like Gary Elkerton. “But I did the best I could. The fact that Kelly came from behind to beat me doesn’t take away any of the glory of getting second. I’m still proud as punch.”

MICK CAMPBELL: THE GINGA NINJA AT PEACE

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