Percy "Neco" Padaratz was already a star in Brazil in 1990, at age 13. Even the American mags were paying attention, which was surprising in that casually racist pre-Brazilian-Storm era. Derek Hynd was obsessed with young Percy, and nicknamed him "Kid with Man Head." Aaron Chang shot his portrait. 

 named him one of the "Surfers of the Nineties," along with Slater, Beschen, Machado, and Dorian. In that same "Nineties" issue, Padaratz said, "If I keep going, I'd say I'll reach my prime at around 17." If you count Padaratz' defeat of Andy Irons in the final of the 2002 Quiksilver Pro France as the high point of his career—which it no doubt was—then Neco's prediction was short by nearly a decade. Kid with Man Head grew up and stayed in the game for a long, long time; he was CT-rated until 2010.

Put aside the Quik Pro win, though, and there isn't much left in terms of Padaratz' WCT comp wins and rankings. Went to #13 in '97. Took out the '92 US Open at Huntington, back when it was called the Gotcha Pro. Neco's surfing? Lots of power, and dropped the frontside hack like he was swinging a sledgehammer. But not pretty. One magazine writer said Padaratz surfed "like a crazed bumblebee, buzzing from flower to flower," and actually that was being kind.

But wow, all the other stuff! If Neco's surfing never set me afire, Neco himself sure did. Like when he quit the tour in 1998, because—he said—his wife had put a curse on him. Padaratz was the first pro surfer to get kicked off the WCT for drugs (steroids, 2005), and the first to make it back to the WCT following expulsion for drugs (2007). It was Neco who made an art form of the huge rafter-shaking claim. He did claims you could see from the next county. Adriano de Souza at his arm-flailing peak was an aging Carmelite nun compared to Neco.

Perhaps most memorable of all was the 2007 Pipe Masters romp with Sunny Garcia, when the tiki-headed Hawaiian first tried to choke Padaratz out after they got crossed up in the water, then smashed the fins out of Neco's board, then chased him up the beach, and stood by glowering as Padaratz left the contest site under a police escort.

Neco suffered and messed up and came back and kept moving forward. Thin, pierced, balding, well-wrinkled, muscles like iron bands as he hit his 30s, holding down a back slot on the CT year after year. Grinning and claiming.

We like who we identify with. I guess that's what it comes down to. Had non-addicting performance-enhancing drugs been placed before me in 1981, when I was a borderline world tour pro, I would have hesitated, maybe asked a question or two, then gobbled them down. And while I would not wish upon any new generation pro a vengeful wife given to throwing hexes and black magic, I lament the fact that none of today's headliners even seem to have the capacity for getting themselves into that kind of full trainwreck situation. In one way or another, I have been thus cursed, many times, and feel kinship to those know that high, that pain.

I salute you Kanoa Igarashi and Conner Coffin, admire your dedication and commitment, and wish you both well. But where oh where is our next crazed bumblebee?

NECO PADARATZ: THE BELOVED "CRAZED BUMBLEBEE" OF PRO SURFING

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