How Nick Merlino Got Short-Changed

There’s a lot of good skating in Foundation’s new video entitled WTF?! But for the sake of this post, just skip to the end and watch Nick Merlino’s part. I won’t spoil it for you by naming tricks, just in case you haven’t seen it, but the guy has five or six solid enders. You see one, you assume his part is over because what could top the _____ down the Hollywood 17? Ok, yeah, I guess that next trick tops it. Then the next one tops that, and so on. The point is, Nick Merlino is amazing, and yeah, maybe you think he’s getting all the attention he deserves, but I disagree. I think the guy is underrated, and unfortunately he did it to himself, in a way.

When did Merlino come on the scene? For normal peeps like you and me, the first time we heard of Merlino was when he switch-heelflipped Wallenberg. “Wait,” you say, “When did anyone switch heel Wallenberg? I don’t remember that, and I would remember that!” You don’t remember it because he did it at the Back to the ‘Berg contest, when Cole did a switch frontside flip and a backside 360 ollie down the thing, and Catfish did his backside big spin, and Potts did a hardflip, and someone did something else. Merlino came out of nowhere and landed a switch heel, but it wasn’t the biggest news of the day, and so he didn’t get a cover, didn’t get featured, and so you forgot about it.

Think about it. If Merlino had gone there a month earlier and had switch heeled that thing, he would have gotten a cover, he would have been the hot thing going for the next few months. All eyes would have been on the guy. Instead, he fell under the radar. Yeah, he’s coming up, but he’s had to work a lot harder to get up than other people who launched there careers with a mind-bender like that. And more power to him, because he’s followed that switch-heel with tons of solid tricks, and not just bigger, better stuff, but innovative stuff, i.e. tons of NBDs.

You may feel differently than me, but I’m looking forward to Merlino gettin’ some more respect in the future. He’s earned it, and doesn’t appear to be slowing down.