Well it’s Thursday and just 1 day short till a weekend full of events, drinking, party’s or whatever you plan on doing with your crew. Today is also another day to showcase a piece of Mulisha history for this week’s Throwback.

Justin Homan:

A cool shot of longtime MM rider/friend Justin Homan throwing some rather large KODs and KOD Indian Airs during Winter X Games 2002. Most riders would opt out of trying this in the beginning era of FMX especially over a jump made purely of ice!!!

Ox 02 Winter X-Games:

This was Jeff’s first time lining up for practice to ride in the 2002 Winter X-Games, and he handled it like the “crazy post jock rookie” that he was! On one of his first jumps he cased the hell out of it and it looked as though he wasn’t going to just walk away from it. OX just pulled over to the side, hit the kill switch on his bike, looked at each of his wrists and came to the conclusion he was fine. Within 5 minutes OX was back to hitting the same jump from the same line he had before without missing a beat! Oh yeah, did I mention he was throwing “Ox-Ecutioners” over it. Afterward, when I asked him what he was thinking, he replied, “if I don’t go straight back to what I was doing before I’ll be sketched to do it later“.
In my opinion this was a big moment in his career because he realized that when you get knocked down you need to get yourself back up. And that is just what he did!

On a side note, I had the pleasure of staying with Jeff on this trip. My original roommate was supposed to be Mike Cinqmars who was supposed to be one of the judges, but changed his mind last-minute and skipped his flight. So, since Jeff was there an alternate and we had been friends long before, I let him stay with me. We had some of the best, funniest times that weekend! Everything from stealing (or should I say borrowing) 2 snowmobiles from one of the snowmobile teams that was competing, and going for a little ride. But I guess you could call us Tweedledee and Tweedledum because neither of us thought to check the gas so halfway up the hill on our excursion we ran out which cut our venture quite a bit short. Luckily, we were up hill so we were able to coast the majority of the way back down. The funniest part of the venture we tried going on was when the sleds we were on shutdown and we looked at each other and said, “you don’t think we ran out of gas, do you?” And at that moment each of us opened our tanks and sure enough, we were both bone dry. All we could do was look at each other and laugh! It was times like those that I really miss my good buddy Ox! Life will never be the same without him here, so I just need to keep the faith that I will see him again when the time comes. I know you’re getting the chicks ready for when I arrive! I love you Jeff, and miss the hell out of you bud.

If you have a chance please take a minute and check out his Memorial T-shirt, you might just like it and want to purchase one… It’s for a great cause!

Deegan Winter X-Games Gold 2002:

Deegan won his first X-Games at this event with a “Seat Grab No Footed Can to Sidesaddle landing”. Not everybody knows, but he had already posted the highest score before his final jump. So in reality he didn’t even need to go for the trick again.

Well it’s Thursday and Chris Ackerman sent over a piece of Mulisha history from his arsenal of photos for this week’s ‘Throwback‘ with the OG himself, Ronnie Faisst.

The Road Trip:
Here’s a photo of Ronnie doing a HUGE one hander back in 2000 at the Lake Elsinore MM Compound. We took off from the Compound on a road trip for Bluetorch that came to a end in Las Vegas at Carey Hart’s house.

The Brawl:
We did a huge demo at the Irvine Spectrum in SoCal. The day started out a great with all our riders killing it. Faisst was doing ridiculous tricks like his signature Shaolin but the event quickly turned into a full blown riot when an “unnamed” professional BMX rider threw a full beer on Deegan. The whole crew propped their bikes up against the chain-link fence in order to hop over it and proceed to beat up the “unnamed” BMXer along with anyone who had anything to say about it. Needless to say after that the score was Mulisha #1… everyone else involved.. 0!

Rolling In Style:
When Ronnie first moved out here from New Jersey to pursue his FMX career, he had a silver front tooth. In the proper sunlight this thing would produce a gnarly glare, and a bad ass Gold Van (not pictured). To put it properly, he was and still is the epitome of style!

Text Book:
A great picture from early 2001 by Garth Milan of Ronnie doing a rather large Cordova!

VIP Status:
Ronnie and I backstage at a Wu-Tang show in Hollywood.

Make sure to check back next week for another one of ‘Ackerman’s Throwback Thursdays‘ follow Ackerman on Twitter.

Thank you for taking the time to visit chrisackerman.com! Please poke around, check out the videos, pictures, etc.  Also, keep your eyes peeled for the Chris Ackerman Foundation logo on many X-Games athletes and personnel who have all offered to help bring awareness to SCI (Spinal Cord Injuries).  Although it’s late in the year, this is the greatest platform in the world to get the word out.