Andy Irons' interview with Derek Rielly was published as "The Champ" in the November 2010 issue of Stab Magazine. It was recorded two weeks before Irons died from drug-related heart failure, at age 32.

Hey, I’m talking to the fucken Champ! The people’s champ!

That’s me! Fuck yeah! (Laughing) Fuck yeah, how y’doin, brah?

I'm good, if y’count owning balls like peanuts good. I know you’re good. After Tahiti, you’ve got your comeback locked down tight like a little girls tuna (Editor’s note. This is a quote from AI’s favourite show, 

Kenny fucken Powers! You know that! Hey, so what are we doing? What’s this whole deal (interview) about, D? Is this for the (

Yeah (Editor's note: it ain't now. We pulled it for this issue).

Y'know how it is. It ain't a book without the Champ inside. Last year we shot you for an interview about your awesome style . . .

You should see me right now. First time in three years, bro, I’m down to my gold comp weight, 176. This winter it is fucken 

My results don’t speak for themselves (apart from Tahiti), but I fucken haven’t surfed so much in ages, brah. I’ve been surfing two times a day with Freddie P and Dusty Payne. Dusty—that kid fucken pumps me up! He’s my new Cory Lopez. I lost Lopey (from the tour) and I’ve frickin’ finally got some sparring partners. Dusty’s the coolest, gnarliest little kid. Full Maui style, brah. Those guys, they’re a different breed. Dusty is awesome.

Dusty's gold, almost as gold as his reddish-gold hair.

I just came back from the Canaries with your brother. He’s supersonic, too.

How’s this? I was in Madrid on the way to Portugal and I’m going, This guy looks like my brother and he goes, “It 

 your fucken brother.” He comes up on me (laughs) all creepy and sweaty, introduced Evan Geiselman to me as Evan (laughs) Geiselfuck!

Whenever I spoke to Bruce I always referred to him as the Champ’s Brother. I’d knock on his door and yell, “That the Champ’s Brother?”

Fuck, I am the people’s champ, brah. You know. Slater’s talking 10 [world titles] this year and it’s making my three look even better. I told him, “Get that 10 and make my three look that much cooler, brah, cause I’m the only one who took you out.” And he laughed. And I said, “No, I’m serious.”

Late at night, in bed, what keeps you awake, what are you fears?

I’m an insomniac. I’m awake all the time, anyway, but my fears are fucken failure, letting down my family, my wife. I’m scared to be a quadriplegic, I’ll tell you that right now. A friend of mine is in a wheelchair now from surfing and that sometimes pops into my mind at night. I mean, shit, what with the waves we surf. I don’t think I could ever handle it. I’m a wild animal and that would really crush my spirit.

When you need to put your mind in a good place, what beautiful memories do you revive?

I still go back to my first surf at the pier, aged seven. Riding this wave that didn’t really break and it was the best feeling I’ve ever felt in my life. I went left, right, left and the wave didn’t really break and I was on the glide. I remember my dad being so proud that I stood up and rode the wave for as long as I did.

What childhood dreams have stuck with you?

Usually it's like, I’m on top of a mountain and trying to stand on the pinnacle without falling off. The wind gets really strong and it turns into this radical Wizard of Oz trip with the wind coming up and with lighting bolts appearing around. It starts to rain and the mountain starts getting real slippery.

Have you ever truly believed you were about to die?

Fuck yeah! I’ve had some moments, even turbulence in an airplane, where I felt for sure the plane was gonna crash. I’ve even had planes crashing in my dreams and woken up on a plane. The other nightmare I have is, I’m on a plane and the bottom's made of glass and it starts cracking. But fuck, that wave in Tahiti where I got stuck in the lip and froze with fear and just made it? I really felt like I might be physically hurt then. That wave was a major moment in my life. A little earlier that day I'd pulled back on a wave, just fagged out, and I told Mark Healy, and he said, “The next one, put your head down and go.’’ Bruce was actually trying to get that wave and he said, "Y’better go, FAG!" And the next thing you know I was in the lip and held up and . . . fucken . . . I was about to jump, I couldn’t move, I was petrified with fear, literally frozen with fear. I made the wave frozen with fear. I couldn't move my arm or anything. Somehow it worked out and I didn't land on my head and break my neck. But it was the wave of my life. I think about that wave all the time.

For me, failure is not living up to my potential. The whole world title thing was my major drive. I didn’t want to have that Taj Burrow deal where you surf so good but you don’t have a world title. I didn't want to have that burden. That’s what drove me to take on Kelly. I couldn't handle being 40 years old and living on Kauai and people telling me, "Oh you should've won the world title but you didn’t quite put it together."


It’s going to be in December. It’s coming. Little Axel Jason Irons is on his way. The name Jason is my cousin's name. Jason is my hero. It’s my dad’s brother's kid. He's this guy I've looked up to my whole life—a Shane Dorian-kinda guy, a genuine good person. Surfs like Tom Carroll mixed with Occy. He’s my fucken hero, he’s a stud, always been the nicest, coolest badass, but in the best way. No showboating. Just everything I’d like to be like. Anyway, Jason is seven years older than me and I’ve always tried to tag along with him. I tried to comb my hair like him, fucken you name it, whatever he had or did, I had to get or do. When he got into BMX, we (Andy and Bruce) got into BMX. He showed me 

 (iconic Billabong surf movies), he got me into surf magazines, everything about surfing I'm doing today is because of him.

Not a thing. It's all a learning curve. There’s a couple of things (laugh) I'd like to take back, but fuck, I wouldn't be who I am or where I am today. You gotta go in the mud sometimes to figure out who you are. I've had my share of hills and valleys, but life’s been radical and exciting. Stuff that kings would die to do. Straight up. The life I've led since I was 17, I try and tell stories about it to my friends and they think I’m making it up or I saw it in a fucken movie. Straight up. It's the life I wanted since I caught my first wave.

Fuck no! I come from humble beginnings. As long as I have a surfboard, a pair of trunks and a roof over my head, or even just a tent. I mean, I’ll be a hippy, living on bananas. When we were little, me and my brother lived with my mom in a fricken place with no kitchen. What I have now is beautiful and all but I could go back the other way and live like that if I had to. But I’m not gonna.

My feet. They’re not too jacked up. Everything else is pretty blown out and scarred up. My feet handle it.

My wife, right now. She’s fricken . . . ah, wait . . . you know what? I’m sorry, but surfing. Surfing's the only thing that’s always been there, day in and day out, fucken girlfriend breaks up, fucken report card fails, surfing always makes you feel better. No matter what, when I'm in the water, even if I don't catch a wave and just swim in the ocean, I always come out a better person.

Do you fear losing the love of your life?

If I ever lost Lyndie or my parents or my brother, I don’t know what I'd do. I couldn’t live without them.

If you weren’t the Champ, who would you like to be and why?

I admire a lot of people for different reasons, for their different traits and for the different values they have. But I don’t know, man. Everyone has their own problems. Everyone's got ’em. It doesn’t matter who it is, there's always something wrong with ’em. I'm happy with myself.


Enough of the fruity shit. How’s that pussy palace of yours? The house at Hanalei?

It’s radical. It’s my dream. I grew up across the street in my dad’s toolshed that we turned into a bedroom. My house is everything I thought I wouldn't or couldn't have. It's more than I could possibly fathom. No one handed it to me. I had to fucken go and do it myself. And it’s my proudest accomplishment.

Anything y’wanna tell the world, now that the Champ is back?

People have actually been so fucken cool with wanting me to come back. People that didn't even like me, who thought I was an arrogant little fucker, are now coming out of the woodwork and being stoked. Richie Collins (radical Californian pro surfer of the eighties) sent Lyndie an email today telling me to stick with it and how stoked he was that I was back on the tour and how much he likes to watch me and that he only tunes in (on the webcast) to see if I’m there. To me, that’s the ultimate fucken compliment.

I swear, I don’t know what it is but, yeah, I mean, shit, it’s been a trip. In Portugal, after my heats, people were coming up to me and all kinds of cool shit. Back in the day, it was sour apples and a couple of threats but I haven't had that in a long time. It’s getting me really motivated to try and do good, you know, put my better foot forward.

Ha! I don't want the pressure of fucken losing someone else’s money. But I'm not going to pull that spoiled brat tantrum shit anymore. That was old Andy. But the new Andy is still real passionate. I'm gonna try my fucken hardest until the fat lady sings.

[Photos: Pete Daley, Brian Bielmann, Billabong]

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