Never underestimate a "former champion"?

[quote=“CaliBuddha,post:20,topic:79930”]
Haha, yeah I’ve thought the same kind of thing! They’re toys for heaven’s sake!!! Like Bill Alton who was an activist against the use of fixed axles in competitions, because using them was like “cheating”. People can take it all way too seriously. Personally I love playing with fixies, but I enjoy responsive and unresponsive bearings as well. I think it boils down to resisting change.

Wouldn’t it be hilarious to hear Dana Carvey include it in a “Grumpy Old Man” skit!?

“In my day we didn’t have all these new fangled bearing yo-yos that spin for days and days, and let you do a million fancy tricks. ‘Oooo, look at me! My yo-yo needs a bind to come back.’ Flibbledeefloo! In my day we had wooden yo-yos with wooden axles that we made by chewing down old stumps with our teeth. They spun for one second, and we could do 3 tricks, and we liked it that way. If the string broke, we had go out and pick cotton, spin it, and make our own string. If the string got knotted, we couldn’t just take it apart like you sissies do now. We’d have to dig out the string with a knife, and often we’d end up cutting all our fingers off, and be left with bloody nubs. But we liked it that way! We were idiots that didn’t know any better, and we were making our own fun, and we loved it!” etc…

I’m pretty sure you guys are misconstruing what the guy meant. Given the context, it seems more likely that by “it didn’t feel like real yoyoing” to him, that it isn’t what he grew up with and that, while he has respect for modern yoyoing (he even tried it) that he prefers the old yoyos. It definitely didn’t seem like a slam against modern yoyoing.

Saying x thing isn’t the “real” way to do something isn’t exclusive to old people, you’ll find people doing that all across the internet.

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You read a lot into his inner mind! However, I agree. I wasn’t picking on that guy, just that philosophy.

If you are going to yoyo, you have to recognize that most people have an idea of what a yoyo is.
It’s been burned into our social memory.

When they see modern yoyoing, what they see, does not fit in with what they know and that creates conflict.

It would be like only ever having seen or heard an acoustic guitar, and then going to see Jimi Hendrix.
It looks like he has something like a guitar, but why is it so loud? and distorted? and on fire?

It’s also worth pointing out that Fixed Axle yoyoing is not always as flashy in the same way as modern yoyoing is, but that doesn’t make it easier. In fact, most of the time, it makes it much more difficult than modern yoyoing.

In the end, these styles are simply different and both deserve respect.
Neither should be written off as “outdated” or “cheating.”
The community at large is too small for use to divide ourselves over these differences.

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that.

i think it’s really hard to imagine a more intense paradigm shift than what happened following the proliferation of ball bearing yo-yo’s.

i think it’s totally reasonable for someone who has only seen and known yo-yoing in the way that it was in the 60’s to see modern yo-yoing as something else entirely, or just not "get it’. i’ve never met an older player who was truly so closed-minded as to not appreciate the skill of today’s great players. they’re just doing something that feels completely different from what they might see as “yo-yoing”.

i also think it’s ok for older players to be protective of what you might call “classic yo-yoing”. nick and i (and a lot of people on here) came up during the fixed-axle age, but we were kids then. we weren’t pros. guys like bill alton, bob rule, dale myrberg… they did have to fight tooth and nail to develop into good players in spite of the limited technology. and around 1998 or so, you suddenly had THOUSANDS of kids apparently proving that what they’d worked for for years could be attained in minutes with a raider. i’m a big believer in the idea that your dedication is more important than your skill. just because someone CAN learn rollercoaster in a few days on a bearing yo-yo doesn’t diminish the years of work stu crump put in to nail it on a woody. he got a lot of other stuff out of that effort besides the trick. i think that’s what a lot of players miss about fixed axle - they think the trick is the most important thing, but it isn’t.

meanwhile, you’ve got dudes like dale o and glenn godsey who have pretty much transcended yo-yo technology and has made the transition to throwing whatever’s out there…

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I understand and agree with everything you said. My silly post was just poking fun at how sometimes this toy is taken way too seriously, and I include myself in that equation. I wrote some utterly ridiculous posts on Dave’s old site back in the day! :-[ It’s a toy after all, and having fun should be the most important thing, but hey, that’s just my opinion. Maybe even saying that is imposing my sensibilities on others?

Ed, When you met Larry Sayco, were you doing any of your modern fixed axle stuff? I think it would be
interesting to see how an old master, who hasn’t kept current, would react to that stuff.

in 08 when we met, i was doing a ton of fixed axle but really just doing “bearing” tricks like spirit bomb/kamikaze/suicides. i showed him a metal yo-yo i had (luchador?) and he was like “oh yeah, i was part of the team that invented that” (referring not to that yoyo but to butterfly shape in general - lol). he thought my bearing tricks were cool, but kind of incomprehensible. we had a conversation about simple tricks meant for presentation/performance and complicated, longer tricks meant more for exploring ideas. fascinating dude.

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I’ll try harder next time. Sorry. :wink:

JHB your being a close-minded, old admin stop it.

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You actually did pop in my mind as I was typing that. ;D

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They are really different sports all together. Responsive yoyos are still my favorite, even though all the advanced 1A looks so cool…

I think fixed axle and 1A are different flavors of the same sport, like mountain biking and road biking, or cross country and track. Before I discovered the fixed axle, Buddha’s Revenge was challenging, but, achievable. I’ve been working on it on fixed axle for quite some time, and have made precious little progress…but, I definitely understand the ‘revenge’ part of the name now. Neither 1A or fixed axle is better or worse, they are different and complimentary. I believe each has helped me with the other.