14 Things You Didn't Know About Rodney Mullen

sold a portion of the company for 29 million making them millionaires overnight [Music] [Music] what's up guys my name is levi this is shred shop connecting you to skateboarding and this is 14 things you didn't know about rodney mullen in this video we're going to talk about where rodney grew up how he became a catalyst in the progression of skateboarding the companies that he's invented hollywood features and so much more let's get into it rodney mullen is not his real name the thing is guys he's so famous but we've been lied to this entire time john mullen was born august 17 1966 in gainesville florida he ends up adopting his middle name of rodney instead of john he gets a skateboard as a gift when he's 10 years old on new year's day he said that his older sister was a surfer and he always watched her and her friends ripping around and he always thought it was pretty cool rodney's dad was a dentist he was super against skateboarding because he was convinced rodney was going to get hurt so they came to an agreement if rodney wore full pads and the second that he got hurt he would quit while we're on the topic of names his nickname later on became the mutt because of his raggedy shaggy hair and his small dog-like appearance almost perfect rodney was a prodigy or a wonderkin in the skateboard world rodney wanted to enter his first pro contest which happened to be the world championship he wanted to go so bad and his dad reluctantly agreed but the deal was that if you go when you come back you're done with skateboarding so the story goes at age 14 he wins the 1980 oasis pro when he came home off the high of winning the world championship he reluctantly started packing up all of his skateboard stuff he had made a deal with his dad putting away his skateboard shoes and his board and putting it on the shelf forever he had stopped skating for a few weeks and not long after that he was getting phone calls from skateboard magazines and sponsors from all over the country saying this kid needs to keep skating offering them all these sponsorships after getting all these calls his dad sees what a big deal rodney is so he says you can keep skating but he reminds him this whole thing is super temporary and that has echoed in my ears more than anything anything that this is very temporary take it is your last chance that first world championship was just a glimpse into what his career would look like because he would go on to win 34 out of 35 contests that he entered after that funny fact is that the only person that ever beat rodney mullen in a contest was his teammate pair well under there's no doubt that he has had a majorly memorable huge impactful career even la magazine voted him in the top 100 most influential people he also won the transworld reader's choice award and transworld voted him third in the most influential skateboarders of all time after tony hawk and mark gonzalez guys if you like our videos the best way to get more content and more videos that you love from us is to subscribe here and like our videos and comment the secret life of rodney mullen rodney's friend and famous musician ben harper calls rodney one day and says can i give your number out to one of my friends rodney said that he later got a phone call from ben stiller asking him if he would be a stunt double in a movie that ben was filming when he picks up the call and he hears what ben is asking he immediately tries to convince ben that he's not the best guy for the job and that he can find him the best skater for the job but then in response he hears on the other end that ben is pretty bummed that ronnie doesn't seem too into it ben had basically written in the part with rodney in mind and so eventually rodney graciously accepts the rule rodney shows up the day before and they take him into makeup they have to make a full plaster cast of his face so that they can add on ben stiller's gigantic schnoz then the next day he shows up to skate in the film as the stunt double and they hand him a pair of old man leather dress shoes with heels on them to skate in when rolling starts they ask him just to do a kickflip and then hey you can go and freestyle for a while so he does it he freestyles for a bit and it was his tricks that he chose to do on his own that ended up making into the movie the secret life of walter mitty fun fact he's riding a chris haslam almost deck in the movie they talk about this experience in depth on the tony hawk and jason ellis podcast hawk vs wolf if you haven't checked out the podcast you definitely need to you can check out the link for it below it's interesting to note that rodney got his hollywood acting debut back in 1989 in the hollywood film gleaming the cube the ollie pop in 1977 in florida a guy named alan gelfin starts snapping his tail to the ground invert to get more air he does this without an early grab everything before that was done with an early grab this trick gets nicknamed the ollie pop because alan gelfin's nickname was ollie even though alan gelfin is remembered as the guy who invented the ollie rodney mullen saw this and he was the first person to figure out the mechanics on how to snap your tail on the ground and pop off a flat ground so he's attributed to inventing the flat ground olives so then in october 1982 rodney mullen made it on the cover of thrasher magazine popping an ollie they said it was a magic trick what kind of magic is this i gotta ask what would you think if someone was just doing an ollie on a thrasher cover today hate on them below this flat ground ollie is really the physics that changed skateboarding forever you wouldn't be able to do flip tricks or jump up on a rails or ledges or anything without this this is where street skateboarding kind of began crazy inventor rodney mullen is half skater half crazy scientist [Music] after discovering how to jump your board without your hand it opened pandora's box for what tricks could be done and invented from this point forward rodney mullen let loose on figuring out and inventing new tricks he started with the kickflip tony hawk was quoted saying we called it the magic flip because there was already another trick they called the kick flip where you hooked your toe underneath your board no one understood how do you flip your board while popping an ollie so at that point that trick got named the ollie kickflip he also goes on to invent the heel flip the 360 flip the half cab flip the 540 shove it the backside flip the switch 3 flip the 360 pressure flip the casper slide the kickflip dark slide and honestly so many more patent pending rodney's innovation didn't just stop with skateboard tricks he is credited with inventing the modern skateboard shape steve rocco who owned world industries at the time with rodney mullen went to the factory that made their boards he took five thousand dollars and he bribed one of the factory workers he asked them take this money and go and steal the double vision mold for me they took that mold made one of the skateboards which at the time a double tail was more squared off rodney took it reshaped it what came out was the world industry's animal farm board this was mike v's pro model board and it's attributed to being the link between what old school skateboarding was to kind of what skateboarding is today you can definitely tell when you put up an old school board and a freestyle board next to each other how you can see how rodney took both boards to influence what is today the modern skateboard shape his inventive nature didn't just stop with creating the modern day shape for a skateboard over the years he's added so much to skateboarding with the different inventions and products that he's made in the early 2000s he was the one who patented and designed the tensor technology where you could slide better on the base plates he also was one of the inventors on the patents for the impact support the double impact and the uber light skateboards rodney is constantly tinkering with skateboard products trying to figure out how to make them better perform better or ride differently ryan scheckler said in an old interview that rodney told him once if you take your skateboard wheels before you skate them and put them in the freezer for 48 hours and then skate them they will last 50 longer let us know below if you've ever tried that he's even still inventing skateboard products to this day on rodneyvaulin.com it's said that he has put in for a few patents even within the last year the bones brigade after winning the world oasis world championship for freestyle skateboarding in 1980 when he beat out the number one freestyle skateboarder in the whole world steve rocco stacey peralta calls him and adds him to paul peralta not long after he goes pro for pal peralta and he becomes a member of their chosen squad the bones brigade if you guys haven't watched the bones brigade and autobiography it's a documentary you guys definitely need to check it out it shows so much lengthy history about all this stuff with powell he would go on to have footage in their videos the bones brigade video show future primitive the search for animal chin and public domain world domination in the late 1980s the bones brigade started to kind of crumble a lot of the guys were jumping ship to go and start their own brands or go their own way rodney mullen leaves the bones brigade and teams up with his old friend and freestyle rider steve rocco he invests in steve's already started world industries which was kind of trying to find its legs at the time rodney invests a chunk of money with them and becomes part owner to me a business partner was anybody that you know just had excess cash gullibility and uh absenteeism rodney had all of those and he bought out john lucero for six thousand dollars and became a partner so then he starts to take on more of a business role at the company and skateboarding starts to take a back seat in his life i went through this a horrible period of being a company guy which i never wanted to be and being like a team manager guy which i never wanted to be at this time vert skating and freestyle skateboarding are taking a pretty huge dip because street skateboarding is on the rise and fast so rodney mullen and his style of skating is kind of taking a back seat because of that his pro career is cut short and his pro board is cut at world industries rodney in the streets mike jornaski starts plan b skateboards under the world industries umbrella he starts to build a super team this team consisted of heavy hitters danny way colin mckay mike carroll matt hensley and rick howard mike tarnowski approaches rodney mullen and says listen you should join the team we think that you could be an asset to skateboarding and street skateboarding you should try it out ronnie said to him honestly i would probably just embarrass plan b and myself i'm not gonna do it but somehow mike convinces him we've been trying to get rodney to do stuff on the street i tried stacy tried and we failed and uh mike t came along and goes man i can do it and i just was like looking at him yeah right don't do it rodney stopped skateboarding when his dad told him to when he was a kid his pro career got cut short and he lost his board on world industries and this is his third life in skateboarding rodney filmed three iconic parts during his time in plan b questionable in 1992 secondhand smoke in 1993 and virtual reality in 1993 as well it was pretty unreal and an amazing comeback because ronnie proved that he could take this old genre of skateboarding and adapt it update it and still blow people's minds in street skating in 1994 mike ternaski tragically passes away in a car accident with that by the late 90s plan b had pretty much dissolved also by the late 90s a lot of stuff was changing at world industries which was the umbrella company for plan b and as you can remember rodney still had a huge chunk of ownership in by the late 90s they're doing almost 30 million dollars a year in sales from there a company approached them with an offer to buy out a chunk of their company for 29 million dollars which made rocco and mullen millionaires overnight in 1997 rodney mullen decides he's going to start his own board brand and he calls it the a-team skateboards he gets a pretty stacked team with himself mark johnson gerjon mosley dave mayhew and chet thomas their goal is to form another super team like plan b did if you remember they did those real cool ads where one of the pro team writers would do a trick in a sequence and if someone could do that trick but better and send in their footage they would send a huge box of products to the hometown hero it was also a really good way to ensure that your team riders are filming and shooting photos of their very best skateboarding because no one wants to be embarrassed in front of the entire world by some local hero the heavyweight championships in the late 90s rodney mullen and daewon song both have full video parts ready to put out but no brand to put them out with so they decide to team up put the video parts together and they jokingly call it rodney versus day one rodney versus day one round one comes out in 1997 and even though they're friends the joking name of it made their fans take sides after the success of the first video in 1999 they decided to put out rodney versus daewon round two in the year 2000 18 skateboards falls apart and rodney jumped ship with mark johnson to start enjoy skateboards his time in enjoy skateboards was kind of short-lived because in 2003 dawn and rodney decided to join forces and move over and start a company called almost skateboards they wanted to start strong so they got a super team together they had cooper will chris haslam greg lutzka and ryan sheckler and obviously rodney and day one a year later they dropped the almost video that gets dubbed round three it was one of the best-selling skateboard videos at that time and it had an absolutely standout part from our favorite canadian skateboarder chris haslam the hawk and the mutt we wanted to take a moment and talk about the special bond that tony hawk and rodney mullen have had over the years besides being polar opposites in their type of skating with tony being avert skater and rodney being a freestyle skater they are both absolute trailblazers in their respective disciplines they were friends even before their shared sponsorship at palo perelta and they both kind of share this unique quality of being kind of quirky a little bit dorky but mainly obsessed with their sport of skateboarding and that progressed and pushed them and the entire industry ahead they both traveled the world with palo perelta and they were both prodigy stars and if you look at both of them their careers kind of parallel each other in weird ways tony hawk said that he would watch rodney's freestyle runs and then he would take some of those tricks and adapt them to the vert ramp and then rodney said that he would walk over and watch tony's vert runs and take and adapt them to freestyle flat ground again opposite styles of skating showing that they both are super capable of doing whatever they want on their board rodney said that he learned ollie indies and all the airwalks after watching tony hawk do them on vert and tony said that he learned finger flips from rodney after watching him on flat it's cool to see their friendship grow and move around in the years as well rodney mullen has been one of the main characters in the tony hawk pro skater games over the years a lesson on innovation recently rodney mullen has been doing a ton of different speaking events but most notably he's been doing tedx and ted events which is a huge honor if you don't know the difference tedx are events that are sponsored by ted where ted talk events are a huge honor where you have celebrities and world leaders coming to speak at them some of the top thought leaders in the world come to speak at these things people like bill gates elon musk stephen hawking sam harris larry page jeff bezos and even rodney mullen his talks are usually centered around failure progression and innovation which we kind of believe that rodney is the perfect person to talk about modern rodney rodney mullen still skates every single day but he usually skates between the hours of 1am and 5am in an empty parking lot by himself he mostly is skating alone he said he's always kind of preferred it from growing up in florida skating alone to where he's at today he's still one of the owners in almost skateboards and if you see globery did their entire team and rodney mullen is one of their legends skaters on there and obviously he's involved in the brand he's been involved in globe for over two decades rodney has had hit problems over the years because of many different things and so as of late he's decided to switch his stance from regular to goofy which if you guys skating are watching this that is insane and no one would ever even do that but this man being the legend he is is still probably skating circles around all of us guys thank you so much for watching let us know below what is your favorite contribution that rodney mullen gave to skateboarding was a certain video part company maybe certain tricks innovation is talks let us know below as always guys make sure you guys are out there supporting your local skateboard shop staying out of the malls and the big companies guys i'm levi this is shred shop connect you to skateboarding and you just watched 14 things you didn't know about rodney mullen stay tuned for comment of the week oh we got a spicy one for you guys my friends this week it is from a jerk his name is eight ornamental panthers he said did levi get bitten by a pete davidson let me tell you bud at least he's funny even though his eyes are sunken into his head and he looks kind of sad all the time but at least he's cute getting hot girls same with me my wife is hot bye

Channel: Shredz Shop

Views: 194,613

Keywords: Rodney Mullen, skateboarding, skateboarding history, who invented the ollie, Tony hawk

Id: KpVtZZAo0oA

Length: 17min 3sec (1023 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022