I just finished watching Stab Highway, a series for Stabmag.com premium subscribers, and I was left with a lot of interesting insights that I think are pertinent to share, which speak clearly about the state of surfing worldwide.

First of all: I had a lot of fun. Basically, it's a series in which four teams compete in what we call a hunt; they have to complete different challenges and add points.

The challenges range from very silly to very interesting, to very core, to very brave… Just to name a few: Drinking water from an unknown surfer’s boot, taking a photo with Laird Hamilton or Tom Curren, winning a surfing trivia game against Joel Tudor, completing an Acid Drop off the famous Steamer Lane rock. Just to name a few…

They require a lot of talent: Several were doing five types of aerials in one session, five types of cutbacks and five types of floaters…

The skill and talent of its participants is enormous; there are tests such as: Doing an aerial before dawn; Mateus Herdy does one a minute before the time.

Anyway, I had fun, yes, and that's good?

I don't know. I would put on Stab Highway for dinner and end up watching it for much longer than it took me to eat the milanesas. I would get wrapped up in watching the originality of the challenges and how several of the best surfers in the world gave their lives to win the tournament.

In the end it became clear to me that there is now a CT, a QS, a CS, an ISA and a Stab Highway… Very strange!

Several of the surfers in the series compete in the QS and have been seen doing all kinds of stupid things, but when it came to competing in this “reality” show, they didn’t fail… The last memory I have of Eithan Osborne is him doing TWO INTERFERENCES in the QS at Pismo Beach; in Stab Highway he was the MVP (most valuable player, for its initials in English).

So I stopped several times to think that several of the best in the world are giving their lives in this “tournament” (Jacob Szekely -second in the competition for the MVP- did not take off his wetsuit for six days), and all for a ticket to the Mentawai!

One of the tests is to get a tattoo of either Monster or Stab… God! It's fun to watch people doing stupid things, but how far do we go?

So, yes, I had fun, just like everyone else who saw these creatures eating seaweed and vomiting in the process. But where is the world of surfing going?!

It's strange! Because on one hand we have the Olympians, we have the CTs, the CSs and the QSs and now we have this new industry of "influencers" or talented surfers who do anything to entertain.

I'd like to have a firmer position on all this, but I think I'll go with the viewer's position.

I flatly refused to watch “Ultimate Surfer” and also to watch “Make or Break”… I find disgusting everything that has to do with putting drama above sport, sport is sport, drama may come from sport, but sport comes first.

Maybe I was entertaining myself by watching those TV shows… Those products that the world now gives us.

What I can be categorical about, and I like to be, is that I miss those times of surfers like Sunny Garcia with an attitude (wrong or not), like Andy (less talking, more surfing) or like Matt Hoy (channels are beautiful things)…

It's great that there are still guys like Manny Resano who go to Mavericks and ride the heaviest waves on the planet, earning the pure respect of the best in the business.

These are just a few examples… It’s great that on any given day, a surfer can win the day and earn the respect and recognition of the world; because the very essence of surfing is this: The sea belongs to everyone and if you have the balls and the talent to dominate it, you can go and do it.

Basically what I'm saying is that the very essence of surfing can be much more entertaining than a reality show, a Stab series or a regrettable CT that also became a praise to DRAMA.

There's a purity to surfing that's much more appealing than those products. And I'd like to see a little more of that come back.

As Kent Brockman would say, that's my two cents.