A Fly In the Champagne - Andy Irons vs Kelly Slater

In the pantheon of great sports rivalries, somewhere amongst the Blue Devils versus Tarheels, the Giants versus Dodgers, and Ali versus Frazier, you'd have to include Kelly versus Andy. But even if you don't think it deserves to rank amongst the greatest sports rivalries of all time, the epic clashes between Kelly and Andy definitely have to go down as surfing's greatest rivalry. Sure, some skeptics may point to Curren versus Occy as the classic of all classics, but there's little contest. At the peak of their rivalry, say from about 2003 through 2006, there was nothing more dramatic, nothing more heated, nothing more compelling than Kelly versus Andy. Head games were played, lines were drawn (and occassionally crossed), and world titles were won and lost.

Now, a few years removed from their heated battles, maybe a little bit older and wiser, the two former combatants have come together to set the record straight and offer everybody a revealing look behind the rivalry that captured surfing's collective imagination at the start of the 21st Century.