“One of the hallmarks of our league is equality,” said WSL CEO Erik Logan. “It is a word that we actually have been focused on for quite some time. In fact, in 2018, we announced that we would be paying men and women the same and we’ve been doing that since 2019. So, equality has been a huge part of what this is and, because of that, the heroes in our sport on the women’s side have been extraordinary, and what we’ve committed ourselves as a league to do is to elevate those icons through honoring them on days such as this. In addition, celebrating the great women we have and then drawing to a much wider swath of inspiration, not only for the women, but also for the men. So we felt it really important that we include the men and women in celebrating International Women’s Day.”
In addition to Namajunas and Rousey, the 54 Competition Tour surfers, including the legendary Kelly Slater, chose several renowned athletes across a wide range of sports to represent on their jerseys, including Billie Jean King, Sue Bird, Michelle Kwan, Bethany Hamilton, Naomi Osaka, Chloe Kim and Serena Williams. As for Brazil’s Jadson Andre, he chose Miley-Dyer. Not surprisingly, the whole program was embraced by the surfers.
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“They were super excited, and it was great because we allowed them to pick a female and then put it on the back of their jersey,” said Logan. “And we did these big packages through the broadcast, because we broadcast for four days, and did all this content and told all the stories about all these different, amazing women that were chosen. And they transcended surfing. Some of our world champions chose the first world champion for women, some of them chose different people that influenced in surfing, but the one that sort of jumped out at me was Barron Mamiya, who, going into Portugal, was number one in the world, and the back of his jersey said ‘Thug Rose.’ Rose was also selected by one of our great, great surfers in Jack Robinson, and by Nat Young. Also, quite a few of our other female surfers actually picked former UFC star Ronda Rousey. The range of everything was from Tyler Wright, our two-time world champion, who had Sue Bird, and everything from snowboarding, track and field, and Billie Jean King and Naomi Osaka. It was so amazing to see all of our men and women really embrace this idea of what this day was intended to do, to elevate these amazing stories.”
“It’s super cool,” added Miley-Dyer. “I’ve seen Ronda fight in person in Vegas and I was pretty stoked because she’s been such a strong figure for UFC and for women everywhere. The coolest thing that stands out for me when I see some of our men and women picking fighters like Ronda and Rose is that the idea that when people think of a UFC fighter or someone in MMA, they think of these two women and what I want when people think of a surfer is for them to also think of a female surfer; to think of different people throughout surfing and that’s the standard in pop culture. So for our men and women to be picking a fighter and be automatically thinking of two different women, I think that’s epic and it shows that they’re getting the recognition as not only strong women, but as icons of the sport for both men and women.”
