Dude you're insane if you think Matt is a better rider than Brett.
I'd be willing to bet the reason Matt has more followers is because he's Canadian and a (mostly)Doo rider. Those guys are an emotional and sensitive bunch - if he rides the Polaris for more than a day, you'll see people in the comments section like "Where's the Doo?" "I miss the Doo.." It's ****in pathetic. And when the Doo went down - again - this year, you heard crickets. But if the Polaris even hiccups, the comments section turns into a slaughterhouse.
That's like saying a freestyle motocrosser isn't afraid to race around the track. Pastrana had very little success racing. It's easy to not be afraid to ride trees. But riding trees in the steep, keeping momentum, and not getting stuck non stop while picking good lines is very hard. You are comparing apples to oranges.
I used to think this too with the guys until I started riding with them. They do this **** non-stop all day in the trees. Only reason there isn't more footage is because it's hard for the camera guy to be set up everywhere to get good shots. Caleb does hopovers and bow ties all day long up the hill with about a 97% success rate. What you see on his Instagram is not an edited clip of the best 30 seconds of riding that day. He does that **** non-stop all day.
Doubt it?
Pastrana had more MX success than the vast majority of MX pro’s…and by far more success than any big-name MX’er had in freestyle. He would still have a chance of running with the current or past MX/SX pros on a one hit wonder like straight rhythm, etc. Whereas you are in 0 danger of RC or JS throwing a double backflip. Fearlessness makes for quick learning curves in action sports.
Yeah well as soon as McGrath tried the high jump he absolutely dominated it aginst free style guys. Obviously if you are unreal at one you are probably going to be better than average at the other. Pastrana was average at best. He never did win a 250 main. His only success came on 125s. I don't think the freestyle guys are that crazy in the trees. At least not that I have seen.
He dang near invented tree riding haha when he did his backflip not many were doing them. If you watch the old sledneck videos he wasn't doing nearly the crazy back country jumps the rest of the gang was doing. He's always been a tree rider first.
That was exactly my point. My 800 Khaos has a fraction of the power output but it creates a high pucker factor in the technical situations at times. That is one reason I started the thread in "Polaris" regarding the rear suspension settings to calm it down for intermittent climbing requirements. That thread so far has mostly garnered the opinion of at least one rider that the suspension components need swapped out.
