Gershon Mosley Explains Why He Punched Out Andrew Reynolds

 

Gershon Mosley was always a real one. We were so young in his hey day that all we remember is that he was always really sweaty when he skaters, but this interview confirms realness status. Gershon goes into details on why he left the skate industry, what he doesn’t like about it, if his sponsors didn’t like him not wearing their shirts due to his sweatiness, jock skaters, overrated skaters, the money, and even that time he punched out Andrew Reynolds. Imagine someone knocking out The Boss now? No way. But back then Reynolds was wild and drunk and it looks like Gershon had to put him in his place. There’s another interview where Reynolds talked about his side of the story, where we believe he took the blame saying he deserved it. Don’t quote us on that however.

 

Sample:

I heard about an old incident you had with Andrew Reynolds back in 1998. What exactly happened?
That was just him feeling himself. Basically, something happened [when we were on tour together in] Australia, and I called him out for my perception of what was going on. I’ll just title it greed. At the time he said nothing to me. But then we come back to America and he comes at me at Long Beach Agenda—it was the year that Baker started—he comes at me with the children from that. I was probably stoned, but they looked like a pyramid! It was the littlest up to him in the middle, then it went down to the littlest on the other side.

This dude rolls up on me and tries to get all G like, “Yo, remember when we were in Australia and you said this shit?” I was thinking like, you didn’t even address it when I said shit to your face, and now you’re bringing all these children into it. I went to pat him on the shoulders like, “Dude, it’s not a big deal.” And he threw his arms up like, “What?” So we just walk off. But then the next trade show, people overhear Reynolds talking shit. They’re saying he said, “Fuck Gershon.” I walk in the middle of all of it looking at him, because that’s who the issue was with. I go, “Do you have a problem?” And he said yes, so I hit him.

When I hit him, I was the one that was wrong, because all he did was say words. But most of it comes from my life. I grew up in Compton, the way that things would go down there… If somebody was talking shit and you got to this point where you’re like, it’s established that you were talking shit, either you punch them or you fucking walk away. I didn’t go in there to just find out he was talking shit and punk out. I went in there because I was sick of it. Like, leave it alone or let’s deal with it. So I hit him. And then Jay Strickland saved him. Because if he’d tried to get up and fight me, I would have hurt him. I knocked his teeth out, and his speculation was that it was because he fell into the chairs, but he fell into the chair after stumbling for a bit. I hit him solid in the mouth.

Andrew’s version of the story was that he was super drunk.
Yeah he was! I might have had a buzz on, but I wasn’t drunk. One of the problems I had with the industry is that they egg these children on and don’t try to help them see shit better. The industry is pimping children and there’s no ethics in it. Skateboarding feels super aggressive but these dudes, if they were in the streets and somebody was about to punch them in the mouth, they would run away. All these supposed tough guys are just tough characters that ride skateboards. I don’t like watching that shit. I wasn’t really into Zero. Zero is like militant, like petty. Most of them were limited in their skills. They would only do like 3 tricks and jump down stuff all the time. Most of it was fisheye too so all of the stuff they were jumping down wasn’t as big or long as it looked. You have to remember that the action heroes are less than 2%, and the rest are posers. Most people only have like 4 tricks and they call themselves professional skateboarders.

 

 

Click to JENKEM for the What Happened to Gershon Mosley interview

 

 

 

 

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