Mike Metzger on the Whiskey Throttle Show

Can't wait to watch!

That guy was larger than life to me growing up. Gotta love the Godfather! "5th gear tapped wide. Can't lose!"

Listening now.

This will be good. Mike's a great all around guy.

Helped Metz out when he came to Europe, to do Supermoto, got to stay at his house when we went to the US, cool guy, got to say the day I spent at Perris with him and Mike Cinqmars was a day I wont forget..

Guys a legend. Had a long riding career. Forgot how long it was until I watched some 90s stuff a while back. Thanks ping.

I bet that was a fun day, stories your going to keep to yourself?

Met Metz when he moved to Idaho for a bit.

Great guy, super down to earth all the times I was around him.

Hes got amazing bike skill too, he raced a few local endurocross races and did just fine in the Pro class.

How is there no footage of his Queen Mary crash?

"Big air! Bigger than anybody!"

Zoo York!

Looking forward to listening!

Great interview!

He really mastered the backflip early in the game, that flip he did at X followed by a bigger one back to back was unreal

So how much was he paid for the Caesars Palace jump?

Watching now, very cool story’s. His dad story’s are hilarious

He held his composer like a champ. Great show bros.

The back to back flips was gnarly cause he had to bang 2nd gear mid rotation for the dirt gap. Legend!

That was as gnarly as it gets. I still remember watching that with my jaw on the floor. Those two jumps changed the way I looked at freestyle. Metz will forever be a legend all his own to me.

Can't wait to give this a watch. Metzger was always my favourite FMX rider when I was younger. Used to always play as him on Freekstyle on PS2!

Awesome. Cinq was a favourite of mine.

Too bad Metz and Travis never really went head to head.

I remember MC and Metz had some bad blood in the early 90’s.

Edit, early 2000’s

Happy to share. I blogged them all in 2003, i will see if i can find them.

Thanks for bringing up Thrasher Land. That brought back memories

387 legend no doubt! Wondered if he was going to mention terrafirma 3 with travis he must have been a huge inspiration to him

So I don't have a copy of any of them , they were posted to Yahoo Groups , but I found this , written by my good mate Dave Lippett.. who arranged for Metzger and a load of other guys ( and gals) to come over.. I offered up some accommodation and transport , last minute after a last minute plea from Dave, who had bitten off more than he could chew , as well as ending up homeless 3 days before...

This is a funny read , and sets the scene, I cant find the rest of it but will keep looking.

https://thumpertalk.com/forums/topic/52300-dave-lippett-in-mettet/

Anyway , the gist is that we have all these guys , and 4 or 5 of us running round like idiots trying to get everything done, I am working full time for Jaguar F1 at the time, but my boss was a bang on guy , and because of that we got the job done.

The guys flew into Heathrow on different flights, Steve Drew, Casey Yarrow, Metz and Mark Miller ( AMA road race guy and now a TT Rider) came on one, and the rest arrived the following morning, I got home from work , to find Drew and Yarrow stood on my drive, with my kids, and the rest I fetched the following morning.. we arranged a practice day for the guys to get the bike dialled on the Wednesday, and I have to drive all the guys down in a van and trailer, Metz, Miller and the others get dropped off by Lippy and he goes back to Birmingham from the other side of London to try and sort his life out... we are waiting in a pub car park to get permission to go on the track we thought we had hired..

An hour passes, and the guys are all cool, Metz is just a regular guy, he is spot on, not moaning , he realises that we are just a bunch of amateur guys doing something for fun.. I have a buddy who is a huge Metz fan, who was recovering from a bad wreck , and I asked Mike is he would just say hi to him on the phone , to cheer him up a bit, and he was cool with it, but he didn't just say hi, he had a proper chat, talked about his injuries, and how he tried to keep his head in the game, and take any little improvement as a big deal.. it was so cool , and my mate said he actually cried after . He was a tough nut , but it broke him.

The race weekend was fun Metz rode a mate's CR500 which was awful ( but what he wanted) if you read the link story you will have seen the stuff that went on .

After this , Metz was all over Supermoto, and as a result , we got invite for few of us to go over and ride in a series promoted by the US end of the deal that got the guys over here. I was the only one to pony up and go, I had to pay my own way , but would a have a bike provided for the race, which was good enough for journeyman guy like me .

We made it a family holiday , rented an RV , the works, arrived in the US with a bunch of cash and a few phone numbers and Email addresses..

Paul Brent had sponsored Metz we MotoMaster parts , he hooked me up with the Vertemati Factory Team on the west coast, but I wouldn't meet those guys till the race 5 days later.

Brent told me to rock up at Lake Elisinore on the Tuesday (I think) , as Metz would be coming along , with a bike for me to ride . Didn't know what , but it would be something.. an hour passes, then 2 and I figure we are getting stood up, but he turns up with a buddy,with his CRF450 in one side of the truck bed, and a DRZ400 in the other.. the thing had like 40 miles on it.. I said I couldn't possibly ride a new bike (that's in Supermoto trim) round that track, and he was like 'dude just ride it , I will trash it anyway , so don't worry' .. so didn't and after 5 mins I bail off it big time on the womens track, cos the caliper bracket broke... luckily I was ok , and the bike was relatively unscathed.. I rode it back and he was like ' man I said it didn't matter if you crashed, not go and crash'.. I was a bit taken aback till he started laughing , and then real apologetic when he realised why.

He went out on the pro track on his 450 on 17's with wets on and jumped everything , and ran with all the pro guys , it was fucking insane.. I think he had just about done his Zoo York deal , so was all geared up with that stuff, and his peakless helmet .. unreal.

So the day finishes , we are saying our goodbyes, and he asks what we got planned for the rest of the week, I say well we were going to do a bit of family stuff with the kids, but nothing solid.. he says ,'here's my number, ring me later on and we can maybe hook up tomorrow' .. so we leave, and go back to Mark Miller's place in Long Beach, for dinner and a stopover.

I ring the following day , but he is busy ( I think he was maybe signing the Zoo York thing, now I think about it) and recommends a few things and invites me to Perris the following day .

We rock up , Metz has his 5th wheeler, with all the speakers out the side with RATM blaring out, there is a small van next to him who turns out to be Cinqmars , and another guy already out on track who is riding knee down, so I immediately write him off as a bozo , and sit with the guys.

I have never been 'starstuck' , either on or off track, so I just treat them like regular Joes, and that's just what it is , Cinq asks how come I am all the way over here , seeing as I am basically a fat guy on holiday, and I tell him ' because someone made the offer, and I was happy to spend my own money to come'.. he kinda thought that was cool, and offered up his 450 so I could spin a few laps with Metz, which was really cool. Now here's the kicker, the 'bozo' was Ben Bostrom , so there is no way I am not going to look shit... but luckily even though I am 'just a regular guy', I can ride, and actually go ok , hang with Metz for a lap or so , which pleases me enough to back off so I don't wad Cinq's bike.. we ride and chill and ride and chill, it was like watching a day through someone elses eyes, I can tell you.


So they run the bikes till the tyres are shot . and we head out, Metz asks where we are gonna stay , I say we are gonna look for an RV park, and he invites us to stay at his place and hook up on his RV pitch . You don say no..do you.
We rock up at his, in Menefee, and he puts us on his trailer pitch.. shows round the compound, and the house .. meet his wife who is lovely and his 2 small kids, my lad who is 8 plays on his trampoline on the BMX he practices flips on . Sun is setting over the hilltops I am wondering when I am going to wake up..

Then my Mrs says we really need a supermarket to get food, Metz has a family dinner date with his Inlaws , so when I ask where the supermarket is , he offers me his Dually so I don't have to take the RV.

So my claim to fame in all of this, is I went to Wal Mart in Mike Meztgers Dually LOL..

The following day we chill a bit, I take my lad for a ride up into the hills on one of Mike's TTR's while he loads up for the Phoenix trip we are doing for the race.

The race weekend is funny as fuck.. middle of the desert , and they all rock up with wets in 85° heat , because the dirt section is sandy.. I run full slicks with no cuts , they think I am a stupid Englishman , till they run out of tyres after 5 laps.. think I went 4-5 for 4th overall.. great fun.

Then we bust out a weeks holiday after , except I get offered a chance to race with STARRS series by the team I rode for .. So after saying bye to Metz in Arizona on the sunday , I end up having to block pass him for a place in the main in Fontana, except luckily, he thinks he is out of a transfer too , and parks Jimmy Lewis that hard , I manage to sneak past..

That day is another story, but there were 16 guys in Jeremy McGrath's first KTM Supermoto race , and I was the only one I'd never heard of.


Fast forward to 2012 ( I think).. Metz is back at Mettet in Belgium, we are on different schedules at opposite ends of the pits.. he is there with Dennis Anderson ( I think that's his name, he was a top SM journo in the US) and Metz, is filming everything for a video, after Mettet he is going to Switzerland for some SX and freestyle ( where he had a bad wreck ) and then onto Australia, which didn't happen.

Metz has a issue with his camera that Dennis cant sort , and a buddy of mine who is there with another team , working , asks Dennis whats up … Metz says ' oh you are English' … by buddy says 'yup' .. Metz says ' oh cool , do you know Phil G ' … true story LOL.

If you got this far .. thanks , if you didn't, I don't blame you , I was there , and I don't believe it either .

Phil, you may be able to find them if you use the wayback machine.

At the risk of this being a joke I may not be in on , how does that work ?

Great episode Ping and GL. I really love the stories from the early days in the 1980s, and it was even better since you guys crossed paths frequently. You guys were racing during a great time for minicycle racing. Definitely was left with the impression that Metzger was happy to be what he is in freestyle but maybe had some regrets on his racing career. Either way he's a legend.

Not a joke, though I could see how you might see it that way.

https://web.archive.org/

It has snapshots of the internet from “wayback”. You can find almost anything that is now gone.