Edited Date/Time:
Here are some quotes that I thought were good from the recent Tony Alessi interview on the Steve Matthes podcast. I did the transcription work. Copyright for the content belongs to PulpMX. Some quotes are informative. Some quotes are insightful. Some quotes are funny. **I have moved segments around due to relevance to the forum
M: Steve Matthes
T: Tony Alessi
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T: You brought up those Believe the Hype shirts. You know how that came about, right?
M: Uh, DMXS guys got it started, didn’t they?
T: Well, it was actually Kenny Watson’s idea.
M: Oh, boy, here was go!
T: I, we never, Mike never raced a pro national, or anything like that so we were naïve and kinda clueless and Kenny said, ‘hey this is what you gotta do, you’re gonna have to do this, it’s a good idea’. So of course, we’re naïve, we’re like, ‘Ok’. And, uh, the DMXS guys built the shirts and all that, so we rocked them. And man, and man were people pissed off.
M: It’s awesome. It’s all part of the fun. Right? Our sport and everything else; looking back on it. Yeah. Funny you say Watson though, for sure.
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M: Jeff is causing a nice little stir on these message boards right now. I don’t know how your relationship is with him right now. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I feel like, like shaking him up and being like ‘Jeff stop posting. Stop posting’. That’s me, that’s my opinion.
T: … the only thing I share, realistically, with Jeff, is our last name. He’s a guy that beats to him own drum. He’s 30 years old … he’s his own guy … They both don’t live with me anymore … ‘the most dangerous guy in the world is the guy that either A doesn’t care whether he lives or dies or a guy that thinks he’s right about something. I think what’s going on with Jeff here is, probably, the second one. He thinks he’s right about something. He’s going with it.
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[Talking about Jeff Alessi]
T: And the very first supercross race that he ever attended and raced, in Atlanta, he qualified first. In front of Dungey … Pro Circuit guys. I remember standing there when one of the PC dudes came up to Mitch, I was kinda standing close by. He said, ‘Alessi qualified first, but it’s not the one you think’.
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M: You know, I get, I see these things online, and it’s happened on my show and everything else, people call Mike Alessi’s career, like a failure. And I’m always like, NO, it’s not. He never won a championship, OK, I get it, but he would have won that 2009 title, without a doubt in my mind, had he not broken his knee cap. And Mike has literally earned millions and millions of dollars racing. He’s made the podium so many times. He’s won nationals. Mike Alessi’s career is so far from a failure, you know. It’s funny though, our sport is so fixated on championships. I get it; But boy, I’d like to have a “Failure” of a career like Mike Alessi.
T: … If you think of the 2009 Seattle Supercross. Mike led 14 laps. He was gonna, probably, win that race if he didn’t fall. Villipoto was second right from the start. So, a race like that. Just that one alone is terrific. You know. And those races when he was a kid when he was racing against Langston were phenomenal. And in 2007, in his rookie ride as a 450 guy, which would be 10 years ago, and keep in mind he only rode the 250 class two years. So, in his first year on a 450 he woulda been 18 years old, he finished second in the championship, which is phenomenal.
T: … And lots of money! … In those days, right, if you won a race, it was a 100,000 dollars. If you won each moto, they gave you a 15,000 dollar bonus per moto. So, theoretically, if you went 1-1 on the day, you could make 130 grand in a day. So, those are all crazy and legit things, you know.
T: ..I think if his name was anything different that Mike Alessi, people would be like, ‘yeah, man, that guy had a good career’.
M: … No one would look at Tim Ferry’s career and be like, ‘oh yeah, he sucked’. Like, no way. And Mike has more wins than him! Yeah you’re right, the last name is what clouds people but as I said, I would love to have a “Failure” of a career. That’s a hell of a career he had.
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[KTM]
M: Rattray.
T: Rattray! Right. So they said, ‘hey look. We’re gonna fly you over here because we believe we have a bike that is really good, we’re winning the world championships, would you just come over and take a look at it?’ So, we flew over there to Austria and they took us to a track that was over there and the thing was SO FAST. I couldn’t believe. I literally, I had to, I asked, ‘Can I ride that?’. So I went and rode the bike. I was probably 170 pounds, or whatever, and I could do a third gear start on the thing. I was like dude, this thing, there aint nobody beating you on this thing.
M: … I had somebody tell me one time … but somebody said that you guys going to KTM with the no-link shocks at the beginning, the PDS system is what KTM had when you went there, it wasn’t ideal for supercross. Someone told me that if Mike had gotten on a bike that worked well in supercross, his whole supercross skills may have been better. Do you agree with that? Do you think the thing held you back a bit indoors?
T: Honestly, if it’s anything, it wouldn’t be more than one number. So if you’re talking the difference between being a 7 and a 6, that’s probably what we’re talking about.
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[Steve talks about Mike RE: outdoors > indoors]
T: Well I would say that, you know, as amateur riders, Loretta Lynn’s was the everything. That was it. Everything revolves around how do you win that race. With that in mind, our focus was 99.9% on motocross. Go win the area qualifiers. Go win the regional qualifiers. Go try to win Loretta Lynn’s because that’s it, that’s all that matters. … With that in mind, we didn’t really put a lot of effort into supercross while others were. Milsaps was riding supercross at very young age, so was Villipoto. … They had a huge head start.
T: We started to ride, the first time we ever rode a … supercross track was before the US Open. That race had Villipoto in it, and Josh Hill, and Crhis Pourcel. I have to look back and see what year it was right off the top, maybe 02, 03. So we went to Castillo Ranch because we were sponsored by CTI at the time. So we asked Mr. Castillo if we could go ride the supercross track … and actually he was good. He was good, he was fast, he was able do everything … I thought his technique was strange but he was fast through them … Looks a little scary but he’s fast through them.
[Mike wins US Open] [Mike wins 11 LL championships]
T: … but when it came to really ride supercross, OH SHIT. Man we got an eye opener right away. We got to the KTM track on the time we were riding supercross. The test ride was Casey Lytle (spelling), and he was 4 seconds a lap faster than Mike. I was like, Oooh Shit, we got problems. And that thing he did in the whoops, that looked fast, ended up causing multiple crashes in the whoops. In the first three months, going to the hospital was a once a week thing.
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[Tony as team manager of Smart Top Racing]
T: … at one of the teams … Jeff was beating Mike on the start, consistently … Mike what’s the problem? … He said, ‘this things not fast’ … ‘What? Not fast? It’s a factory bike!’ … Here, you get on Jeffs bike, and let Jeff go on your bike and let’s do starts. And then Mike holeshots by three bike lengths. So I did a video of it both ways and I sent it to the team manager … ‘I think the bike might need more power. It’s looks like a little off’ … ‘It’s not a factory bike’. And the answer I got bank was, ‘Maybe you should go back and ride KTM’.
T: … Those kind of things stuck with me. When the guys are telling me they need this or that or want something better, I want to make it better for them. You know, I want to make it better.
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More tomorrow, maybe. 33:15
"What happens to your hands when you crash?"
"I put my hands up real quick to protect my sunglasses"
