Right after writing the long bit i did on page 2 of 'rename' matw I have realised something, so please read this once and it all carefully
I am putting my hands up and say my first topic is arrogant because It has been a very long time since matw was made and the majority of people on here first saw freestyle when it had developed massively. Alot of people understandably are thinking wtf was it as big deal as some of the old school members are saying, this will bring back memories for some but here is a tad of history for many to learn, hers why:
When this forum started, the ONLY videos we had, was Touzani 1 & 2, an Nelson 1 - THREE freestyle online videos
Me palle and a only couple others started to put combos together which was impressing a lot of people, there we ABOUT FIVE freestylers!
Touzani was an online God people saw what he done short combos and thought it was fake, that was how amazing it was it had never ever been seen bare in mind
Now before matw believe it or not the only tricks were atw, htw, toe-bounce, crossover, tatw. That is it. And the gap between matw coming out was a VERY long time of the same stuff, more videos came, same moves, it didn’t seem possible that there was anything else you could actually do and nothing new was coming up in videos
So one night before meeting my mate to make my second video I thought fuck it, why not try inside atw into a cross-over thinking it might be impossible to actually do so the next day when I met my mate it went like this…
- tried it, I fell over, I got up
- tried it again, fell over & still seems impossible, I got up
- tried it again over 20 more times and failed
- tried again landed with my foot on the ball, fell on my angle and rolled around in pain, got up
- realised if I got my foot under the ball I could make the cross over, so started filming
- after over an hour of attempts in pain with a swollen ankle, I hit it perfectly and carried on juggling
I posted my video on the forum and OTHER members called it mitch atw, not me, I wasn’t even sure but went along with it.
Not long after this there were gradually more and more new moves being made because people realised ‘actually that wasn’t so difficult to do, so maybe this isn’t and I can do it’ example - palle came up with patw and more and more got discovered
Now im not saying matw wouldn’t of got found because obviously it would have but I was the one who sat down and thought about being unique and going for it and thought fuck it and went for it and did it. And anyone from back then Adi Benbow etc etc will tell anyone 100% that it triggered off many new moves that no one thought was possible
I know that was long but I think it is interesting to know the beginning of the beloved freestyling when there was 4 or 5 of us because look how big it is now, the main credit goes to Touzani for me for the whole thing kicking off, but I certainly played my part in the begging,
thanks for reading
Mitchy
