Now That The X Games Are Cancelled, We Need To Have A Tony Hawk's Pro Skater World Championship
Never in my life did I think I'd see a day when the X Games were cancelled. Figured the games were just way too rad to ever let anything stand in their way. Nothing is more gnarly than shredding right in the face of adversity, but I get it. Only thing more gnarly than a quick backslide tailslide is keeping everybody safe and not increasing the spread of this virus. So I get it.
But with the X Games getting called off for 2020, there's a void to fill. We need some sort of extreme sports fix in our lives or else we'll just become a bunch of squids.
So I think the only solution here is for the X Games to follow the same path that other professional sports leagues like NASCAR, the NBA and NHL have taken already. It's time to pivot towards streaming video games. It's time for the inaugural Tony Hawk's Pro Skater World Championships.
You can have the tournament on the same 3 days that the X Games were scheduled for. On the opening day you'll have 2 events--a qualifier and the quarterfinals. The original THPS will be played in the qualifier round to determine seeding. In the quarterfinals they can move up to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. The next day can be THPS3 in the semifinals and then we'll just have to figure out if we want to go with THPS4 in the final round or if we'd like to skip over to Tony Hawk's Underground 2 which is, in my very expert opinion, the best game out of the series.
As far as strictly skating and skaters go, I'd say that Pro Skater 3 is at the top spot in my rankings. But once you add in the story, the ability to get off the board and walk around and all the other features from THUG2, that puts it over the edge for me. Either way, Pro Skater 3 and THUG2 are 1-2 in whichever order you'd prefer so they should be the semifinal and championship rounds.
And if the X Games really wanted to go for it, we can get a Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX and a Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer tournament as well. But I'm fine with just going THPS to start. Either way, streaming is the move these days and as much as I love Balls running people over in a tactical rover, I need more Tony Hawk's Pro Skater love on Twitch these days.