Welcome to Woz Up! Last weekend, I was at the Blue Diamond MX Park in New Castle, DE covering the final MAMA round of 2012.  It was a fun, family vibe like of a weekend as all of MAMA’s core members were celebrating the close of another fun filled MAMA season. For me, I wish I was at more MAMA events in 2012 since I only attended opening round at Budds Creek and last weekend’s final round.  It’s been a very busy summer on the pro scene what can I say!

No shortage of lines at the final MAMA round at Blue Diamond.

MAMA native Cameron Dowell has probably cracked 1,000 MAMA championships by now! #winning

And as it looks, I will be missing out on MAMA’s awards banquet (which I have covered the past 2-3 years) as its the same weekend as the MX Day event on the island of St. Martin.  A week in the Caribbean is often rarely turned down for anything else that’s for sure!  It’s not like I’m leaving the MAMA crowd or anything like that.  My schedule has been getting more packed throughout the year and there are just events and shoots that I have to get done for my clients.

Maryland import Cory Gilliam looked very fast at Blue Diamond last weekend.

Diamond Motorsports/Bel-Ray’s Tyler Wozney raced a borrowed 125 and made that thing sing in the 250 A motos. Tyler has also inked new deals for next year with Alias and FMF.

As far as the racing went, it was cool to see some of MAMA’s top young riders such as Justin Rodbell, Cameron Dowell, and Charlie Wernig tear it up in their respected classes.  The A and B classes provides some fast action with Gregg Duffy and Scotty Clark dueling to the end on the big end of the year paychecks MAMA offers to the top 250 and Open A racers as in the B classes, it seemed like a “KennyV” runaway as local hotshoe Kenny Venarchick was passing A riders and leaving the B riders way behind.

The MAMA Race Of Champions race was crazy. And that’s an understatement.

To check out the eccentric photo coverage and energetic video reels from the weekend, check out the links/embeds below:

CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS FROM BLUE DIAMOND! 
(SmugMug link to ALL photos available for purchase.)

Purchase prints and downloads of MXPTV’s images from Blue Diamond!

As I was planning on what I wanted to do for this weekend, I was on the fence about hitting up either the Maryland States event at Budds Creek or Hog Heaven’s Pro Shootout in North Carolina but as Hurricane Sandy made her disappointing appearance on the east coast, it is looking more like a wash to do anything this weekend.  Hog Heaven is definitely not in the cards as earlier today, they decided to postpone (or canceled) the event for next weekend in conjunction with Jimmy Weinert’s race at his training facility near Hog Heaven. Then, you may ask….why not Maryland States? That may be a last minute decision depending where the storm is heading.  It’s about a 2 1/2 hour drive one way to Budds for me.  I’d like to go but if the weather gets worse by Sunday, I may just stay safe at home.  Also, I can finally work on future plans for myself and MXPTV for once!  Don’t worry! I got some cool content for next week to show off!

Looks like we got some hurricane action to deal with this race weekend.

My Monster Cup Evaluations

The 2nd running of the Monster Energy Cup kicked off last Saturday and wow, what an event.  The format, the layout, and the racing were top notch all night.  Besides the starting gate malfunction for the first race and the horrendous camera angles (they butchered every start when the riders met at the split each time I thought), it was a great event. It looked solid on TV and the racing was exciting. It’s safe to say Justin Barcia has transferred to the 450 extremely well (which I knew he definitely would) and is already waving/looking back at the top riders in his class.  I know a lot of people bag on Barcia for his style of racing but seriously, that race would have been a complete wash if JB51 wasn’t in there mixing it up.  Barcia is that breath of fresh air for a, at times, character-less premier class.

But with that came just a barrage of weird incidents that night.  Ryan Villopoto had a very uncharacteristic whiplash in the 2nd Cup race.  Ryan Dungey continues to evolve KTM’s 450 with it’s new suicide shift feature. Blake Baggett out with a broken wrist before the night event began (and some how didn’t break it on his insane Texas 12 pack leap each time back at Freestone?).  But some things were the norm such as Chad Reed keeping it cool as he is coming back from his devastating injury earlier this year.  Eli Tomac still knows how to shred that Honda 450.  Mike Alessi going off the SX track even with no whoops to contend with.  The 2013 SX class is going to be very intense and very interesting this season.  A1 is, once again, going to be the most anticipated race of the entire season.  Hope there’s room for a privateer or 2 in that class.

As far as the MXPTV t-shirt giveaway contest last Saturday for the Monster Energy Cup, there was only one winner that guessed Justin Barcia as the overall winner and that was Joey Biccum.  Joey is actually a good friend of mine from the days when I started racing in upstate New York and recently, he’s been serving in the military overseas now.  Not only is he getting a MXPTV shirt but his whole squadron will also get a shirt. All 12 of them! Go ‘Merica!

Here’s some cool content from the past week!

Western NY’s media master Larry Wooster sent over his last contribution of the 2012 season before he hits his hibernation session for the winter with his coverage of Cohocton MX’s final race of the season.  Check out the extreme foliage and fun at the photo link below.  And thanks to Larry for providing great coverage from WNY!

Click the image for photos from Cohocton MX’s final race of 2012!

My latest rider profile video out to date features local Maryland upstart Chris Sarigianis at an open practice day at Blue Diamond.  Check it out:

My latest videos from Alli Sports were released this week featuring a Head2Head trivia with Justin Bogle and Wil Hahn as well as a My Five video featuring Blake Baggett:

Every Thursday, I post a cool Throwback video feature from the videos I’ve done in the past before MXPTV started up.  This week’s video comes from a Northeast Classic round at Hurricane Hills back in 2007.  This video features Phil Nicoletti just before he hit the pro ranks, Tyler Wozney screaming his Suzuki 250 2 stroke, Frank Lettieri just getting on board the 125s, and many other top riders from that year.  Check it out below:

THROWBACK: Hurricane Hills – Northeast Classic (2007) from MXPTV on Vimeo.

Ziggapalooza’s Troy Zeigler, who helped out MXPTV at Loretta Lynn’s this year, put together a pretty cool edit featuring FMX vet rider (that exists?) Paul Smith at his private spot in Florida.  Check it out below:

That will do it for Woz Up this week! Now, it’s time to get ready for my future Weather Channel gig!

Hope this kid still isn’t sleeping there. A hurricane is coming in!