One of Monster Energy’s more likeable, easy-going athletes, Aussie Jake Brown’s no doubt best known for what Tony Hawk said was the “heaviest slam we’ve ever seen.” We’ll get to that in a bit here. What a lot of people don’t know, especially ones that just follow skateboarding through the X Games, is that Jake’s one of the best vert skaters in the world. Case-in-point, his 2005 Transworld Magazine “Vert Skater of the Year” award after killing it in various competitions, including the LG Action Sports events where he won the halfpipe comp in Beijing (’04) and placed 2nd in Paris in ’05. Thus his overall scores and subsequent placings were off the podium.

So when he started skating buddy Danny Way’s MegaRamp, then X Games decided to do their version, dubbed “Big Air,” the event was perfectly suited for Jake; bust out with a couple big tricks and take home a medal. He’s done that in each of the three years X has put on the event. But it was his Big Air crash in ’07 that branded “Jake Brown” into the American lexicon under ‘Kings of the Crashes,’ right along with Evel Knievel and Monster Energy’s own Doug Henry (Budds Creek MX, ’95). Again, his vert terrain colleague, Hawk – who was announcing for ESPN at the time of Jake’s crash – who summed it up best by saying: “He jumped out of a building. Landed on the sidewalk and now he’s walking away.”