Pastrana 'Tribute' Confirms There Was Only One Evel Knievel

Published on 9-Jul-2018 by Alan Adamsson

Motorsports    Motorsports Daily Update

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Pastrana 'Tribute' Confirms There Was Only One Evel Knievel

Remakes have much in common with assembling homemade bombs.

First and foremost, what the hell are the makers thinking?

Secondly, both start out as bombs. With rare exception, they stay that way and soon thereafter, the damage is done.

The logical conclusion, then, is this: why even dick around with them?

 

As to the rare exceptions, in those instances, the makers dared to bring a refinement of some sort to the task.

X Games gold medal biker dude Travis Pastrana didn't refine anything in Las Vegas. All he did was walk in the shadow of Evel Knievel, and anyone who does that stays in the shadow of Evel Knievel.

Former ABC Sports announcer Jim McKay nailed why he resonated with the public: dude was undaunted by failure.

 

Notably, it was Knievel's crash on his first attempt to clear the Caesar's Palace fountain that brought him widespread fame.

 

That crash put him in Sports Illustrated.

By the time he announced his Grand Canyon stunt, dude was on it:

No one could deny that he was ballsy.

Jackass personality Johnny Knoxville did a documentary on Knievel, and his research could attest that the 'tude went far beyond motorcycle jumps:

 

With all that in mind, who's Pastrana think he's fooling when he wraps imitation up in tribute?

 

But there he is, in modern times with a modern ride built for jumping, making Knievel's stunts in Las Vegas look like three-foot putts:

- 52 Crushed Cars ...

 

- 16 Greyhound buses ...

 

- 1 Caesar's Palace fountain ...

 

 

Wonder if anyone ever told Pastrana that Evel's kid had already done the tribute thing.

Ironically, on behalf of sobriety.

 

Really, it's enough to make one ask if Caesar's Palace rents their fountain out on weekends or something.

At the end of it all, someone paid Pastrana to spend a day doing what's already been done back when it was a novelty to do so.

But he's pushed better envelopes, being the dude who inspired and later performed a triple-backflip:

 

Now, that's a modern-day stunt frontier.

If dude's got the urge to go all daredevil -- and you know he does -- he should go try a triple-backflip on the street.

Or near a fountain.