'Shameless': Tony Hawk exposes huge skateboarding fallacy

Anyone who's ever played the Tony Hawk video games or just taken a keen interest in skateboarding, will have heard of the 'mute' grab.

The term has been floating around since the start of the 1980s but Hawk has chosen to ditch it for his remastered Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 games - coming to consoles later this year.

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Hawk and the game's developer Vicarious Visions have gone back through skateboarding history and revealed that it never should have been called a 'mute' grab in the first place.

The skateboarding legend revealed that the trick was named after a deaf skater called Chris Weddle, who was prominent in amateur competitions in 1981.

Weddle was credited by many as being the first person to perform the trick, but the hearing-impaired skater was wrongly referred to as being mute - hence how the name arose.

Hawk took to Instagram to share the curious piece of history with fans and explain his decision to rename the trick in the upcoming games - in honour of its creator.

“For nearly 40 years, we’ve shamelessly referred to this trick as the ‘mute’ air/grab,” Hawk wrote.

“Here is the backstory. Around 1981, a deaf skater and Colton skatepark local named Chris Weddle was a prominent amateur on the competition circuit. The ‘Indy’ air had just been created & named so somebody proposed that grabbing with the front hand should be known as the ‘Tracker’ air.

“Others countered that Chris was the first to do, so it should be named after him. They referred to him as the ‘quiet, mute guy’. So it became known as the mute air, and we all went along with it in our naive youth.

Weddle to have trick renamed after him

“In recent years a few people have reached out to Chris (who still skates) about this trick and the name it was given. He has been very gracious in his response but it is obvious that a different name would have honoured his legacy, as he is hearing impaired but not lacking speech.

“I asked him last year as I was diving into trick origins and he said he would have rather named it the ‘deaf’ or ‘Weddle’ grab if given the choice. His exact quote to me was, ‘I am deaf, not mute’.”

So there you have it, the tricks dubbed the Weddle Grab, Weddle Backflip, and Reacharound Invert will all replace the longstanding versions with the 'mute' denomination.

"It's going to be challenging to break the habit of saying the old name but I think Chris deserves the recognition," Hawk says.

Video game publisher Activision has already sent a demo version of the new games to media, with the wider gaming community also able to access it this weekend by pre-ordering Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2.