When we first saw this video we were not yet very familiar with the Mexican style of play. It completely blew our minds! It still does. For me it had the same impact as seeing the freestyling of Herman Lau when I could barely do a trapeze. When I sent it to Dale Oliver he said: "the best I have ever seen!" When Jon Gates posted a copy (with his own music selection
) he titled it "King Gus."
The demo happened at the Mexican Yo-Yo Winter Games of 2007. The idea started with a conversation I had with Isaac Kanarek, the president of the Mexican Yo-Yo Association, while waiting for the rides to the airport at the end of worlds in Orlando. Isaac was lamenting that the Mexican yo-yo players were not yet good enough to medal at the world level. I told him that he should bring trompo players, that they probably had the best ones in the world together with Colombia (we were already familiar with them). He liked the idea. He tried to organize a national spintop contest to go together with the Mexican nats and the winter contest was the first test. He contacted the Mexican pros (including Gerardo) but found very little interest in his amateur contest format. Well, he did get Gustavo interest. Only one more guy registered but probably got scared when he saw the competition and quit, so Gustavo ended up just doing a demo. Gustavo told me on a long phone conversation that he arrived to the contest late and tired, coming from a soccer game, had not time to change and the demo was a little sloppy!
Very unfortunately, Gustavo and Isaac had a big and ugly argument and split apart. There was never a spintop contest at the Mexican nats. Isaac took down the video from youtube and asked Jon and me to do the same when we posted copies.
