In the early ’90s, a group of motocross racers gave a middle finger to the bloated, corporate-run sport. Tired of being told what to do and how to act by the suits behind the scenes, this small pack of riders split off to invent an entirely new sport called freestyle motocross (FMX) . Guys like Mike “The Godfather of FMX” Metzger, Carey Hart, Travis Pastrana, Larry Linkogle, and Brian Deegan began bulldozing their racetracks and replacing them with jump parks where they borrowed the tricks they saw in BMX and adapted them to dirt bikes. Freestyle whittled motocross racing down to the bone. It took all of the boring crap that happened between jumps and left it in the dirt. One team of tattooed misfits called the Metal Mulisha didn’t just push the limits of what was possible on two wheels–they beat the shit out of it. The result was flashier, more over-the-top, and infinitely more dangerous than motocross racing, and it wouldn’t be long before it eclipsed racing’s popularity completely. Whether the Metal Mulisha could survive that transformation was another story. >>

The Birth

Brian Deegan, founding member of Metal Mulisha: I grew up in Omaha,
racing dirt bikes since the age of 10. I raced through the amateur circuits and
won championships. I ended up going out to California when I graduated high
school. I told my dad, "Give me a year to give it a shot. If not, I'll go to college." I
ended up getting a deal with a race team and won the Los Angeles Supercross.
I ghost rode my bike across the finish line and threw up the middle finger. I had
a bad attitude, and I couldn't get much help because I was kind of a punk, you
know? I walked away from the sport and started the sport of freestyle motocross
around 1997 with Mike Metzger, Travis Pastrana, and all of those guys.

Larry Linkogle, founding member of Metal Mulisha: Supercross is controlled
by the grips of corporations. The corporate claws. You can't do this,
the only way you're going to get into this is if you know this person…you know how the politics are. And the politics of that sport
just drove me so bananas that I couldn't take it. I
always rebelled against the politics, so I always got
the worst equipment, I always got the worst gate
pick, always got the worst of everything from the
corporations because, here I am, I'm the rebel.

Deegan: There were too many rules. They wanted
you to look a certain way, very clean cut. And we
were more into colored hair, tattoos, and piercings.
We were ahead of our time.

Linkogle: Motocross corporations wanted the
golden child—the guy that holds an energy drink
in the air and walks around with 10 million embroideries
on his collared shirt like NASCAR. Here I
am wearing a GG Allin shirt, cutoff Dickies, and
mismatched socks.

Deegan: Our deal was that we're just riders. We're
going to ride our bikes, and we don't need sponsored
gear. Freestyle motocross was all about
personality and individualism. I built my own personality
on being the bad-boy rebel, the guy who
showed up wearing all black with no sponsors,
just big plastic spikes coming off my shoulders like
GWAR. Went out and did heavy metal and death
metal and just set a standard that was we were the
rebel gang of dirt bikers.

Linkogle: That's how Metal Mulisha started. My
friend Nathan Fletcher, the pro surfer, and I decided
to make up a name and start all of this propaganda.

We were both huge Metallica fans, and Nathan
came up with the name Metal Militia after the song.
I was like, "Hell, yeah, dude. But let's spell it wrong."
I don't like the way "militia" looks, so we spelled it
like it sounds. That way, it really makes it look like
we don't give a fuck. The whole thing with Metal
Mulisha was that it was nothing. It meant nothing.

Mike Metzger, freestyle motocross champion
and Metal Mulisha contemporary: Larry
and Nathan, probably in a drunken stupor, started
writing Metal Mulisha all over the place with Sharpie
markers.

Linkogle: We'd scribble it on our bikes. We'd make
stencils. We'd spraypaint it on everything. People
would ask, "What's Metal Mulisha?" And the response was, Metal Mulisha is
nothing, but someday it's going to be something.

Deegan: Larry and I started writing Metal Mulisha on our bikes and helmets
with marker. We wore all black and just ran with the whole image and attitude,
but we backed it up by winning events.

Linkogle: Nathan took off to pursue his surfing career. Brian Deegan and
I started hanging out a lot, and we became really close friends. Brian really
grasped on to a lot of talented riders and got them to join our crew.

Deegan: I met Ronnie Faisst racing motocross back East. He was all tatted
up and just seemed to fit the image. We got along—he was over the racing
scene, too.

Ronnie Faisst, early member of the Metal
Mulisha: I moved in with Deegan, into this little
house. Neither of us was making any type of living,
so we had no furniture, just a TV sitting on a milk
crate. I guess I was in the Mulisha right off the bat
because I was his roommate.

Deegan: We built the first jump park ever on Larry's
property, and only Mulisha guys were allowed to
ride it. People were tripping.

Linkogle: It was pretty much "Fuck racing." All I
want to do is hit the jumps anyway. So we ‘dozed my
course and turned it into a gigantic freestyle course.
That was the first-ever freestyle course. It was like a
giant skate park for dirt bikes. This was unheard of.
People were like, What the hell is going on?

Faisst: We built another one on some land we rented
at the local motocross track. We fenced it off and
put up big signs saying "Metal Mulisha Only — No
Trespassers." People got so pissed. It even listed
guys by name that weren't allowed to ride. Metzger
was on the list. Brian and Larry always did stuff like
that just to get under people's skins.

Deegan: We met Twitch at one of the first-ever
freestyle events. He was cussing out of the middle
of nowhere during a riders' meeting, and I was like,
"This guy is sweet."

Faisst: He just stood out right when we saw him—
just a tattooed, scrawny kid with the worst mouth.
Everyone that got into our group, they were outcasts.
People who didn't fit in. It's almost like the
more jacked-up you were, the better chance you
had of being in our crew. Twitch was perfect because
he was just this white-trash bad mouth from
San Diego who told everyone to F off. He used to
flip everyone off. He was just a punk. Right when we
saw him, we were like, This guy is in for sure.

Jeremy "Twitch" Stenberg, member of the
Metal Mulisha [speaking to Fuel.tv]: I have
Tourette's. I got diagnosed when I was about 5
years old. The government used to think I was retarded.
They used to pay me, like, a couple of grand
a month until I turned 18.

Deegan: We nicknamed him "Twitch."