Monsterjam came into Tampa this past Saturday and it was an event to behold. The Stadium 2 Tour starts off in Tampa with big names such as Tom Meents and Jimmy Creten leading the way as fan favorites.

Monsterjam has gone to a 3 part format involving racing, wheelies, and then freestyle. Points are awards for in the order of finish. Racing winners earn their points. The two wheel and freestyle has a heavy influence of fan voting on their mobile devices to determine the winner. The racing was fierce, but the finals finally had El Toro Loco driven by Chuck Werner against Jimmy Creten in Bounty Hunter. El Toro pulled it out.

The 2 wheel competition had a lot of misses in it. It came down to Grave Digger, Black Pearl, and El Toro Loco. The voting was close, but fan favorite Grave Digger driven by Charlie Paulen notched the win and denied Chuck Werner a triple down for the evening.

The Freestyle, which is what everyone came to see, of course, did manage to bring the fans to their feet on this cold evening night. El Toro Loco had a run that seemed inevitable he was going to win once it was finished. There were challenges, and when Grave Digger came for the final run the fans were wondering … WILL IT BE?  No, it wasn’t, and El Toro Loco squeezed out the freestyle win to win the overall for the night.

It was a cold night and I am sure this effected many things on the evening. It did not seem to be the best monsterjam overall and only a couple of trucks really performed to the potential a fan is used to seeing. I am a fan and loved it all the same, but I have seen better and looking forward to the Feb 3rd event.

My critique with monsterjam now is the voting. IN the past 4 years of me attending shows it has turned from unpredictability to unexpected fun and a track no one has ever seen before. Now it seems the track is the same week to week and semi-same year to year (I remember one year an airplane was on the track, as well as the school buses). I feel the bias to the big names like Max-D and Grave Digger reflects too heavily in the mobile voting and somehow that really needs to be figured out how to make it work. These are athletes out there and it is hard for a rookie to have the run of his/her life to come up short with a good run by Grave Digger.

I do highly recommend it and the value for your dollar cannot be understated. Be sure to come back Feb. 3rd where Grave Digger, El Toro Loco, and Bounty Hunter will be back, as well as all-new trucks such as Earthshaker, FS1 Sports Cleatus, and Mutant look to tear up the night.