Ricky Carmichael and Ryan Villopoto gave their opinion on how Haiden Deegan went about that second and decisive SMX moto in Las Vegas that decided the title in Jo Shimoda’s favour and left Haiden Deegan with a broken collarbone and a race to be fit for team USA in less than two weeks at Ironman.
Villopoto: “I think he should have went out and smashed everybody in that second moto and killed everybody by 20 or 30 seconds and made his statement that way versus doing this. Because for me, this just looks very unprofessional.”
“I just don’t think it was the smartest move and maybe it was emotions that got involved. Maybe it was just the whole the race, the way it was turning out. You know, it got away from him, that’s happened to a lot of us in certain scenarios where, you know, things just start to… the throttle starts to stick and there’s no coming back and he got wrapped up in it.”
DEEGAN IS OUT OF THE RACE! 🤯#SMX #SMXFinal pic.twitter.com/Ct3a0HVF4L
— SuperMotocross (@supermotocross) September 21, 2025
Carmichael: To win the championship, he had to do something. Looking back on it, if I was in that situation, I was ready for it in 06. And, you know, I don’t know, it’s hard for me to like reflect on it, like how many attempts would I have made? I’d like to think that my first attempt, I would have executed it and I wouldn’t have had to slow down and race behind me. But it never got to that point because my option one worked out the way that I had hoped that it was going to work out to win that supercross championship.
“The bigger picture is this, how he is towards his competitors. It caught up with him, caught up with him at St. Louis. That’s the bigger picture of it all, it’s come to a point. I think you have to change your strategy, because in the 450 class, you’ve talked about it multiple times, it’s even going to become more apparent, and it’s going to be that much harder for him. And if he doesn’t have, you don’t even have to have friends, but you don’t have to, you can’t have enemies. If I was working with him that’s what I would be saying, and I understand like the marketing part of it and everything, but if I was coaching my dude, you’ve got to start being a bit nicer and being mindful of when you have to cash in a favour.”
Watch the whole segment below:
