We caught up with the man who was the best rider in the world at one stage and the Jett Lawrence of his era, Ricky Johnson, to discuss his career and the injury that ended the glory days abruptly while he was still on top. We also got his expert view on Haiden Deegan and Jett Lawrence that you can read below.
RJ on Jett Lawrence
Well, I think that he’s the student of the game and his knowledge in motocross, and not just riding motocross, but line selection, throttle, the ability to pick it up. I think that he’s not over-trained, he looks relaxed, he doesn’t look worn out, super skinny, and as I said, not over-trained. So I think he’s got the right balance in everything. A great team around him with Johnny O’Mara, his mother, his father, his brother, and team Honda, he’s got Lars and everybody over there. So he’s at the right place at the right time, and he is the man. I mean, I can’t say enough great things about him.
RJ on Haiden Deegan
I admire Haiden, I admire the family, I don’t like to be in the public eye that much, I do some social media because I have to, so I do as minimal as possible. But they make it work, it is a business for them. As well as that, Haiden works hard. It doesn’t matter how much money you have to hurt that much because when you race that hard, that long in a moto, you’re in a lot of pain and money will not save you. So he’s doing the right things on the bike and he’s doing the right things training wise. You don’t hear him complaining about arm-pump, fatigue or anything like that. He’s just a young aggressive man that is trying to find his way. He needs to understand that your race persona is not your real life persona.
And that happens too, it happened to me a little bit. I was an asshole. In 1983, I thought I needed to beat Bob Hannah and I needed to hit everybody. I didn’t just pass everybody, I ran into them and I was literally forcing contact. And then I realized that I’m slowing myself down to try to make these guys intimidated and all I was doing was pissing everybody off. And I realized, you know what? That’s not me. If you want to scrap, I’ll scrap. I’ll T-bone you. We’ll take each other out. We’ll fist fight if we have to. I’d rather not.
And so that’s why when you see my race with Jeff Ward… I think I knocked him down through the whoops. And I’m like, you know what? He leaned on me, I leaned back and shoved him over the berm. But we didn’t have that relationship, same with David Bailey. There’s guys you can trust and guys you can’t and if you want a long career, you’ve got to make sure that everyone doesn’t want to take you out.
Watch the full interview detailing Ricky’s career, here:
