Record Payouts, Plies Mag Growth, and Worldwide Sanctioned Events | S3 E145

On this week’s episode of the USAFBL Fingerboard Podcast, we recap one of the wildest years in competitive fingerboarding. We dive into the massive cash prizes from Combo of the Year, Line of the Year, and King of the Plies, and break down why 2025 became the year fingerboarding officially stepped into the world of sports. We talk about the first-ever USAFBL trading cards, the rise of Plies Magazine as the heartbeat of the scene, and the Fast Fingers 22 trip that’s turning our national champions into Team USAFBL. We highlight global expansion with upcoming sanctioned events in Australia, Spain, the Philippines, Africa, and beyond. And we give a behind-the-scenes look at “Flick,” a new fingerboarding documentary produced by Taylor University. Season 4 is coming in hot and 2026 is shaping up to be even bigger.

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Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00)
Reporting in progress, let's piss everybody off!

Speaker 1 (00:03)
today. You're just in one of those moods.

Speaker 2 (00:06)
I

am in one of those moods. This is probably going to be the cancellation episode. What do think? Think we can do it?

Speaker 1 (00:11)
We spent like 150 episodes and we haven't been canceled yet.

Speaker 2 (00:18)
talking shit recap 2025 real quick dude. I got like a guy

Speaker 1 (00:24)
I gotta do the thing though. I can't go out on demand. Everybody's looking at me.

Speaker 2 (00:27)
yeah, do the thing.

now you're nervous? I got the little thing on my forehead. I'm a 54 year old man with a damn zit on my forehead.

Speaker 1 (00:40)
That's not a good look. Welcome to USAFBL Fingerboard Podcast, the official voice of fingerboard culture from league news to community stories with real insight, writer interviews and the heart of the scene. Please follow and turn on notifications for us. And now let's get into fingerboarding. That was boring. That was boring.

Speaker 2 (00:58)
to watch this crap today, Levine, you got old man Brian marketing dude on again. And like the fingerboard mogul Levine Cunningham, like why do people want to pay attention to this shit?

Speaker 1 (01:09)
Because it's been a hell of a year and we haven't been in the studio in like quite some time. I feel like I feel like a new beginning. It's been a while. It's been a hot minute. Yeah, we've been through some shit.

Speaker 2 (01:22)
We have been through shit, but let's recap 2025 real quick. What do we do?

Speaker 1 (01:27)
We had, that's the thing. Like what didn't we do? USFPL, we gave away so much money this year in 2025.

Speaker 2 (01:32)
online competitions.

man is a whore. Has always been a whore.

Speaker 1 (01:40)
It's always been a war. We'll probably-

It is ungodly, but also amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:47)
Yeah, we did. There was a lot of cash going out. And you know what? I don't really remember many of these MFers thanking us on Instagram, by the way. Did we get anybody being like, got my $1,100 cash prize for Cody, or I got my $650 cash prize for Lodi, or I got my $2,000 cash prize for Kate. We did get some king of the place.

Speaker 1 (02:11)
Yeah.

Comma of the year, $1,150 in cash and prizes, cash plus prizes. Sorry, not like combined, but like separated. Same thing with line of the year, $650 in cash plus prizes. King of the plies, $2,000 cash plus prizes. And the craziest thing is in the same year, 2025,

We did a in-person version of Combo of Year, Line of the Year, Battle of the Plies. And the grand prize for that is a all-inclusive, all-paid-for trip to Germany to compete in the World Championships of FastFingers 22.

Speaker 2 (02:51)
Don't talk about it, be about it.

Speaker 1 (02:52)
That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Cash prizes and free trips. I mean, this is, this is wild. Name, name another.

Speaker 2 (03:00)
This ain't a free, this is a free trip for them. It ain't a free trip for us. We gotta make some dollars and shit. That's why everybody hates us right now, right?

Speaker 1 (03:08)
We gotta be money grabbing whores, don't we?

Speaker 2 (03:10)
We are money grabbing whores. got to pay for flights and hotel rooms and we got tons of shit to pay for money grabbing whores. Hey, this cause you ain't us. Whatever you did for regional events this year. We've already talked about it. We're not trying to drive everybody crazy, but then you did a national event never before done. First time game setter for the United States.

Speaker 1 (03:31)
Yeah, but the craziest thing that no one is talking about, or maybe they don't even realize is that after the national event was done and solidified, we are now considered an official sport. So finger boarding now is considered an official sport due to USAFPL.

Speaker 2 (03:48)
100%. Not even going to argue about it.

Speaker 1 (03:51)
You can argue it.

Speaker 2 (03:53)
Corbros like listen, Corbros ain't down with us. They're not happy about this shit. They want to be all about the punk rock and stuff, right? But like, I don't know. I think Chris Daniels is a Corbro, don't you?

Speaker 1 (04:09)
He's one of the OGs.

Speaker 2 (04:10)
Yeah, think, you know, like, listen, don't get mad because we're talking about pro fingerboarders and stuff, man. We're just trying to move the game forward. That's all.

Speaker 1 (04:20)
Infrastructure. It's all about infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (04:23)
⁓ shit, first ever trading cards, those launched this month too.

Speaker 1 (04:27)
ever trading cards so finger boarding professional trading cards they even say that right pro finger boarding trading cards there we go

Speaker 2 (04:36)
I don't

even know if we have any left. I think we've got a couple. We might have some left.

Speaker 1 (04:41)
We got a few sets and I think Nick Dimer? Did I say it right? I always butcher it. I'm sorry, bro. I hope that was right. Nick Dimer, I think he is sold out and Big Badass Brian, Brian Aris is sold out.

Speaker 2 (04:56)
But we do have some sets, a couple sets left. If you want to get those, can get those over at usafbl.com, right?

Speaker 1 (05:03)
Yeah, you can go onto the site, go grab some singles, go grab the set. These are highly collectible, first of its kind, a piece of history right here.

Speaker 2 (05:11)
Because we're money grabbing whore!

Speaker 1 (05:13)
Money grabbing whores.

Speaker 2 (05:17)
I'll

be you need to go to Germany, we need to go to fast fingers Germany. So okay. Another full season of podcasts are going to keep doing this shit. Do you need anybody watching this right right now? Like

Speaker 1 (05:29)
I honestly don't know. the time I feel like we're just on here just talking out of our ass, but I think people are still listening to us. They're still tuning in.

Speaker 2 (05:37)
Detective Test determined that was a lie.

Well, we're in our fourth season. got more podcasts out there in the universe than anybody else. They're not the best. They're not great. They're pretty damn good. These last little sets of podcasts with the interviewing Markov and who else did we interview while you're on the road?

Speaker 1 (05:59)
We interviewed everybody, pro fingerboarders, vendors, companies. We did a lot of highlights, a lot of community stuff. 223 fingerboards, everybody. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (06:06)
We interviewed

Yeah, so you know what? Uh, hit subscribe bitches or don't. don't care. Hit subscribe or whatever. We're going to keep doing this. We got, we're in our fourth season. Uh, we're going to do what? 53, 50, 50. How do we, wait a minute. There's 52 weeks in the year, but we've got 53 episodes this year.

Speaker 1 (06:29)
I think there was one week where we just got real anxious when we dropped two in one week. Just because we can. But we haven't missed a week in two years.

Speaker 2 (06:37)
And considering how busy you've been, that's pretty freaking crazy. I don't even understand. Listen, I'm to call out you other podcasters out there. Get on your damn game. Like we're posting all the podcasts that we can find in Plies magazine every single month. And ⁓ you guys, you need to be more consistent. I'm just saying, I'm just saying it. Get mad. I don't care. Get mad, whatever, but be more consistent so we can get more finger boarded content out there in the world.

Speaker 1 (07:02)
Talking to podcasts, we've got a, we got a new podcast that kind of entered the scene. I don't even know if we should, we should definitely talk about it. It's already in the mag. It is the split ply podcast. So if you guys are listening to our podcast and you're a fan of podcasts, definitely go check them out. They are basically two fans of finger boarding that are having real finger boarding conversations. talking about stuff that people are kind of scared to talk about. So go check them out.

Speaker 2 (07:27)
All right, so in finishing up the recap for 2025, when, Levine Cunningham, when did you realize nobody does it better than USAFBL?

Speaker 1 (07:40)
didn't really realize it, I just really just, set the bar high and failure's not an option, so it just came naturally.

Speaker 2 (07:48)
There's

not an option. I'm watching the Sean Diddy Combs documentary produced by 50 cent, which arguably doesn't really like Sean Diddy Combs, which I think is fucking hilarious that he flexed by actually producing this documentary. But the hustle is real. And we're trying to keep it real with everybody out there in the finger boarding world. Right. But like our big challenges are butting up against industry standards, core bros selling stuff.

And growing the USAFBL network big enough to be able to ⁓ basically keep generating more prizes, more opportunities, more pro fingerboarders, right?

Speaker 1 (08:30)
Yeah,

having the infrastructure that we have and continue to grow it and scale it, definitely a struggle, but definitely a challenge that I like to try to meet.

Speaker 2 (08:39)
Let's

talk about our cool redheaded stepchild, Plies Magazine. It's about damn time.

Because Ply's is just off. You got a comment from our buddy Gary Graves.

Speaker 1 (08:53)
Was it Gary hit me up. He's been, we got to them back on the pod by the way. I don't know where he's at and what he's doing. Just travel tracking, but he's all he's like a literally on vacay and he hits me up and he's all like, bro, like this issue of plies mag is literally like the best issue you ever had. And it's like literally the heart of the scene right now. It's like all people are talking about.

Speaker 2 (09:15)
That's cool. And we've got issue 13 with Black River Edition. That's out right now, correct? Correct.

Speaker 1 (09:21)
Got Alex Christ on the cover?

Speaker 2 (09:24)
Dirty Dozen?

Speaker 1 (09:26)
The dirty dozen fingerboard of the year nominees, all 12 of them.

Speaker 2 (09:31)
How

much shit are you going to catch for this one?

Speaker 1 (09:33)
I am actually surprised that no one really has had any real backlash. Like we produce the most controversial list of fingerboarders period. And for the most part, everybody is vibing with it. Everybody pretty much kind of agrees. There's going to be people that are like, why didn't this person make the list? Which, you know, you got 12 people. talking globally, not just in the U S not just Canada.

Globally, you're talking Europe, Asia, everybody. So to make a list of 12 out of a list of like 5,000 people that you can literally pick from, pretty crazy. So I think that ⁓ the fact that we really haven't had any backlash and everybody's vibing with it means that like the team, the judging team, everybody on there, the nomination team, we did it. We killed it.

Speaker 2 (10:18)
And January 1, we will announce the winner in Plies Magazine. ⁓ Also, we leaked something in this Black River issue, this issue 13, that I think everybody slept on.

Speaker 1 (10:33)
We leaked the Fast Fingers 22 dates and I- If for anyone who likes- leak it!

Speaker 2 (10:41)
Black River leaked it, but like we printed it and like nobody has gone there to see that they're in that issue.

Speaker 1 (10:47)
Yeah, it's in the magazine. It's in the black river interview. So if you, hell no, we're to make them go to plies mag.com and check out the issue. Check out the black river interview. Yeah. All kinds of good stuff in there. Definitely got the dates. Read it, put in your PTO catch. Let's cut some flights. I'm going out. The team's going out. We're all going to be there.

Speaker 2 (10:51)
We're going to tell them what it is on this podcast.

Yeah, we're going to win. We're going to win. We're going to sweep. Fast Fingers 22. Who's our champions? Who are we taking, dude?

Speaker 1 (11:18)
We're taking our national champions. taking Chris Daniels, Mitch Rush, and Tanner Hensch. ⁓

Speaker 2 (11:25)
Dude, this is gonna be so much fun.

Speaker 1 (11:27)
You want to hear something crazy with this that no one hasn't caught up yet, but eventually it will. have three champions basically being represented by team USA FBL. We're getting ready to unite an entire country. Who's going to be backing these national champions to go compete for our country. They don't know this yet, but they're going to be like, I mean, who else you going to, who else you going to be rooting for? got to root for the home team. Hey.

Speaker 2 (11:56)
Listen,

I hope like 15, 20, 30 other American fingerboarders are like, screw you guys, we're better than Mitch and Tanner and blah, blah. We're going to go to fast fingers and win. Like, I hope we have American competition showing up in Germany for this.

Speaker 1 (12:13)
I want to see more representation for sure. Last time we went, we went to the Fast Fingers 21 and there was only like a small handful of us out there. And I feel like we were very underrepresented at Fast Fingers and I'm changing the game for that.

Speaker 2 (12:25)
So ⁓ first trading cards, what? Okay. Americans capitalist scum. If you want to buy an issue, a printed issue of Plies magazine, you can get it Plies mag.com, right? But we've got some changes going on. And also by the way, if you're one of the near 20 storefronts that are carrying Plies magazine, please support them. They're also capitalist scum. ⁓ If you're looking for a printed issue for free because you

You cheat, but you want to buy some finger boarding gear? Where can they do that?

Speaker 1 (12:56)
teaktuning.com. $60 or more place an order with teaktuning.com. Add the magazine to the cart at checkout. Very important. Use code free magazine. You can get Plies Mac for free with your order.

Speaker 2 (13:13)
Okay, now, teak chaining is also American, they're dominating capitalist scumbags, though technically they're giving them away. where else can... Now, my Canadians, Canadians are cool. I can't even talk shit on Canadians. They're too nice. going on in Canada? What's going on in Canadia? Canadia.

Speaker 1 (13:30)
Man, all right, so Rise Fingerboards is going to be our Canadian distributor. So you can pick it up at risefingerboards.com. Go grab a mag, support the local shops that we also have in Canada as well if you're local to those shops. But if you're not, risefingerboards.com's got you.

Speaker 2 (13:48)
and international.

Speaker 1 (13:50)
international black river picking up a huge stack of magazines each month. And it's going to be distributing the magazine globally for us. So Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, any place basically that's not America or Canada. They've got you cheap shipping, no tariffs. Germany's got you. Black river's got your back.

Speaker 2 (14:10)
Yeah, I'm not going to talk any shit on Big Daddy Black River.

Speaker 1 (14:14)
Big Daddy Black River.

Speaker 2 (14:16)
All right, issue 14 drops in two weeks. Winter Fingerboard of the Year is gonna be in there and they're gonna be on the cover,

Speaker 1 (14:24)
They're gonna be on the cover. I don't know who this is yet. We're still finalizing all the deets and the details, but whoever that person is, January 1st.

Speaker 2 (14:33)
Also in issue 14, we do have a homeless person in there.

Speaker 1 (14:36)
Really? Yeah. Interested to go check out issue number 14 two weeks.

Speaker 2 (14:44)
Yeah. All right. Now let's talk about the dirty money grabbing horde aspect advertising. What is up? Levine.

Speaker 1 (14:53)
And all right, so if you are a brand, a company and you're not advertising implies mag, I mean, are you really pushing your brand forward? Are you letting people know that you're out here doing things?

Speaker 2 (15:04)
Well, no, they're advertising in all the other fingerboarding magazines.

Speaker 1 (15:08)
Wow, the 20 other ones, yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:10)
Yeah,

all the there's like a ton of finger boarding magazines to add to advertise in and they just haven't picked us.

Speaker 1 (15:15)
Yeah,

that's wild. It's crazy that all these brands have ⁓ product launches, team writer announcements, pro models, sales, events, all kinds of stuff, but they don't want to. They want to put it front and center in front of the entire community is crazy to me.

Speaker 2 (15:30)
I am not going to give them any leeway. You've got a few bucks. Help us out. Make sure applies magazine keeps growing. Spend a little bit of marketing dollars. We'll get you hooked up. Even if you don't have time to build an ad, we'll put something together for you. We've got designers. We've got plenty of cool stuff for you. So advertise prior applies magazine. Okay. This is becoming a whole thing where we're just pushing our own shit. But like what this use having our notes here applies does a weird thing that no one is talking about.

What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 (16:02)
Alright, so something that kinda came to my attention, like I was looking for one of the older Black River Fingerboarding mags, cause I was like, man, it'd be interesting to see like, you know, what was going on back, you know, 2011, 2010, 12, whenever those magazines were coming out. And I was like, man, the fact that Plies Mag is literally documenting the scene right now and immortalizing people is pretty wild. So like five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.

people would actually be able to look back and be able to look and see what was going on in the scene. And these people in the scene right now aren't in the magazine, which is something that can actually be either contributed to or literally like paid for through like advertisement stuff like that and being solidified in stone. It's kind of crazy. And I'm like, that's wild. That's something that like nobody or anything else in the scene actually does.

Speaker 2 (16:50)
Did

you ever like this is like, ⁓ this is almost like a time capsule thing, but like, you know, whenever you got your hair cut that weird way, because one girl said it looked cool back in high school. What we're going to end up looking like to people 10 years from now, aren't we?

Speaker 1 (17:00)
Yes, unfortunately.

It

could be cool or could be cringe. It just depends on, ⁓ what the, what is the gen...

Speaker 2 (17:10)
High top fade, whatever.

Speaker 1 (17:14)
I never had one high fade. I was wanted a high like slant, like a slant top. Yeah. Yeah. That's cringy.

Speaker 2 (17:24)
Subscribers ⁓ still on the plies thing guys. Listen subscribers. We're pick me chicks is whenever it comes to subscribers, please subscribe. You're going to get some cool shit. If you subscribe that means that you're getting a printed magazine every single month, but you're also getting one off posters. We're getting what else we what else will we put in the magazine so far we put in sticker. Yeah. Yeah. So like, you know, just pick us just pick us. You know, it's it's pretty easy.

Speaker 1 (17:45)
Not musical stuff,

Speaker 2 (18:03)
be subscriber and let's not hit the subscribe button bullshit literally go in to plies mag.com get a subscription you can do six you can do 12 months whatever you want to do cancel whenever you want but get a subscription get a magazine shipped out to you every single month easy peasy

Speaker 1 (18:21)
Like clockwork. Like clockwork.

Speaker 2 (18:23)
T-shirts, hoodies, blah, blah, blah, blah. One thing that's cool on Plies right now, we got like the Zegheads, the, what are those, the mini mags?

Speaker 1 (18:31)
Mini mags have been on fire. Everybody's doing like your little DIY spots and all these like just scaled down miniature spots. And these mini mags are a great addition for those.

Speaker 2 (18:40)
And do not send us an email saying that you're pissed off because you can't read the type on the mini-max. They're literally miniature magazines for God's sake.

Don't be like, thought I was getting a magazine but I can't read any of this shit. No, no. Just get the mini mags, they're cool, they're for your displays and your fucking DIYs and stuff. Alright, now this is the thing that's going really piss me off this next topic. I'm really mad about this, Levine. Did you get a documentary made about you?

Speaker 1 (19:08)
Why would it

We We did a thing.

Speaker 2 (19:17)
Can we show anybody the documentary?

Speaker 1 (19:21)
Legally? I don't think so. But are we? More than likely yes.

Speaker 2 (19:27)
Okay, all right, so we'll figure out how to like, Captain Crunch this but tell us what happened. What's up with this doc? What's it called? It's called

Speaker 1 (19:34)
called

Flick, a finger-boarding documentary.

Speaker 2 (19:38)
I think it's a finger boarding story. I don't know. showing the I'm showing the poster right now. So they're looking at it while we're talking.

Speaker 1 (19:40)
Is it?

man, I messed it up.

Speaker 2 (19:48)
Yeah, flick a finger boarding story. And they what did they do? What tell me about this thing? And because this is interesting stuff.

Speaker 1 (19:50)
Fingerboard

All right. So yeah, we had a finger birding documentary. had a team of students.

Speaker 2 (20:02)
We didn't wait a minute. We didn't make this. This was made by Taylor University.

Speaker 1 (20:06)
Yeah, so Taylor University, it's a college that's about an hour north of us here in Indianapolis, Indiana. And they have a team of students and a school project for them was to basically do a short film documentary. They get to choose any subject, any type, but it had to be just a short form documentary.

Speaker 2 (20:26)
Hey and so like what was it like man how was it being the start I mean like listen I've seen it you've seen it. ⁓ I think it's freaking amazing I'm really really frustrated that we got away what like 9 to 12 months before we can release.

But who else got interviewed in it? We got Markoff in there, who's got like 18,000 fingerboarders. He's going to be opening up the fingerboard museum. Who else was interviewed in this?

Taylor University, send them an email. It's the A and V club or arts and visual or whatever the hell the group is. Send an email, bug them for it. But if we get 100,000 subscribers on this channel, I'm releasing it. I'm just going to tell you right now. 100,000, hit the subscribe button. We only have like 1,600, 1,700 people a month that watch this podcast. So I don't think we're in legal hot water with Taylor University just yet. But if we hit 100,000, I'm doing it. I don't even care.

Here's cool cover again. Here's their... Fuck it, I'm even going to do a little clip of the video. Here you go.

What do you see this podcast accomplishing for all of your buddies out there?

Okay, that's all you get, because we are not allowed to show any more than that.

All right, what's next? 2026.

We're not going to tell him about any. We're not telling about any decks and graphics and stuff that we're coming out through Plays Magazine. We're not going to tell him about any parks obstacles, anything like that. We're not going to tell him.

But we are going to tell them about the sanction events, right?

King of the Plies is coming back, right? When does King of the Plies start?

⁓ We've got sanctioned events. We're going to be launching sanctioned events in about 30 days. So towards the end of January.

Thinkshin events aren't just happening in the United States in 2026, are they?

So pay attention. ⁓ David Jones, pay attention. We are going to be doing some international sanctioned events, right? So we need Australia, need Spain, we need our friends at Carmel, we need what? need where else we want to go with these.

Sanctioned events, international USAFBL is going to be happening in 2026. I'm here for it. I think it's going to be amazing. We got our buddies down in Africa. Where are we at now? What countries in Africa are we like right now dealing with?

Okay, ⁓ Cody and loady are obviously going to be back. We can't not do Cody and loady,

Okay, we got Mitch Rush, Mitch, rushing, call him Mitch Rush, but Mitchell rushing Chris Daniels and Tanner Hedge going to the World Championships. Fast Fingers 22 on not going to tell you but go ahead and look in Plies Magazine December issue and it'll tell you when the Fast Fingers is we already told you guys you need to read more. Fourth season of the podcast 12 more issues of this goddamn Plies Magazine love your shirt by the way. That's not even half the cool stuff you guys don't even know.

Yeah, so love us or hate us, you just ain't us and get over it. All right, let's make 2026 badass.

Anything else?

We're doing everything we can do. We're running as fast as we can run, ⁓ Go to teaktuning.com, buy $60 worth of cool finger boarding crap, and make sure you use the code, what was it again? Free Magazine on checkout. Put the magazine in your shopping cart, then use the code freemagazine. If you're up in Canada, hit up Rise. They've got the magazine available. If you're anywhere else in the world besides US or Canada,

Go ahead and go to Black River and grab a copy of the magazine, right?

We're planning on doing the same thing next month too. So we're going to keep these channels open. Plus, we got 20 stores. They're all listed in the magazine and on our website that you can go to in person, pick up a copy.

Let's do what forecast how many you think we're going to end up with? I'm saying well over 100.

All right. And I think there's going to be a very special event this year at a very special company happening that we're going to be involved in. But we can't tell you yet. A big, big time in person event at a place that you have not been to yet. And it's going to be off the hook.

Let us know in the comments what you think, where we're talking about. And I'm talking one of the big boys. mean, I'm talking about one of the big, big boys are doing an open house event this year. Let us know in the comments who you think it is.

Yeah.

Thanks for watching me motherfuckers. If you liked it, subscribe. Subscribe bitches!

See you.