Blogandt!: Most Hyped Opener Ever. No arguing.

In 1995, Michael Jordan's comeback with the Chicago Bulls ended at the hands of the Orlando Magic, who wiped the floor with the #45 jersey-wearing MJ, who was still coming back from a stint at playing baseball. We've seen this before.

This just pissed Jordan off, so he spent the summer reinventing and reestablishing himself as a basketball player. The Bulls picked up the insane Dennis Rodman, and ripped off the greatest single-season win record in the history of the NBA. But O-Town still loomed in the playoffs. The Bulls had no one to contend with Shaq (except for a free throw line). A collision course was set. An epic battle between the best 1-2 punch of the past--Jordan and Pipped--versus the best of the future, in Shaq and Penny.

Then the Bulls swept the Magic. 4-0. Over and done. A week later, during the NBA Finals, Bob Costas said words I will never forget: "Perhaps the only shame in this amazing Bulls season is that they didn't have another great team to measure themselves against." What? How soon we forget! The Magic had a great team. The only reason it looked like the Bulls didn't have great competition is because they made even great teams looks mediocore.

So now we're on to this week, which I like to call hype week in supercross. It's so freaking on right now. You really, really don't know what is going to happen. You don't. It's impossible to predict. We're way beyond the hype week of, say, 2008, when we were all "Yeah so Stewart is just gonna' kill everyone right?" No, this year is set to be a good one. A great one. Same scenario as the "greatest season ever" stuff we heard last year. It can't get much better!

Ah, but it does. I love hype week as much as the next guy, but I'm taking one fact to the grave with me: there will never, ever, never, ever, NEVER be a hype week like Anaheim 1, 2005. There will never be a more anticipated season than '05. You will never have a starting gate with that kind of star power. We breathe oxygen, the earth is round, and Anaheim 1 2005 was the most anticipated supercross ever. This is inarguable to the point where I shouldn't even have to explain it. I should just end this blog post right here.

Wait, you're going to argue? Yes, the actual 2005 season didn't turn out to be that great. But what is this, the 1996 Orlando Magic? How soon we forget! BEFORE the year began, it was so on, it was beyond on. It was so on, it was above.

Here's the A12K5 scenario: James Stewart, by now the winningest 125 SX and MX rider in history, is making his 250 debut. Say and think what you want about James now, but in 2005 he was a  "you've gotta' see this" dynamo who everyone liked. No booing. No complaining about reality shows, or crashes, or SX only deals or whatever else you don't like right now. In '05, he was just the baddest most talent dirt bike rider we had ever seen and people couldn't wait to see him do crazy stuff on a 250.

And...he was finally going to race the man he'd been groomed to race since day 1. Ricky Carmichael. See, Carmichael/Stewart wasn't just the rivalry for that season. It was a rivalry for all time. We knew these two were set for greatness 10 years in advance of this race. They were the absolute dominators of every amateur class and bike size they raced, then did the same on 125s as pros. But somehow these two managed to dominate everything, but never once line up in the same class in the same race at the same time. Until Anaheim 1 2005.

That was enough to make this all-time hype. In fact, when I had this blog running back then, I actually started a countdown three months out, counting 100 days until James Stewart and Ricky Carmichael finally race each other. I feared the world might blow up when it happened.

 In '05, Carmichael was coming back after missing the '04 season with ACL surgery. And he was making his Suzuki debut, and Suzuki had sucked it up so bad in previous seasons that some thought, legitimately, that there was such a thing as a Suzuki curse. Living proof was Suzuki's other guy, Travis Pastrana, who was not done as a full-time racer and built his own team to go after the 2005 Championship. Even better, Jeremy freaking McGrath was coming out of retirement and back on a Honda. McGrath! Pastrana! Carmichael! Stewart! And not one of them was the defending SX Champion. That, folks, was Chad Reed. So you ran the possiblity of Stewart and Carmichael racing each other for the first time, and yet having someone else be the favorite.

Throwing a few more hype logs on the fire, Kevin Windham, Mike LaRocco and Tim Ferry, among others, still had several good years left in them. Think of the darned star power on the starting gate that night. I remember telling our shooter Simon Cudby that he had better have his stuff dialed, because you may never get a start pic with the likes of McGrath, Carmichael, Pastrana, Stewart and Reed together again (and you really wouldn't, because Stewart and Pastrana were soon out with injuries and MC only ran a few races).

Anaheim 1 2005 sold out months in advance. The hype was insane. This was the perfect storm, the race of all races. This was the peak, the prime. And then, because it was all just too big and too crazy, it started to rain in "It never rains in Southern California." The universe just couldn't handle it, and my fears of the card turning sideways, the gate dropping and California unleashing the earthquake to end all earthquakes were starting to look like reality. The whole event turned into a crazy mudder. Windham won over LaRocco, and we'd have to wait some time to see the Stewart/Reed/Carmichael showdown on a dry track. By then, Pastrana and McGrath were gone. I don't care what the motocross Gods come up with next. They're never gonna' match the hype of Anaheim 1 2005. Someone get me the number of a tombstone guy, I'm putting that on there right now.