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Rodney Mullen (born 1966) of Gainesville, Florida, is a skateboarder and the son of a doctor. Mullen showed interest in skateboarding at the age of 10, but his father opposed his son's wishes to practice the sport. However, his father promised him a skateboard for the New Year, and on January 1, 1977, Mullen had his first skateboard.
During the 1980s he turned professional at the age of 13 and began skateboarding for the legendary Powell Peralta Bones Brigade team.
In 1988, Mullen appeared in the feature film Gleaming the Cube, alongside fellow Bones Brigade team members and movie star Christian Slater. Mullen's other videos include The Bones Brigade Video Show, , , and .
In the 1990s, Mullen left Powell Peralta and signed on with another skating company, Plan-B. During that decade he improved on the technical area of some of the tricks he performed, and moved from the traditional small freestyle skateboard to the larger, now standard, street skateboard. Mullen was also featured in several Plan-B videos including: The Questionable Video, Virtual Reality, and Second Hand Smoke.
Sometime in the late 1990s Mullen left Plan-B and joined A-Team, starred in the extremely popular Rodney Mullen vs. Daewon Song video series, and continued to push the limits of technical street skating by taking his tricks to new levels of difficulty and new terrain.
Mullen's ability to do the seemingly impossible on a skateboard has earned him the nicknames "The Godfather of Street Skating", "The King of Freestyle" and "The Mutt" by skateboarding fans.
After A-Team's end, Mullen joined Enjoi Skateboards. His shoe sponsor, Globe, put out a new full length team video "Opinion" in 2001. Mullen also won the Transworld Readers' Choice Award for Skater of the Year in 2002. At the end of 2002, Mullen left Enjoi and created a new company, Almost Skateboards out of Dwindle Distribution. With a team consisting of Daewon Song, Ryan Sheckler, Chris Haslam, Greg Lutzka, Cooper Wilt, William Patrick, and Rodney Mullen himself. In December 2004, Almost skateboards released the much-anticipated video "Almost-Round Three." The "Round Three" video finds Rodney Mullen versus Daewon Song once again. He currently wears Matix clothing as his apparel sponsor.
Tricks
see: Skateboarding trick for detailed description of trick skating maneuvers
Rodney Mullen has invented the following skateboarding tricks during his career:
- Godzilla Rail Flip
- 540 Shove-it
- 50-50 Saran Wrap
- Helipops
- Gazelles
- No Handed 50-50 Kickflip
- Heelflip
- Double heelflips
- Impossible
- Ollie Impossible
- Sidewinders
- 360 Flip
- 360 pressure Flip
- Casper 360 Flip
- 50-50 Sidewinders One footed Ollie
- Backside 180 Flip
- Ollie Nosebones
- Ollie Fingerflip
- Airwalks
- Frontside Heelflip Shove-its Switchstance 360 Flips
- Helipop Heelflips
- Kickflip Underflip
- Casper Slides
- Half Flip Darkslide
- 540 double kickflip
- Caballerial impossible
- Half-cab kickflip underflip
- Handstand flips
- Rusty slides
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