Skate Mag Scans by Skate Media Nerd: Mike Rusczyk ("Rus-Sick") Appreciation

Mike Rusczyk ("Rus-Sick") Appreciation

Let me start by saying that for years, I did not like Mike Rusczyk's skating. I remember watching Cataclysmic Abyss for the first time and being psyched to watch guys like Don Nguyen and Corey Duffel skate huge gaps and rails, but then wondering why they included a guy in the same video who was doing no-comply tail stalls on brick banks and varial kickflips down 4-blocks.

*pause for dramatic effect* 10 years later, it's my favorite part in the video.

Don and Duffel's skating is still awesome to watch, but Mike's part is so much more interesting to me now, and pretty mind-blowing. Every no-comply is flawless. And no-comply wallride??? He pops out of nosebluntslides so effortlessly. He skates a lot of spots no one else is skating and doing tricks on them that few others or no one else was doing at the time, and doing them quite well.

I won't go on and on, but if you've never seen his skating or haven't watched his parts for years because you didn't find them appealing, I recommend you watch his Cataclysmic Abyss and Art Bars parts now. And by no means am I an expert of his skate career, so if you are reading this and know of some other skating of his that I didn't mention, let me/us know!

TL; DR, I used the Skatepark of Tampa website to look up every piece of magazine coverage that I owned that had Mike Rusczyk in it because he fucking rips and is one of the most underrated skateboarders ever and I wanted to feature him on this page.

April 10th, 2022 update: Since putting up this post, I have found more Mike Rusczyk photos. I decided that instead of making new posts whenever I find another photo of him in a magazine, that I will just update this post. For the purists, everything up to the June 2010 The Skateboard Mag post was what was I originally published on March 20th.