^ Not to mention Gou actually used to be a pretty fucking gnarly rail skater before he started doing more of the weird stuff off his board he's most popular for (and then for a while he had a transition phase where he was doing those weird maneuvers at gnarly spots, jumping onto fucked-up handrails etc.). He's now in his forties and as you said, had the humility to retire spontaneously; in comparison Richie is just a sad clown trying to sell out, I just rewatched his Death part from 2008 where he hucked a little bit more to make sure I remembered how he used to skate and while - bad taste aside - some of it is actually pretty good (I guess he still needed to really try and skate at the time), none of the shit he ever did is nearly as gnarly as some of Gou'd old stuff which actually took balls and skills and had serious risk factor. Gou used to have very smooth style too (classic East Coast-inspired), as opposed to looking like Disneyworld's Aladdin. Richie's style in the Death video is contrived as fuck, even clothing aside you can tell he's more focused on trying to catch your attention than on learning how to push.