I first rode Cyclone circa 2002, after all the butchery had already been committed, and it reminded me of the painful, public decline of Chuck Norris: every once in a while it would throw you a really good move, but mostly it just lurched along in a stoic, wooden manner with very little inspiration or excitement. I was pulling for the Cyclone, just like I spent years pulling for Chuck. But all the great stuff Id heard so much about -- the world-beater status, the full-contact credibility -- seemed to have happened in another era. The here and now was mostly a Walker-like pastiche of embarrassing slow-motion movements, the same moves that at full-speed used to wow the fans and intimidate the haters.
You could still feel some spirit there, a sense that this old warhorse maintained some guts. But it had become, in its declining years, a pale imitation of its former glory, like the painful spectacle of a former world-class athlete pushing cheap exercise gizmos on late-night television. True, it could still land a backfist on your soup cooler once in a while, but in the end, these moments felt more annoying than thrilling, just gratitutous punishment that never amount to anything. Slowed and dumbed-down for the masses, it simply lacked that knock-out power.
Well, its heart was always in the right place, so you cant feel anger or betrayal, only regret. Maybe if it had better handlers. Maybe if it had kept in better shape. Maybe if it had stuck to its core audience, instead of trying to please everyone. Whatever the case may be, we cant live in the past. Jet-Li-like GCIs await us, and in S&S Power, we may have found our next Bruce Lee.
Yet let us pause for a moment to remember the cowboy-hat and chest-hair era, and give a silent nod of respect to one that arrived too late and lingered too long. Goodbye, Cyclone. We always believed in what you stood for.
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