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He’s dominated competition, then felt like he was making up the numbers, punched a shark and most recently helped save another surfer from drowning.
Now Mick Fanning just wants the job done.
After a tumultuous season, Fanning holds surfing’s No.1 ranking as he heads into the event that will decide whether the Australian star wins a fourth world title.
Fanning will have five other rivals for that crown when the Pipeline Masters, the last round of the World Surf League, starts on Wednesday at Hawaii’s famed North Shore.
Australians Owen Wright and Julian Wilson and Brazilian trio Filipe Toledo, Adriano De Souza and Gabriel Medina, the reigning world champion, can all unseat Fanning depending on what happens at the Banzai Pipeline reef break.
Fanning has three world titles – only compatriot Mark Richards (four) and American legend Kelly Slater (11) have more.
“It’s been an up and down sort of year,” Fanning said.
“I feel like in France I was just hanging on and now I just want to go and throw everything at it.
“It’s no use playing tactics anymore – it’s just go out and do your job.
“I want to do my best and to match Mark Richards with four titles would be a dream come true.”
Fanning slipped up at the previous WSL round two months ago, finishing 13th in Portugal.
But Fanning emphatically returned to form last week when he won his first big Hawaiian title, taking out the Vans World Cup at nearby Sunset Beach.
Then surfing was reminded of its dangers two days before the start of the Pipeline Masters waiting period when American Evan Geiselman nearly drowned.
Geiselman wiped out badly at Pipeline and Fanning was among those who helped bring him to shore.
He is expected to make a full recovery.
It’s been that sort of year for Fanning – in July, he fought off a shark attack during the final of South Africa’s J-Bay Open.
Wilson paddled over to help after Fanning punched the shark and their actions, recorded on live TV, instantly became an iconic sporting moment.
Wilson, the defending Pipeline Masters champion, is seventh on the world rankings.
Everything must go right for him if he is to claim an unlikely first world title.
“If I can go to Pipe and get another result like last year, I’m going to be proud of whatever position that leaves me in,” Wilson said.
“It’s been a much better year.”