Once upon a time, all yoyos were fixed axle. Therefore, all yoyo tricks were fixed axle yoyo tricks. That’s just how it was. Then some dude in Sweden threw a ball-bearing into a yoyo, and some dude in San Francisco threw a ball-bearing into a good yoyo, and then all hell broke loose.
Now we’ve come to the point where fixed axle yoyo play is a rarity, not the norm. Modern tricks don’t work well on fixed axles. But a handful of people have decided that there just need to be more modern tricks that do work on fixed axle yoyos, and thus we have Ed Haponik.
For a while, the vogue was to try and hit really hard modern tricks on fixed axle yoyos just to prove you could. It was vain and ridiculous and fun, but all it proved was that fixed axles were largely obsolete equipment. What players like Ed Haponik and Drew Tetz and a few others have done is embraced the limitations of fixed axle yoyos and simply created modern tricks that are intended for them, instead of done in spite of them.
The modern fixed axle renaissance is fantastic, and watching players like Ed find ways to make fixed axle play not only difficult but native is truly exciting.
Watch this video and enjoy. And then go get one of these or one of these and get to work.