Sluggo Boyce

Robert Doucet Boyce (born September 15, 1969), better known as Sluggo, is a professional skateboarder, snowboarder, break-dancer, gymnast, stuntman, and businessman from Vancouver, BC. Sluggo is best known for his skateboarding and is most famous for being the first to land a back flip on a skateboard which is shown on the cover of Transworld Skateboard March 1998. He is also the first person to perform a back flip to fakie on a vertical skate ramp. Sluggo is the only person to complete a back flip in competition to this day. Sluggo currently shares ownership of Canada’s premiere skateboarding distribution, Centre Distribution, and oversees the day to day operations of RDS Skate Supply and Red Dragon Apparel. He has two children Liam and Araya.

Early career

Sluggo was born in Victoria, British Columbia where he started as a gymnast winning the Western Canadian Championships at age 14. Rob also took up break-dancing where he won several competitions and placed 5th in a North American break-dance contest.

He began his skateboard career at the age of 15 on the advice of a classmate. Sluggo honed his vertical skateboard skills at the Richmond Skate Ranch, owned by Kevin Harris, a local pro skater for Powell Peralta. This is where he would also meet his future crew, best friends, and business partners Colin McKay, and Moses Itkonen. The crew came to be known as the Red Dragons.

Mid career

Sluggo caught the eye of Stacey Peralta, director of the Dog-town documentary, and owner of Powell Peralta Skateboards. Stacey introduced Sluggo to Henry Hester, a skateboard legend from Southern California who ran G&S. Sluggo rode for G&S from 1988 till 1990. Later Sluggo would ride for Real Skateboards owned by Tommy Guerro and Jim Thiebaud from Stacey Peralta’s world famous Bones Brigade.

Sluggo turned pro in 1991 and traveled to the World Championships in Munster, Germany and competed for the first time against his childhood heroes Chris Miller, Tony Hawk and a long list of highly regarded veteran skaters. Sluggo placed 5th in his first international competition.

Skateboarding took a down turn in the public eye from 1993 - 1996. Sluggo still continued to skate and compete all over the world but the industry had down-sized. Vertical skateboarding had fallen out of favor and street skating had taken over. The Red Dragons have always prided themselves on being well rounded skaters skated everything that they had at their disposable which was usually downtown Vancouver, the breeding ground for some of the best skateboarders in the world.

In 1992, Sluggo’s brother younger Dave Boyce introduced him to snowboarding. And after two seasons under his belt became one of Canada’s most published snowboarders showing up in almost every snowboard magazine that came out in 1994. This opened the doors to many sponsorship deals trips all over the world to film and shoot photos.

Later-Career

Sluggo is now a full UBCP union stunt performer in the Canadian movie industry. He started his stunt career doubling Dean Cain in a Wesley Snipes production, Future Sport. Sluggo has over 60 TV/Feature Credits to his name either acting or stunting.

Sluggo retired from snowboarding professionally in 2000 but continued to skateboard professionally until 2004. He came out of retirement briefly to compete in the Canadian Half-Pipe Championship in March 2005 and won the event.

Business Interests

In 1996, Rob Sluggo Boyce, Colin McKay, and Moses Itkonen, also known as the Red Dragons opened RDS Skate Supply in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. RDS was an instant success with the support of the Vancouver skate and snowboard scene. RDS sponsored the best skaters and snowboarders of the 90’s many of which used RDS as a platform to take their careers to an international level. In 1997, the Red Dragons turned their eyes to National distribution and became Canada’s premiere skateboard distribution company. Centre Distribution would start off with distributing DC Shoe Co., World Industries, Seek, Independent Trucks, Alien Workshop, and Habitat.

With the success of RDS, and Centre Distribution which now had two locations in both Western Canada (North Vancouver, British Columbia) and Eastern Canada (Ajax, Ontario), it was time to introduce Red Dragon Apparel. The purpose of the brand was to create a clothing line made by skaters for skaters. Today the Red Dragon line is Canada’s number one skateboard line distributed to 350 stores across Canada and 14 countries around the world.