John Rodney Mullen was born on August 17, 1966, in Gainesville, Florida. He created his own brands and companies, developed his inventive talent, and became a popular public speaker. As time went by, Mullen became more than just a prolific skateboarder. Progressively, he shifted his interest from freestyle to street skating. 'The media told the world of my greatness while I felt like a fraud. The rest were hollow victories tainted by playing it safe,' admitted Mulled in 1999. 'I defended my world title over 35 times, and I recall being genuinely happy about it only twice. From then on, Mullen won 34 out of 35 freestyle events he entered. The 'godfather of modern street skateboarding' won his first world title at the age of 14. The Floridian invented several skateboarding tricks, including the heelflip, the ollie kickflip, the 360 flip, the flat ground ollie, and the impossible. He won the 2002 Transworld Skateboarding readers' choice award for favourite street skater and is the most popular character on the top-selling Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video games.For many riders, historians and athletes, Rodney Mullen is the most influential street skater in the sport's history. The videos in his series Rodney Versus Daewon are among the most popular skateboard videos ever produced. With the help of mentor Mike Ternansky, Rodney used his freestyle background to usher in a whole new era of street skating. So Rodney picked up his board and started from scratch. But by the time he finally broke free from his suffocating and abusive home life, the popularity of freestyle had waned and given way to vert and street styles. After years of stress and conflict, Rodney gave in and promised his father he'd quit for good. But through it all, his father looked down on his son's love for skating and pressured him to walk away from the sport and leave behind his fans and status as the most famous skateboarder of his era. He won 35 world titles in less than five years. At the age of 13, Rodney took the freestyle skating world by storm. The world-champion freestyle skateboarder and the man who brought the ollie - the trick that revolutionised the sport by taking it from the ground to the air - to street skating shares the history of skateboarding, as he tells the dramatic story of his life.

The mutt rodney mullen