Figure skating (at least when it doesn't involve a Goodfellas-influenced recreation of the Tonya Harding scandal) has a reputation as a staid, traditional sport with a nearly-impossible-to-understand scoring system.
Well, on Thursday, David Ma did his best to upend the staid and traditional part of that rep with his routine at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Ma, who is from Queens but now lives and trains in Texas, brought figure skating into the early 2010s by performing to a medley of DJ Snake's "Propaganda" and, to the delight of pretty much everyone on Twitter and the confusion of the TV commentators, Snake and Lil Jon's famous pre-gaming classic "Turn Down for What."
The routine, which you can see in its entirety above (baffled commentators inclusive), didn't bring Ma anywhere near a victory—he ended the day in eleventh place. However, he certainly finished first in the hearts of social media users.
I have no interest in figure skating--wait--some dude just skated to "Turn Down for What?" I gotta watch this
A guy at the U.S. figure skating Olympic trials skated to "Turn Down For What." He would SO have gotten a 10 from me.
Y'all. I was on a date watching this and almost stopped cuddling just to get on Twitter and be like, "THIS GUY IS FIGURE SKATING TO TURN DOWN FOR WHAT!!!!" https://t.co/TiQRAckvvl
Men's figure skating might be my new favorite sport. Somebody deadass just skated to Turn Down for What, and it was amazing
Ma told USA Today why he added something resembling excitement to his routine.
"Figure skating is an extreme sport," he said. "I want the most amount of people to see that it is both an awesome art form and also an awesome sport. The whole point was to get people hyped. Get older people hyped and for younger people to think it is cool."
The U.S. Figure Skating Championships continues on Saturday. Ma will not be reprising his DJ Snake routine, sadly. Instead, he'll be skating to Rachmaninov. But we've always got his Eminem medley from last year to tide us over.
