Maximum Destruction; The Other Bad Boy!

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Maximum Destruction (often referred to as Max. D.) is a monster truck currently racing in the USHRA Monster Jam series. It is currently driven by Tom Meents.

As one of the most successful of the trucks it currently rivals Grave Digger in popularity. The truck was formerly known as Team Meents, and debuted as Goldberg.



History of Maximum Destruction In 1999, Clear Channel (now Live Nation) signed a contract with World Championship Wrestling to create monster trucks based on popular professional wrestlers.

In order to ensure the success of the truck of Goldberg, Clear Channel contracted the team of Tom Meents (who was already wildly popular from driving Monster Patrol and Bulldozer) to build and campaign the "Goldberg" truck.

Meents debuted in the truck in January 2000 at the Georgia Dome, where he won racing and finished second in freestyle.

The truck was popular with casual fans, but many long time fans were less enthusiastic about the unconventional "Futuristic SUV" body and the professional wrestling connections.

As the year progressed, and as Dennis Anderson struggled in Grave Digger, Meents became almost unstoppable and capped the year by winning the Monster Jam World Finals Racing Championship.

The following year saw a continuation of the dominance, and Meents won the world racing and freestyle championship.

In late 2001, WCW was bought out by the World Wrestling Federation and the deal with Clear Channel was dropped. For 2002, Meents kept the same truck and body but renamed the truck Team Meents, even retaining much of Goldberg's color scheme and graphics. Once again, Meents swept both the racing and freestyle the World Finals.

2003 saw the truck change both name and image to become Maximum Destruction, a name which Meents had intended to run the year before until the September 11 attacks delayed those plans out of respect.

The truck has remained significantly popular, and is often introduced with equal billing as Grave Digger. There are currently two Maximum Destruction trucks touring.

Maximum Destruction Monster Truck

Since the truck debuted as Goldberg, the Willman-style chassis and Fox coil-overs with Knight Stalker shocks shocks have led to several bouncy and wild rides.

Meents later replaced the Fox shocks with Knight Stalkers with coilovers wrapped around it.

However, the truck is famous for its ability to make large jumps and take several hits during freestyle runs and not suffer significant damage. The truck is also known for its numerous crashes, often simply as a result of Meents' full throttle driving.

Meents' driving style is emulated by the current driver of the second truck, Neil Elliot, and other former drivers, such as Phil Foster and Rob Knell, are said to have graduated from the "Tom Meents School of Driving".

About Tom Meents

Tom Meents signing autographs in front of Maximum DestructionTom Meents (born June 10, 1967) is a professional monster truck driver. He currently drives Maximum Destruction on the USHRA Monster Jam circuit.

His Career Meents started out as a mud racer, driving his own vehicle, Shake Me. He had his first wreck when he rolled the Shake Me over at a USHRA Mud Race in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He won the NMRO Open Class championship in 1992. He later teamed up with Paul Shafer to drive Shafer's Mud Patrol vehicle. Tom won the NMRO Class 5 championship in 1993 and 1994 and won the Class 6 championship in 1993.

This also led to an opportunity to drive one of Shafer's Monster Patrol monster trucks, which Tom drove to a rapid rise in popularity. Among his accomplishments in this truck was a victory at the USHRA U.S. Truck Fest in 1997.



Meents bought the truck and in 1999 was commissioned by PACE Motor Sports (now Live Nation) to run a Bulldozer body to help increase the truck's exposure.

In his first event with Bulldozer, Meents defeated Dennis Anderson and Grave Digger on national television, becoming an instant star in the process. Meents would continue driving Bulldozer until the end of 1999.

In 2000, Clear Channel commissioned Meents to drive a new truck, Goldberg, named after the WCW wrestler. Meents was extremely successful in the truck and rose to an even greater level of popularity, despite controversy over the truck's wrestling basis and unconventional looks. With Goldberg, Meents won the inaugural Monster Jam World Finals racing championship in 2000, and completed a full sweep of the event in 2001.

This event was notable for the controversial "grand finale", in which Anderson and Meents attempted to drive over each other's trucks at the end of the freestyle competition.

When WCW folded two days after the 2001 World Finals, Meents debuted Team Meents, which was a repaint of Goldberg with a similar design and lettering style. Meents again swept the World Finals in 2002 with this truck.

In 2003, the truck got a brand new image with the debut of Maximum Destruction. Meents' popularity has remained high with this truck, with several major stadium event victories, but he has not had the success in the World Finals he had with previous trucks.

Despite berths in the first three World Finals since switching to "Max D.", he had only been able to score a co-championship in freestyle with Madusa and El Toro Loco in 2004. Finally, in 2006, Meents broke through and regained the Monster Jam freestyle championship.Retrieve from online 10/25/2011. http://www.offroaders.com/directory/monster_trucks/Maximum-Destruction.htm Since 1995, Monster Jam has been pitting the best drivers and monster trucks against each other in high-flying fashion.

Monster Jam: The Trucks The American South has always prided itself on making the best of any situation and using any tool to get it done.

The end result of decades of tinkering and homemade automobiles is the monster truck. Though the concept and the ideal of what a monster truck is has changed over the years, the main principle of a huge and mean machine has always remained the same.

After decades of being a local attraction, monster trucks roared out of the South thanks to legendary trucks like Bigfoot. Monster Jam arose in the 1990s as the leader in monster-truck sanctioning bodies.

Monster Jam: USHRA Before fans could buy Monster Jam tickets, they bought up tickets left and right for a variety of monster truck shows. Along with dirt bikes, motorcycles, tractor pulls, and demolition derbies, monster trucks were brought to national attention thanks to the United States Hot Rod Association (USHRA).

Promoting extreme motorsports since the 1970s, the USHRA was quickly drawn to the monster truck known as Bigfoot, the truck that would go down as the icon of the sport and perhaps the most famous vehicle in history.

By the 1980s, the monster truck had become the attraction of choice in truck rallies, and the USHRA began to dial up the competition with a heavy emphasis on the dichotomy of building better monster trucks while aiming to destroy more cars in competition.

Inspired by the rise to power of professional wrestling in the 1990s thanks to the WWE and WCW, Monster Jam was created in 1995 to give a national stage to a long-held Southern tradition. Though their audiences were not totally merged, fans who bought WCW or WWE tickets would also be out to get their hands on Monster Jam tickets.



Monster Jam: Grave Digger The first monster truck to emerge from the shadow of Bigfoot was Grave Digger, and the trademarked green and black wrecking machine became the poster truck for Monster Jam. Driver/creator Dennis Anderson turned into a legend to fans with Monster Jam tickets and has since become the Monster Jam equivalent of Michael Schumacher or Dale Earnhardt.

A specialist in the “freestyle” of monster-truck competition, Dennis Anderson and Grave Digger gained a reputation as a team that would lay body and vehicle on the line for fans with Monster Jam tickets every night.

Monster Jam: World Finals By 2000, fans with Monster Jam tickets wanted a way to recognize the best driver and truck on an official basis. The Monster Jam World Finals were born and quickly became one of the top motorsport events in the nation. Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, was chosen to be the venue for the Monster Jam World Finals.

The competition was to be divided between the traditional car-crushing spectacle of freestyle competition and the pure speed action of races. Both events thrill the thousands of fans with Monster Jam tickets in attendance, but freestyle is always a favorite.

The initial Monster Jam World Finals freestyle competition was won by Dennis Anderson and Grave Digger, but rising superstar driver Tom Meents and his Goldberg truck would take the racing title.

Tom Meents and Dennis Anderson would form the biggest rivalry in Monster Jam history, and each drew millions of fans to their camps. Even after WCW and their sponsorship folded, a great deal of fans with Monster Jam tickets flocked to Tom Meents and his new Team Meents truck.

Monster Jam: Taz & Batman Like any sport, a new generation of athletes always takes over as the years progress. Veteran driver John Seasock and his Batman truck have shown all the power of a superhero; John Seasock has reined as the Monster Jam World Final Champion in racing in 2007 and 2008.

The 23-year-old son of Dennis Anderson, Adam Anderson, took the Monster Jam World Finals freestyle competition with his Taz truck. Fans with Monster Jam tickets have hailed the younger Anderson as the future of the sport.

Monster Jam: Future & Legacy The trucks of Monster Jam are moving representation of the American spirit and are monuments to innovation and technology.

By constantly turning over the technology and ramping up the showmanship of every event, fans with Monster Jam tickets get to see one of the few motorsports in the world that still relies on the skill of crews, teams, and technicians instead of uniform restrictions and rules.

Monster Jam events are also surprisingly intimate for a sport that involves 10,000-pound trucks crushing cars as fans are always close to and a part of the action.

With Monster Jam tickets selling to more than seven million fans a year all over the nation, no racing organization brings more action to more people.

From large arenas to giant mega stadiums, Monster Jam packs every venue with screaming fans that cannot get enough of the sights and sounds of the world’s biggest racing machines. With 2009 on track to be the biggest year in Monster Jam history, fans with Monster Jam tickets will not miss a second of it. Retrieve from online 10/25/2011. http://www.onlinetickets.com/info/sports_other/monster_jam/history.html Return to Monster Trucks from Maximum Destruction