Almost every professional sport has a feeder league. Baseball has the minors. Basketball and Football have the college sports program. Even within the motorsports realm – you have F3 and F2 for Formula 1 and the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series for NASCAR.
For years – there wasn’t a proper pipeline into the most important series in motocross: the Monster Energy Supercross series. Sure, a few amateur nationals like Mini Os offered select supercross races and the Arenacross series has served a pseudo-feeder series. But the sport has long-lacked anything that really replicates the feel, intensity and difficulty of pro supercross. Which is crazy considering how the fans, manufacturers, pros and money all place that series on a big ol’ pedestal.
Enter SMX Next (formerly Supercross Futures). Introduced officially in 2019 – SMX Next is a limited series that features some of the gnarliest kids currently on the amateur circuit. The likes of Jett Lawrence, Haiden Deegan, Jo Shimoda and many others have all debuted to the supee masses in the series.
With the 2026 season officially kicking off at Anaheim 2 – it was the first look many of us get at the next crop of supercross stars. To no one’s surprise, the boys under the Star Racing tent came out SWINGIN’ in the opener. With a clean sweep of the podium, the Aussie Kayden Minear (how bout them folks from down under by the way HOLY SH*T), Caden Dudney and the former Team Green Standout Landen Gordon took care of business in the home of Disneyland. Resulting in a whollllle lot of blue on the podium.
This past Saturday, however, round two went a bit differently. Kayden Minear ended up tweaking his knee in practice and was officially a DNS for the main. This left room for a few amateurs looking to prove themselves in Deacon Denno and Vincent Wey (son of former SX fan-favorite, Nick Wey) to make some noise at the front. Both Denno and Wey were looking to build off of strong top five performances at Round 1, with even better performances at Round 2.
Wey hopped out to the early lead, anchored by a great start. Following suit were the likes of Denno and Dudney. Denno made a quick move on Wey who was unable to counter as he came up short on the big triple out of the corner. With Dudney breathing down his neck, Wey gave away second place – paving the way for Dudney to go after Denno. Dudney ended up making pretty quick work of the 199 on his way to the front and would never relinquish the lead.
The action wasn’t over then, as Wey LOCKED in towards the second half of the race and caught back to the rear tire of Denno. With a slight mistake in the big rhythm before the finish by Denno, Wey was in a prime position to make a move in the whoops. Clicking a few gears, Wey fully sent the whoop section in an effort to make the pass. Ultimately his full send ended in a pretty nasty little high-side into the corner (luckily he was able to finish the race without major injuries).
Denno wasn’t exactly safe after that as last week’s third place finisher, Landen Gordon, was charging his way through the pack and putting serious pressure on. Gordon was able to get around Denno for a short bit, but Denno tenaciously fought back and regained the position.
In the end – the podium was pretty damn similar to last weekend, with the only difference being Deacon Denno slotting into second and Dudney shifting to the top step. With the two Texas boys going 1-2 with Gordon in tow – safe to say the homecoming was a big success.
