GODSPEED! RICK “SUPER HUNKY” SIEMAN (1940-2023)

Rick and Jody on the starting line Saddleback Park in the late 1970s.

By Jody Weisel

Rick Sieman, better know as Super Hunky, and I had a bond, even though we didn’t actually ever work together. It is true that Motocross Action and Dirt Bike Magazine were both owned by Hi-Torque Publishing, but each magazine was independent, from corporate control in what we chose to do or how we chose to do it. MXA’s offices were right across the hall from Dirt Bike’s in a high-rise office building on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, California. But, we rarely socialized, with the Dirt Bike guys. However,  I had a warm spot in my heart for Rick Sieman that went back to the early 1970s. I was from Texas, that is where I started racing and that is where I made a name for myself—so when I became a SoCal magazine guy, I was a outsider. I remember flying to the New Orleans AMA National on a plane that had every magazine editor of any importance in the 1970s on the same flight. I wasn’t one of them. They didn’t speak to me or even glance my direction. I didn’t really care for their magazines, their personalities or the things they wrote about bikes, so I was fine with it.

This is the only existing photo of Rick and I racing together at Saddleback Park. Rick was, of course, on his beloved Maico.

The only person on the plane that I thought was worthwhile was Rick Sieman. I was, without a doubt, a big Super Hunky fan. However, I didn’t work for Hi-Torque at the time, so I didn’t try to talk to him. So, I was surprised when he walked back to where I had chosen to sit and sat down next to me. He was a ball of fire, with rapid fire jokes, unlimited insights, wild stories, perhaps a touch of fatherly advice, and scathing reviews of the other magazine guys sitting a few rows in front of us, who he called “pencil-necked geeks,”  We chatted for most of the flight. I liked him right away!

Jim O’Neal, Rick Sieman and Jody Weisel.

A year later, I was offered jobs at virtually every motorcycle magazine in print in the mid-1970s. I turned them all down until I got an offer from MXA. They didn’t offer me the most money, but I didn’t care about the salary, I wanted to race, test motorcycles and make Motocross Action into the best magazine possible—and it didn’t hurt that Rick “Super Hunky” Sieman, would be just 20 feet across the hall from the MXA enclave.

A fuzzy photo of Rick (left), Jody (center) and Vic “Mr. Know-It-All”Krause (right) dressed in Tuxedo’s at the Cincinnati Motorcycle Show. 

But “Super Hunky” was a lightning rod for controversy, and that was the thing that would make him a great fighter for off-road rights, but not the greatest employee. And eventually, Rick elected to leave “Dirt Bike Magazine” and I fell out of his orbit. He was an ex-power lifter, who lived in the Valley and was the ultimate story teller—I would alway say to him after he told me one of his fantastic adventure tales, “That was a great. Was any of it true?” He’d laugh out loud and act offended, but he was always ready with another outlandish tale.

The best known photo of Rick was the lead to  his “From the Saddle” column in “Dirt Bike.”

When he wrote his “Monkey Butt” book, he told me not to worry about what he wrote in it because, “I left you out!” Thats’a the kind of guy he was. It’s not that I didn’t see Rick after he left Hi-Torque, we ran into each other all the time. We would see each other at press intros and the magic that was Rick was always on display, but eventually he moved to Mexico and then to Arizona to live out the off-road lifestyle. It’s a shame that the vast majority of modern motocross racers never had the opportunity to live through Super Hunky’s reign at the top of the motorcycle magazine world.  Rick passed away after a long illness at the age of 83. For me Rick will always be the Rick Sieman who sat down next to me on a flight to New Orleans and made me feel like I had a friend.

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