Avenged Sevenfold and Sports

Arin Ilejay , Johnny Christ , M.Shadows , Synyster Gates , The Rev , Zacky Vengeance 33 comments

Avenged Sevenfold and sports , what's the relationship between them ? At first you might think that there's no way that the guys are athletes or into the sports but don't judge the book by its cover and let's us see the athlete side of Avenged Sevenfold.
We will start with who we think is the most athlete of the band, M.shadows.
At his young age Matt's life was all about basketball , he was gifted with a great basketball talent, knowing also that his mom and dad were basketball coaches and he was coached by his mom on his elementary basketball team and his dad coaching his club team.
Although Matthew had a great talent and he was playing very good but he couldn't handle the pressure of his parent to be successful on this game and one day while his father was pushing him to do jump shots he said "Dad, there has to be more to life than basketball. ". Years later Matt left the basketball.

M.shadows watching a basketball game

Shadows is a big fan of the Lakers NBA basketball team and he holds season tickets to their games.

Another sport that M.shadows loves to play is Golf . In october 2014 issue of Golf Digest magazine it was mentioned that Matt started playing Golf to prove to Larry Jacobson (the manager) that it is just an easy game .

"When their manager talked rocker members of California-based Avenged Sevenfold into hitting balls at a golf-resort concert venue in 2007, lead singer M. Shadows jumped at the chance, thinking it would be easy. What has kept him coming back to the game is how hard it turned out to be."

Matt has a handicap of a around 12, which is a numerical measure of a golfer's potential playing ability based on the tees played for a given course.

M.Shadows and Matt Heafy (Lead vocalist of Trivium) playing Golf

M.shadows in the Duffing for Dollars Charity Golf Tournament

Matt has also mentioned being a fan of the American football team Green Bay Packers, but the band in general have mentioned the LA Raiders as their favorite team.
Matt has also been a member of the MMA academy and he loves lifting weights.

Now that's all we know about M.shadows's sport life so let us move on to see Synyster's favorites sports.

I believe that most of you have seen this pictures before :

Yes ! Ladies and Gentlemen's that is Synyster Gates playing some aggressive sport and it's called Jiu Jitsu.
While we were searching on the internet we found this article of a fighter named Jay Jack talking about his training session with Brian and he said :

"...Synyster Gates asked us to come by and train before the show tonight...He was very cool to the group of us that showed up to train. Offering everyone passes to the show. He was solid practitioner. Very into BJJ, and open to new techniques. I was really impressed with his dedication to the style. I know most people would just give up on training while on the road, but this guy always makes time. Admirable. More people should have that kind of dedication."
Source : Here

Synyster with Jay Jack and other fighters

Brian also surfs regularly and loves to do target practice with his extensive collection of firearms.

Now let us move on to Zacky .

Zacky Vengeance is a huge baseball fan and he was the pitcher of his jr high school baseball team. His favorite baseball team is the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

In 2012 Zacky has tweeted this picture of his baseball bat tattoo saying :
"In honor of the baseball season check out my baseball “bat” tattoo. It’s a tramp stamp. Hard thuggish…"

And speaking about tattoos Zacky V has another tattoo behind his left ear and it was done because Brian made a bet with M.shadows that the Angels wouldn't make a comeback and win the world series that year. Well Brian was wrong and the Angels did come back and win. So since Brian lost he was supposed to get the "A" 's tattoo but he had no money at the time so Zack got the tattoo for him.

Another game that Zacky loves to play is Golf and he actually attended the 2014 Duffing For Dollars Charity Golf Tournament with M.shadows.

For Johnny Christ and The Rev we didn't found much of informations except that Johnny loves the NBA Lakers team and The Rev used to love boxing.
We also found this picture but we're not sure if the guys were really into baseball like Zacky :

And you might wanna watch this video where Zacky V was nailing it and The Rev was failing it :p

Now I know you will start wondering what about Arin Ilejay ? ...Don't worry guys we're saving the best for the last.
Now it turns out that the new guy that you're seeing behind the drum kit every night was a big football (soccer) player and he was playing with some of the biggest football clubs like Real Madrid and Arsenal and this is the prove :