For the past few years guys like Jeremy 'Twitch' Stenberg, Nate Adams, Ronnie Renner, and others have been toying around with four-strokes for everything from freeriding to Speed & Style and Supercross racing. I've been paying attention to the boys dabbling, but it never crossed my mind that a four-stroke would one day become a sought after FMX weapon. Riders like Blake 'Bilko' Williams and Cam Sinclair have been on the smaller four-strokes since the beginning of their careers, but I kind of just wrote it off as a weird Australian fad that would soon end.

Year by year, most manufacturers have put their version of the FMX friendly 250 two-stroke out of production, and as much as we (the riders) try to ignore it, the fact is that the future of the brappy, snappy bikes is looking grim. The biggest hit of all came when Honda decided to discontinue an iconic FMX bike of all FMX bikes ... the CR250, which ultimately left riders with three options: Switch to either a Yamaha YZ250 or KTM250 (still in production), or make the jump to a four-stroke.

But this past fall I hopped on a friend's Honda CRF450 to spin a couple laps at my local track. I had ridden it before, but I had just taken it easy -- this time I went out and hucked all the jumps on the track right away and found myself having a blast. The different power delivery made the four-stroke a lot of fun to ride, and right away, I thought about buying one for riding motocross.

As for other pros thinking of joining the four-stroke movement -- well, it's already happening right before our eyes. Beside the riders already riding them fulltime like Lance Coury and Bilko, there are a host of new riders joining the movement. Back in January of '10, I visited Todd Potter in Temecula, Calif., and he was riding a new CRF450. It was his first day riding the bike, but that didn't stop him from jumping everything on his course, and even flipping the bike right away. And of course, we've all seen Twitch ripping his new KX450F. ESPN.com/Action has posted video of Metal Mulisha riders Jeff 'Ox' Kargola and Wes Agee riding at Jimmy Fitzpatrick's house on 450's as well. Also, let's not forget, Brian Deegan has been training on his CRF450 for Speed & Style. And it doesn't stop there. ESPN.com/Action contributor Chris Tedesco recently posted photos of X Games Best Trick invited rider Rich Kearns, Nixey Danielson and Derek Garland all tricking and flipping four bangers. And of course, OC ripper Destin Cantrell made waves by being the first popular freestyle rider to switch to the big 450, which attracted a lot of attention -- partly because his bikes look so dang awesome. All of these spottings made my decision much easier -- I was now a four-stroker for life. So what's this mean? Well, plain and simple, the future's not looking too good for the two-stroke in FMX. I think what we've all been trying to hold on to, is now finally starting to slip away. And one thing is for sure ... X Games 16 will have a lot more four-strokes competing then years before, which will make for a very interesting change of atmosphere and sound. After reviewing the invite list, there will undoubtedly be around 10 riders on four-strokes ... and this is just in the FMX-based disciplines.

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