A Legend Bike Co. rider history page. Primary sources: BMX Freestylin' — Featuring the BMX Action Trick Team (Mike Buff, Bob Osborn, R.L. Osborn, and Len Weed, Wizard Publications, 1982) and The Complete Book of BMX (Bob Osborn, Harper & Row / Wizard Publications, 1984). Cross-checked against Legend Bike Co.'s own R.L. Osborn, Bob Haro, Bob Osborn, and Entradero BMX pages.

Mike Buff

Born December 8, 1964, San Pedro, California · BMX Action test rider · BMX Action Trick Team, 1981 onward

At a glance

Born
December 8, 1964. 5'9", 140 lbs at the time BMX Freestylin' went to print in 1982.

Hometown / school
San Pedro, California. Attended San Pedro High School, graduating class of 1983. Youngest of four boys.

Family
Older half-brother Steve Potts — as Bill Ryan recalls it — a formerly professional motocross racer in Southern California who by 1982 raced BMX cruisers and owned the Bicycle Source bike shop in Lomita, California, where Mike worked.

Known for
Replacing Bob Haro on the BMX Action Trick Team in early 1981, debuting at the Oakley Expo in Mission Viejo, California, then touring the country with R.L. Osborn through the sponsor-backed 1981 Oakley/BMX Action Trick Team Summer Tour.

Team
BMX Action Trick Team, alongside R.L. Osborn

For a couple of years, Mike Buff and R.L. Osborn were the two faces of BMX freestyle. Not Bob Haro, who'd already left to start his own brand. Not any of the racers who filled out the pro rankings. Two BMX Action kids who'd grown up testing bikes for the magazine, thrown together in a ramp-and-van act that toured the country and, by most tellings, helped turn freestyle from a halftime sideshow into a sport of its own. Buff's own book calls it plainly: this is the guy who came in for Haro at the Oakley Expo in Mission Viejo and never looked back.

Entradero, age 13, "a fast Expert"

Buff's path into the BMX Action orbit ran through the same dirt as half the South Bay scene. In the foreword to BMX Freestylin', Bob Osborn — R.L.'s father and the magazine's publisher — recalls meeting Buff "about three years ago" at the old Entradero track, where Buff was riding as "a fast 13 Expert." That puts the meeting around 1979, on the same basin dirt Legend Bike Co.'s own Entradero BMX page calls ground zero for the BMX Action crew — the magazine's Torrance offices and its test track, the Pit, sat just up the road.

Test riding for BMX Action

Buff started test riding for BMX Action in early 1979 — a couple of years before he ever set foot on the Trick Team. That's the same pipeline that put R.L. Osborn on a bike full time: ride for the magazine, get noticed, get pulled into whatever Bob Osborn's crew was building next. By the time the Trick Team needed a new rider, Buff wasn't an outsider auditioning for the job. He was already in the building.

Early 1981 — in for Bob Haro

Bob Haro was dropped from — or by most other accounts, left — the BMX Action Trick Team in early 1981 to build Haro Designs into its own company. Mike Buff replaced him, and Buff's debut with the team came at the Oakley Expo in Mission Viejo, California. It's the hinge point of the whole Trick Team story: the act that started as a Haro/R.L. Osborn duo became an R.L. Osborn/Mike Buff duo, and that's the pairing that carried the team through its biggest touring years. Full detail on the formation, the ramp, and the tour is on the BMX Action Trick Team page.

The Bicycle Source — the family shop in Lomita

Buff's older half-brother — as Bill Ryan recalls it — Steve Potts is described in BMX Freestylin' as a formerly professional motorcycle motocross racer in Southern California who by 1982 raced BMX cruisers and owned the Bicycle Source bike shop in Lomita, California — where Mike worked. Bicycle Source wasn't just a family paycheck. It was also a listed sponsor of the 1981 Oakley/BMX Action Trick Team Summer Tour, alongside Oakley, Premier, Kuwahara, SE Racing, and Skyway. The team's home-video short, Trick Flick, was shot around May 1981 at a Bicycle Source open house.

The ACS Rotor — born out of Mike's own riding

Steve Potts created the ACS Rotor — the handlebar detangler that let a rider spin the bars without tangling the brake cable — for Mike's own bar-spinning riding at the shop, then licensed it to ACS (Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026).

On camera

Buff's Trick Team years put him in front of more cameras than most racers of the era ever saw. He bunnyhopped roughly 16 people for a That's Incredible TV taping — The Complete Book of BMX puts the same trick at 19 people in a separate telling. He appears extensively through the Freestyle chapter of The Complete Book of BMX: a full bike-setup spec (p.106), an aerial at the World's Fair in Nashville with the Sunsphere behind him, and jumping a Porsche 924 for Dutch television during an Oakley-backed shoot. In a separate photo from BMX Freestylin', he's shown bunnyhopping a Porsche 911 — plate "BEAR WIZ" — in a grassy field in front of a crowd of cheering teenagers, a different car and a different moment from the Dutch TV jump.

Off the bike

The color details in BMX Freestylin''s bio pages are worth keeping, because they're the closest thing to Buff in his own words that survives in print: an '81 Ford Courier truck, lowered, with a GT spoiler shell, custom interior, and Keystone rims, running the plate "BMX TRIX." Favorite food: Burrito Factory shredded beef tacos. Favorite show: The Dukes of Hazzard. Favorite celebrity: Victoria Principal of Dallas. And one family story that made the book — a brother once kicked him, and Buff's foot was hard enough to put the brother in a cast for three months.

Where the public record runs thin

Honest gaps, because the four books mined for this page are strongest on 1979–1984 and go quiet after that:

• The Astrodome crowd count. BMX Freestylin' (1982) puts Buff's first Trick Team performance, at the Houston Astrodome's "GNC Superbowl of BMX," in front of 70,000 people. The Complete Book of BMX (1984) describes the same Astrodome show for 50,000. Both are Wizard Publications books; neither corrects the other. We're citing both rather than picking one.
• Bicycle Source's location — resolved. The original family shop was in Lomita, California, owned by Steve Potts, confirmed both by BMX Freestylin' (1982) and by Bill Ryan, firsthand, 2026. The Anaheim location referenced on Legend Bike Co.'s own Bike Shops That Made BMX page was a separate, brief revival: Steve Blackey, who had worked for Potts at the original shop, reopened Bicycle Source in Anaheim in the early 2010s with Danny Hubbard as a partner, and it closed again after about two years.
• Life after the Trick Team. None of the four source books, nor the oldschoolmags.com or bmxsociety.com record checked for this page, document what Mike Buff did after the mid-1980s. If you have that record, Legend Bike Co. wants to hear from you.

Sources

BMX Freestylin' — Featuring the BMX Action Trick Team, © 1982 by Mike Buff, Bob Osborn, R.L. Osborn, and Len Weed. Wizard Publications, Torrance, California. Text and editorial coordination by Len Weed; riding input from R.L. Osborn and Mike Buff; photography by Bob Osborn. The Complete Book of BMX, by Bob Osborn. Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, © 1984 Wizard Publications, Inc. Acknowledgments credit Michael J. Buff among the book's contributors. Legend Bike Co.'s own R.L. Osborn, Bob Haro, Bob Osborn, Entradero BMX, and AERO Racing Products pages, checked for cross-consistency.

Read more on Legend Bike Co.

Trick Team & freestyle: BMX Action Trick Team · R.L. Osborn · Bob Haro · Bob Osborn

Places & gear: Entradero BMX · The Bike Shops That Made BMX · AERO Racing Products · Wizard Number Plates · Oakley

Overview: The History of BMX