This "little" wave at Mavericks is maybe only half the height the contest will see on Saturday.  And yet look at it.  

You can feel the girth, it is thicker than it is tall.  It focuses and wedges its energy all at once in concentrated spots, rather than providing a reasonable spread out canvas like Malibu or Rincon.  The top of the wave dumps like the shore pound surfers avoid at their home breaks.  The water in the trough of the wave sucks up into the wave so violently it is a wonder the boards make any forward progress and escape from the pitching lip.

Of course sometimes the best of surfers cannot escape from the lip of such waves., but Peter Mel is having no trouble here.

Now we imagine it 2-3 times as tall, 2-3 times as thick, and 2-3 times as wide and realize we're talking about at least 8x the water.  The Mavericks surfers will inevitably be taking some of these waves right on their heads