Deegan: "I enjoy when people punch back."

So, you say you want to dominate? You did last year in quite a few rounds. Is it ever enough? Do you not feel that it's enough unless you're dominating every round?
I didn't win the supercross title. That one hurt pretty bad because that was my second year getting second place. I didn’t feel really good coming into supercross, I just got hurt before, so I didn't have any preseason. I don't know, I still came out and won the second race off of no preseason. So, this year I've really locked in and just trained hard and I wanna come out swinging where it's like, “Damn,” you know, like, “He really put in the work.” So that's my goal. And I mean it's never enough when you're in this sport. You always want more.

At this point last year, you weren't a supercross main event winner, but now coming into 2025 everyone expects you to dominate. Maybe even win every race. Is that too much, too soon to progress to that point already? Maybe expecting too much?
Yeah, I mean, I kind of put it on myself, working hard and winning races, people are gonna start giving their thoughts about it, but honestly, mentally, I work for it and I wanna go out there and try to do my best each race. If that's winning it's winning and if you don't go win, you figure out why you didn't win, you go work harder. But I kind of enjoy the pressure, too. It kind of makes you work a little harder.

I feel kind of like your whoops need work. So, have you been putting in a lot of time on them with Christian?
Yeah, 100 percent, Christian doesn't let me slack. If there's any days where I slack on that side, trust me, I'm out there after my moto doing 50 whoop passes! [Laughs] Because he's definitely gonna make sure I hit the whoops and pass people in the whoops this year. So that's been the big thing, once you get the whoops dialed in, the race wins are getting a lot easier.

What variety of things have you been working with Christian?
In general, you just study the way I ride and study the way other guys ride and take little things from everybody else and try to implement it in your style a little bit, like where you see that you make little mistakes. Turns, pushing through jumps, there's many things. Supercross at this level when you're winning, it's just fine tuning everything. And that's kind of been the big thing.

Do you use rivalries as motivation? We see what you say on the podium, that kind of thing. Do you use that kind of thing to drive you as well?
Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, I try to feed into the talk, you know, say something to me, it motivates me. When people say something to me, I honestly need that because it's like I'm already a motivated person but add that into it and it just turns me into a working machine. So, I enjoy when people kind of punch back.

On that note, you're very open of the trash talk. No one else is really doing what you're doing.  It kind of surprises me that no one's ever kind of given it back. Does that surprise you?
Yeah, I mean, it's hard. A lot of people I feel like can't really say nothing because I'm out there beating them most of the time. So, honestly, when people do kind of take little punch lines at me and I'm already beating them, it's kind of like, “Why are you doing that?” But I kind of enjoy it too. Like, I kind of did the same thing when I was not beating somebody. I take a little punch at them and see if I could break them down. So, a couple of guys get into Instagram comments. I know me and Levi [Kitchen] are going back and forth. I don't know if Bobby [Regan, Star Yamaha Team Owner] was trying to motivate me, but he says Levi called up my team and asked what coast we are racing so he could race against me. I'm like, “Dude, I'll text you what coast are racing!” It's like, let's get it on! I do not care. I beat you multiple times. So, I'm down for it. Anytime anyone that wants to race in 250 class, I don't really care, I’m going to work hard, and my goal is to go win.

Your social following, it's huge. We know a lot of fans follow you, but I'm sure a lot of celebrities, a lot of influencers also follow you. Have you had a really cool connections that maybe you didn't know you would have just because your popularity?
Yeah, definitely. You realize there's a lot of other people with the popularity or some celebrities and stuff that watch the sport that I think that's a big thing this year. You know, trying to get some of those people to the races, keep expanding the sport and kind of put the spotlight when we have celebrities and famous people at the races. Because you watch UFC and football and stuff, and they highlight when there's some popular people there. So, since I have the following, I feel like I can bring some people into sport to help grow it.