One of the biggest Internet sensations since the invention of the Information Superhighway itself has been YouTube. YouTube was created in February, 2005 by three former PayPal employees. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for an astounding $1.65 billion. Since then, hundreds of millions of videos have been uploaded to YouTube – including nine of mine.

If you log onto YouTube and you search either “Paul Wein” or “Ring Fever,” you will find videos of me from my Ring Fever show. There are two promo videos with ECW’s Joel Gertner and the Sandman, one of me “looking for trouble” by interviewing a bad guy – or as we say in the business – a “heel” manager, one of me interviewing the late Brian Pillman – and one of me “getting my ass kicked” by a seven-foot wrestler.

Eight of the videos have garnered moderate hits, with each hit counting as a person who is viewing the video for the very first time, because YouTube only counts an Internet Protocol (IP) address once – even if you view the same video a thousand times. The video has garnered anywhere from 333 hits for the Sandman promo to 5,575 for the Brian Pillman interview. But for some reason – one that I absolutely cannot explain – the video of my “getting my ass kicked…”

…has garnered 83,291 hits.

When it was first posted, over a year-and-a-half ago, it was fairing as well as my other videos – ranging in hits from a few hundred to a few thousand. But starting about four months ago – the hits for this 34 second video have risen like a launched rocket – garnering thousands of hits a day. There are days where I would look at the counter and be amazed at the amount of hits – only to look the next morning and see the hits increased by a thousand more. The strangest thing about this is that I have no idea why this particular video has spiked the way it has. Was it put on the front page of YouTube as a featured video? Did someone watch it, like it – and send the link to thousands of people? Was it passed around by word of mouth? I guess I will never know. But nonetheless – I am amazed that so many people have seen it.

What really freaks me out is that there are videos on YouTube that, not to knock myself – deserve much more hits then my video. For example, there is a video of the WWE’s Vince McMahon, WCW’s Eric Bischoff, and ECW’s Paul Heyman – standing together on video for the first time ever – that has garnered 20,768 hits – 62,523 less hits then mine. Truth be told, even though I am in my own video – I get more excited watching theirs. Another example is a clip from Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas, which is my favorite Christmas video of all time. The clip is the characters from the Christmas special singing “Barbeque” – which is my favorite song from the show. It is on YouTube and has 65,249 hits – 18,042 less hits then my “getting my ass kicked” video. Again, while I am flattered – I watch their video maybe five times a week – and yet, I still have more hits.

Amazing.

I was talking to a friend of mine and we were discussing the fact that from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, my late friend Bradd (may he rest in peace) and I would go around with a camera and interview everyone that we could stick a microphone in front of. From Former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, to Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley from KISS, to Chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment Vince McMahon – to actors Billy Baldwin and Shari Belafonte – we were everywhere interviewing everyone. But despite the fact that these videos never aired anywhere except from our living rooms to anyone who was willing to watch, we were still proud of them…

…but I now realize that if YouTube was around when we were doing that – both of us would without question would have either been instant Internet media stars – or would have definitely wound up with careers in television. So many people have gotten famous through placing their videos on YouTube – and I know for a fact that Bradd and I would have been no different.

On that subject, my long term goal is to take all of my videos and put them on YouTube – not to find a career in television – because I am very happy with the career I have – but to take this archive of my life and have people enjoy them as much as they enjoy my columns. While the end result will be a great payoff – the work in doing it will take months if not the entire year – because I have dozens upon dozens of tapes to convert.

If you have not seen the video I have mentioned, log onto YouTube and search for “Paul Wein” – as it is the first video to come up. I hope you will enjoy it, for while it is not my best – it is certainly, thanks to YouTube – my most famous.

By the way, it took me only 45 minutes to write this column…

…and now the number of hits totals 83,505.