Listen up!

Class is in session.

This week's lecture: Why YouTube Is Great.

Your professor was under the weather recently, and one night I found myself horizontal -- yet unwilling to read a book or watch whatever was on TV.

Podcast: 'Old School, New School' -- Episode 92

Luckily, I had purchased an iPod Touch, which has Web browsing capabilities if you're hooked to a wireless network. So I turned the thing on, and decided to surf for pro wrestling clips on YouTube. I didn't want to watch any matches or get bogged down in a serious interview, so I kept my search terms to two words: Gene Okerlund.

If I haven't said it before, it needs to be said now: Mean Gene was one of the greatest interviewers in wrestling history -- and YouTube proved it.

Clip after clip after clip came up. Mean Gene as a young man in Verne Gagne's old American Wrestling Association in the late-1970s. Mean Gene in the mid-80s working for Vince McMahon's Hulk Hogan-energized World Wrestling Federation. Mean Gene as a seasoned veteran in Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling in the 1990s.

His voice -- in every era, for every employer -- was crystal clear in delivery, a voice that made you excited to see the match he was pitching during his backstage or in-ring interview sessions. Today, no one -- and I mean no one -- is as good as Okerlund in that one-on-one setting. And when a wrestler was talking, you STILL kept your eyes focused on Okerlund because he gave you those goofy looks all the time. Paired with that delightfully cheesy mustache, his act was perfect.

The great thing about YouTube is that you can get snippets of this greatness without having to slog through a DVD collection or wind through old videotapes -- it's just all right there, one clip at a time.

The great thing about looking at Mean Gene clips is that you also get a quick history of wrestling itself. I had forgotten the AWA feud between Jesse Ventura and "Rock & Roll" Buck Zumhoff. Mean Gene chatted with both: The ultra-cool heel Jesse sporting the feather boas, the popular babyface Zumhoff hoisting the big boombox on his shoulders. An iPod would have killed that act.

Another great Okerlund clip had him -- in his early WWF days -- interviewing Roddy Piper and Cowboy Bob Orton, who were preparing for a big card in Oakland. Okerlund just couldn't keep up with Piper, who put on bravura 3-minute performance. Piper, in his day, was beyond great. No one in the business could put together a crazed promo like the Rowdy one. That is, except for Ric Flair.

My favorite Okerlund clip was another WWF entry. He was in a locker room during an old NBC "Saturday Night Main Event" show with Flair, Mr. Perfect and Razor Ramon. Okerlund flawlessly interacted with each star, with Flair stealing the segment with his usual intensity. It was also a room of four Minnesota kids who made it big. Okerlund, Flair, Hennig and Hall all had roots to the old AWA, your professor's stomping grounds.

Maybe that's why I felt better after watching all this stuff. It brought me back a little to a time when wrestling seemed closer to home. It wasn't so over-produced, and the guy on the microphone had a part to play that was charming -- not annoying.

As for YouTube, if you don't watch yourself, it can suck away a lot of your life. Like Alice In Wonderland, it's easy to fall through that Webbed looking glass and stare at strange fantasies for days. Thank goodness my iPod battery finally ran out, and I could get some sleep.

But for a few hours, the YouTube wrestling escape was a delightful sight for weary eyes. As the great, great, great, great Mr. Okerlund would bellow: "Don't you dare miss it!"

(Don't you dare miss EPISODE 92 of "Old School, New School," the Professor Wrestling audio podcast. Get it right here.)

(Professor Wrestling is a masked employee of Internet Broadcasting, hailing from Parts Unknown. Got a question, comment, complaint? E-mail him right here. )