It's been 15 years since Micah Peasley gave an unforgettable interview on Fox. So, where in the world is the surfer dude who gets pitted?
In 2002, there was no such thing as YouTube. People were not able to view and share clips the way we do it today. You could watch DVDs, and tune it to cable news shows. And that was it.
Around summer 2002, Micah Peasley was one of the many surfers who had just enjoyed a pre-storm session at The Wedge, the iconic point break located at Newport Beach.
When Peasley got out of the water, he was approached by a news reporter. She wanted to know more about the conditions out in the surf. Fox was live, and Micah didn't know he was about to become a star.
"I knew that I had to do some type of interview that was going to bring a lot of attention. It couldn't just be your average surfer doing an interview. I mean, that would have just been commonplace," Micah Peasley tells Fox, 15 years later.
"People were thinking, 'Was he being serious? Was he faking it?' And the truth of the matter was, I was seriously faking it."
YouTube kicked off in 2005 and, in a couple of years, Peasley became one of its first viral stars. People started making music video adaptations using his interview, and the surfer's popularity kept growing and spread across the world.
"It was YouTube what sent it all out. That's when it got really big. But when they were playing it consecutively year after year, people would say, 'hey your interview was on again in the news,' and I'm like 'shut up!'. And then I got popular again. It was coming in waves," reveals the world's most famous surfer dude.
Peasley is now 35. He married Nicky and has just become a father. He opened his own business - Get Pitted Surf - and teaches surfing at Huntington Beach's North Pier.
