Commentary
Occy's main commentating gigs are the Billabong World Tour events in J-Bay, South Africa in July, Teahupoo, Tahiti in August and Pipeline, Hawaii in December.
Billabong sometimes requests Occy to commentate on the Prime events. This year Occy went to the Azores Island in Portugal and commentated with Richard 'Dog' Marsh, his childhood friend from Kurnell, Cronulla. The duo proved a hit with viewers, having them in stitches thanks to their raw, comedic commentating. Not only is Occy very much on the ball with surfing, he's also undoubtedly known as quite the character!
'I really love commentating because when I was on tour I always used to watch heats all day before and after my heats, just because I love it so much. You also get to see how different everyone surfs. So now it's just the same, but I'm actually talking about it on air... putting my two cents in and the locations of the Billabong events are all time.'
Below is an article by Action sports website 5ones.com
OCCY - SURFING'S NEW VOICE
One of the pleasant surprises resulting from Mark Occhilupo’s retirement from competitive surfing this year has been his presence as a color commentator at Billabong sponsored WCT events. The webcast audiences for ‘CT events have grown in large numbers over the past few years and Occy’s silky smooth and unbelievably witty style is turning out to be pure gold in the commentary booth. Most of the commentators used in the various events have been……okay. But no one brings flavor, knowledge, and slick humor to the people the way the world champ does.
Scott Bass from Surfer put these Occy-ism’s together coming out of the Pipeline Masters-
“Santa Claus is more of a legend than Gerry and Rory, isn’t he?”(this was as a Santa-suit laden Garrett McNamara SUP’d around Pipe as legends Gerry Lopez and Rory Russell went about their Masters expression session.)
“That’s a bit of a tongue twister isn’t it, ‘Rory Russell replica boards, hmmm yeah, don’t try that with crackers in your mouth.’”
“Dave Rastovich, there he is off in the jungle, cutting down trees and making surfboards. Rasta doesn’t cut down lots of trees, mind you. He only cuts down the tree that’ll make a good surfboard.”
“What was that stingray thinking? I hope he’s alright! That stingray had a bad wipeout.” (An ASP cameraman captured a shot of a stingray leaping out of the water just in front of a bottom-turning Kelly Slater. The stingray looked like it was about to go for a ride in the wall of white water.)
The classic end to Occy’s brilliance came when word came that Joel Parkinson had in fact clinched the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing title. An overjoyed Occy called Joel up live on the webcast with a cellphone, congratulated his mate on the accomplishment, and then proceeded to place the cell phone against the microphone so Parko could say a few things to those watching online. It didn’t work, but it didn’t matter. Occy once again left us with some of that pure Occy gold.
Hopefully someone on the ASP is taking note. Finding a way to make Mark Occhilupo a full-time commentator for all of their events needs to be somewhere on their 2009 to-do list.
"Occy commentating is epic, if you don't have him your webcasts will never be as good as the Bong." Liz Hauser