#American Ninja Warrior

[mirinmuscles]

Eddy Stewart

[shining-just-4-u]

did anyone else just picture the american ninja warrior obstacle course when violet described the gauntlet no matter what new fucked up detail she added??

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Everyone in the world had to compete in an American Ninja Warrior course and anyone who fell off was sent immediately to Hell.

[l00k4tm4m45c415]

Barclay Stockett

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

While most of the beautiful people walking the red carpet are Hollywood A-listers, there are those who are a bit less recognizable. No matter though, stuntwoman Jessie Graff was determined to seize her moment when she attended the Emmy Awards in 2016.

The perennial American Ninja Warrior showed off her skills by doing flawless karate kicks and an amazing backflip all while dressed in a stunning red gown and very high heels. When interviewed about her red carpet antics afterward, Graff recalled the freeing feeling saying, “I felt like I was being let out of a cage.”

(Cinema Symphony)

[peniswizard69]

You know what I always wanted to see on that American Ninja Warrior show? A gibbon. A gibbon competing. Just this less than one meter tall ape looking at every last human to ever call themself a ninja and smoking them like a comically small joint. Just once

[celeb-fettish21]

Katana

[ransomreferee]

This is every American Ninja Warrior episode:

*Some white guy walks out*

Matt: Next up is Bobert Bobbinson, who goes by the name of “The Brussels-Sprout Ninja.”

*Cut to interview*

Bob: I was trained by the best of the best: Jimbo Johnson. I’ve been training all year after my failure last year and I’ve found eating Brussels sprouts really help.

*Sad music starts playing*

Bob: As a kid I didn’t like Brussels sprouts. And my mom was a druggie. I’m going to do this for her.

*Cuts back to the course*

Akbar: Bobert’s mother has recovered and is in the audience cheering for her son. Let’s see how he does.

*Falls on second obstacle*

[mirinmuscles]

Eddy Stewart - American Ninja Warrior

[victoriadallonfan]

Tristan is the type of person to watch American Ninja Warrior and think, “These chumps got nothing on me”, while also sobbing at every sad backstory each participant has.

[honey-stick]

I obsessively watched American Ninja Warrior growing up. It was my favorite sport, I never missed an episode, and I knew everything about it. One of the reasons I loved it so much as a little girl was that it was extremely empowering- there was no gender segregation (or any segregation!) in the sport. Men & women, disabled & able-bodied people, all competed on the same course and ended up on the same leader-boards. It was co-ed. It did take 5 years until a woman completed a course and made it it to the nationals, and Kacy Catanzaro was incredible for it.

Over time, I realized I'm trans and loved the sport more since it didn't care what gender I was, and, as the years went on, more and more women succeeded at the sport. There were still very few women making it far though, so they added an extra leader-board. If 5 women didn't make it into the top 30 competitors in the qualifiers, then the top 5 women would move on and get another shot. The extra opportunity helped to close the gap, and it seemed like at the rate things were going, they wouldn't need the bonus top 5 women leader-board, since we started to get 4-7 women qualifying in the top 30 regularly.

The sport was proving what we knew, that women are just as strong as, if not stronger than, so many men. They were top athletes, competing at the same athletic level as men and often doing better than a lot of men, knocking them out from competition. In the kids league of the show that they started, girls and boys race against each other all the time! This was a co-ed sport, a sport that started in the 00's with the ethos of 'anyone can try on the same field, athlete or average joe, disabled or able-bodied, any gender.'

I stopped watching for a few years and forgot about this sport that I loved until a couple of days ago. I've been catching up on the re-runs of everything I missed and got caught back up to this year's competition. They changed the rules. American Ninja Warrior is no longer a co-ed sport. Yes, everyone still competes on the same course and has the same time constraints, but women and men are split up in the leader-boards. It's now just the top 12 men and top 4 women that get to move on. When competitors race each other in the second round, those races are gender segregated.

And it's obvious why this change happened. All the trans panic means now it's totally normal to say that women and men shouldn't compete on the same playing field because obviously men are going to outperform women. So they had to separate the races by gender and have a consistent amount of men and women for that separation to happen. But to then limit the amount of women to 3 times less than the amount of men that get through? That's just outrageous.

This was a sport so deeply empowering to me both as a little girl before I came out, and as a trans person after I did, because it's something I always could have competed in and have a place in. Because they're so scared of trans people and gender variance they take what was once a super powerful and progressive co-ed sport, something that was a model for how more sports could be, and changed it into something else. I'm just really sad about it.

[blackpoolcombatwriter]

My favourite ninja is the last one to run tonight and now I'm worried they're setting up for a dramatic fall.

[callmebrycelee]

HAPPY 53RD BIRTHDAY, MATT ISEMAN!!!

[l00k4tm4m45c415]

Barclay Stockett

[bufffamouspeeps]

Jessie Graff