by R.C. Samo
Editor-in-Chief
July 1, 2013 – The smash hit American Ninja Warrior, premieres tonight on NBC. Hosts Matt Iseman, former NFL player Akbar Gbaja Biamila, and co-host Jenn Brown spoke with FanboyNation via a phone conference about the show’s permiere on both G4 and NBC. During the preliminaries both stations will be airing new episodes on back to back nights. Here are some of the topics discussed:
FanboyNation: We have American Ninja Warrior. We have the original series in Japan. You’ve had the international training sessions. Is there a hope after this season or the following season that there’s an International Ninja Warrior and you bring everybody over from Italy, the United States, Japan, China, Korea, et cetera?
Matt Iseman: Okay, we’re sworn to secrecy but I will say your idea may be shared by some people in the network, but we’re not allowed to comment on anything. Suffice it to say, it is growing and we look – we believe we have the strongest competitors here in America and at some point, we would love to prove that. Is that cryptic enough? I don’t know. I’m not trying to lose my job by giving anything away but at the same time, I think you’ve got a very good idea there, (RC).
FanboyNation: The size differential between our American athletes, the Norwegian athletes, the Japanese athletes, you know, the Norwegians, on average, are about 6’4”, 6’5”. We’re about 5’10”, the Japanese are about 5’7”, so that sort of thing.
Matt Iseman: Well, and you’re – you know, what we’ve really seen, too, is a spectrum. You’re right, the American competitors tend to be larger than what we typically saw out of the Japanese on Ninja Warrior.
And the thing that hasn’t changed is the course. We take our specs largely from the original Japanese course. So some of our competitors, the height can offer an advantage on certain obstacles. On other ones it can be problematic. So as to what the actual best size is, I don’t know that there’s any consensus. I know that the only three people who’ve ever completed the course were all 5’5”, under 150 pounds. So you think it’s small but they do have – we grow them big here in the US and as you mentioned, in Norway, even bigger.
Genetic makeup plays into that, too. Genetic makeup plays into it. Your actual training plays into that because, you know, if you’re a big guy and you’ve gotten really good endurance, I mean, that may be into your favor, so I think that would be, you know, the other element to it. But I will say Akbar and I, I’m 6’4”, he’s 6’6” and we attempted the course and the size did not seem to help us.
Akbar Gbaja Biamila: No, no. I think I had a little bit more weight than you too. Two-hundred sixty pounds, that’s not the ideal height and weight.
FanboyNation: You had mentioned that various athletes, Olympians, football players, basketball players, et cetera, have tried this course. Have you gone out and specifically recruited athletes from various sports and pitted them up against each other?
Like, in the early stages of the UFC, you have the karate guy versus the judo guy, the jujitsu guy versus the taekwondo guy, et cetera, et cetera. So did you specifically go and say, “All right, we’re going to put the basketball player against the (heptathlete). We’re going to put the football player against the rugby player,” et cetera, et cetera?
Matt Iseman: Well, we really don’t do necessarily a head to head matchup so much as these athletes will compete against the course in themselves. But we had – we haven’t had to recruit anybody. Every athlete who’s come out has done it of their own accord. I think they’ve seen the show and they’ve seen the challenge and being world class athletes, they obviously have a competitive streak a mile wide and they want to test themselves on the course. So we’ve seen them actually comparing notes against one another.
Akbar Gbaja Biamila: Yes, and you know, what’s interesting is that, you know, having – being fresh from the NFL, you know, the last season was 2008 and thinking about the time that, you know, in the locker room or, you know, gone into the locker room, (covering the) NFL as they’re talking about, “You know, I can do that. This is cheesy.”
You get guys out there who are already watching (unintelligible), they may want to test their athleticism. They want to (see it) in a different area. You’ll see a lot of guys make a crossover, female athletes going and crossing over to another sport just to see where they are.
And I know the one guy, you know, we talked about (Shawn Mann), you know, (Shawn Mann), you know, I had lunch with him (unintelligible) and he was so – he said, “I’ve watched this stuff for years. I know I can just dominate this course. I mean, if I can take down XYZ course, I know I can take down this course. (Unintelligible).” And so that’s where – that’s why there’s no recruiting needed. I think it just tests you because it calls you out.
FanboyNation: Would you say American Ninja Warrior is this generation’s version of the World’s Strongest Man, how that was 20, 30 years ago?
Matt Iseman: Oh yes. I think we’re coming to that. But, again, you know, you’d only see 6’6”, 300 pound – it was (Magnus Vern Magnus) and (unintelligible) and all the groups. But now I think, you know, you will see the guy who lives next door to you who’s a father of three, he could end up on this course and unbeknownst to you, this is a guy who’s been training relentlessly and turns in a phenomenal performance. So it’s a lot more accessible, I think, than World’s Strongest Man.
Akbar Gbaja Biamila: And we have several mothers aplenty, you know, mothers out there with kids and they’re going out there too, showing the moms that, look, you know, just because you’re a mother doesn’t mean that you can’t work out. It doesn’t mean you can’t stay active and really showcase their athleticism, dominantly too.
Leslie Schwartz: One thing I would love to just clarify for people who are dialed in, is the way the show is going to be airing.
It premieres on G4 on Sunday night, June 30th, and then it premieres with another original episode on NBC on Monday, July 1. And both G4 and NBC are airing original episodes. We both start out with the Venice qualifying rounds and then we move on to the Baltimore qualifying rounds, so we’re each showing different competitors coming through during the qualifying rounds.
So we cover Venice, Baltimore, Miami, Denver, and then we do on to air the Venice finals rounds and we move through the cities, and then of course, we move on to the Vegas finals where people who have completed the course will be able to take a shot at Mount Midoriyama.