American Ninja Warrior, a sort of modern and souped-up version of American Gladiators, has been on TV for seven seasons without anyone ever making it to Stage 4 of Mt. Midoriyama—let alone completing it. Until tonight.
Competitors on American Ninja Warrior go through qualifying in cities across the United States, and those that perform the best are flown to Las Vegas to compete on “Mt. Midoriyama.” (You may remember Kacy Catanzaro becoming the first woman to qualify for the Las Vegas finals, where she failed at Stage 1.)
Before tonight, no competitor had ever completed the punishing Stage 3 of Mt. Midoriyama, which features a bunch of insanely difficult climbing obstacles that I don’t have the vocabulary to describe properly. In the three seasons since a replica of the Japanese version of Mt. Midoriyama was built in Las Vegas instead of flying competitors to Japan, 10 have made it to Stage 3, where they all failed.
