Contestants on American Ninja Warrior tend to vary from entirely serious athletes in workout duds to crowd pleasers who dress up like legendary characters to folks who go for gimmicks to become unforgettable on camera. More and more of those contestants have been women ever since Kacy Catanzaro started defeating courses back in 2014, but the dinosaur demographic had unfortunately gone unrepresented. A T-rex finally turned up on American Ninja Warrior in Atlanta to give the course a try, and he didn't let his tiny arms stop him from an epic run. Check it out!
Dinosaurs everywhere should be proud of the performance turned in by the T-rex. Plenty of contestants blessed with proportional arms never even make it past the first obstacle. This dino used his tiny limbs to cling with all the might of the greatest predator to ever walk the earth. In fact, he seemed to use the bulk of his tail and massive head to help compensate for his itty bitty appendages. He may not have had much reach, but he could sure build up his momentum with those five tons of weight behind him.
Frankly, his entire performance as an athlete representing a species thought to be extinct is remarkable, and it's hard to say which of the obstacles that he conquered was the most unlikely. The air he got on the Floating Steps was definitely impressive. Evidently, his kind adapted over the past sixty-five million years to develop precision jumping skills. He definitely deserves kudos for even just grabbing the rope to swing away from the Steps; those tiny arms of his were made more for tearing into the flesh of herbivores than for conquering rope tests on obstacle courses. I'm astonished that he made it through the next step without dipping his tail in the water. His eventual fall on the Spin Cycle did prove that he might have benefited from a little bit of that bird evolution to help him fly, but conquering the Warped Wall at the very end proved that his spirit wasn't rendered extinct by his failure.
The entire run of the T-rex on American Ninja Warrior was so epic that I personally couldn't pick a favorite part. I did enjoy the dino's little victory dance whenever he made it past a particularly tough spot. Are we really so different as species if we all want to do happy little victory dances? Good for him that he felt confident enough in his performance to do a little jig in front of a huge crowd and plenty of cameras.
Unfortunately, the T-rex's loss does mean that we won't get to see him advance to the next stage of American Ninja Warrior. Still, the American Ninja Warrior spinoff Team Ninja Warrior could mean a return of the rex. If Ninja Warrior could just recruit a velociraptor and a pterodactyl, the T-rex could form an epic trio of creatures previously thought to be gone for good that could take out the competition as a team.
Only time will tell if this T-rex's appearance on American Ninja Warrior will have been enough to encourage other dinosaurs to try to win the top prize on the Esquire series. For now, check out our schedule of summer TV premiere dates to see what else you catch watch on the small screen.
