Personally, I'm a big fan of MXC, or Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. It's the old Japanese game show, Takeshi's Castle, except it's dubbed over to fit under the category of high comedy. The actual game show is a convoluted competition pretty much featuring hilarious obstacle courses and regular people getting wiped out by big foam boulders. Think American Gladiators for losers who get made fun of in the re-dubbing, and fall into dirtier water. Here's a link to the top 25 greatest wipe outs in show history: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpGw45FyvaU My personal favorite is the first one with the soccer ball cannon. Coincidently, that's always been my favorite since I saw the episode years ago, and then when I searched for it, it happened to be the first clip of this priceless montage. Needless to say I was giddy to watch the rest of the 5 minutes. How might this relate to sports, you may wonder? Well, if you're a fan of MXC, American Gladiators, or simply wish either of these shows could become serious competition, then Ninja Warrior is the show for you. It's the Japanese show Sasuke, translated to be Ninja Warrior, and it's like a serious MXC, or a competition for most extreme bada** mofos. The challenge is divided into 4 stages, and it starts off with 100 competitors at stage 1, which is a complicated obstacle course featuring zipcords, log rolls, and spider jumps. Then comes stage 2, which features conveyor belts, chain swings, and lifting heavy doors. Stage 3 is the only untimed stage, and features mostly feats of upper body strength, like parallel wall crawls and curtain pulls. Finally, stage 4 consists of a 12 meter spider climb, followed by an 18 meter rope climb. In under 30 seconds. Iíd like to see you do that in 3 minutes. To put it in perspective, only 2 people have ever completed all 4 stages to become true ninja warriors. After the first guy did it in the early years of the competition, when the course was still relatively easy and had not been revamped. He couldn't make it past the 4th obstacle of the first stage once they changed it. The second guy to do it, Makoto Nagano, is my favorite athlete in any sport right now in the world, period. The ease with which he proceeds through the course is amazing. Where others struggle to crawl across bungee bridges, he walks across as if it was nothing. Here's a video of the time he beat Ninja Warrior: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VG5_diRx4U You really can't appreciate how good he is until you've seen others struggle to do what he makes look like child's play. He's made the final stage a record 4 times, and has only failed to make it to the 3rd stage in 2 of his last 10 tries. Even the Hamm twins, the US's gold medal winning gymnasts, couldn't make it past stage 2. And keep in mind Nagano is a fisherman who stands at only 5'3". After he beat it, they revamped the course yet again, as they have countless times, but this time it was in order to Nagano-proof it. If you want to see a world class athlete dominate the competition, then forget about Tiger, Kobe, LeBron, A-Rod, or Crosby, and check out Nagano, the only true Ninja Warrior. Note: Because I'm inept, I couldn't get hyperlinks to work, but that will be fixed for my next post. Just copy and paste the links and enjoy the laughs. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or just wanna let it out, hit me up at skip2mylos11@gmail.com. Tune in next week when I can link properly.