American Ninja Warrior
American sports entertainment game show television series
American Ninja Warrior, sometimes abbreviated as ANW, is an American sports entertainment and reality game show competition program based on the Japanese television reality show Sasuke, which also serves as a successor of American Ninja Challenge. It features a set of obstacle courses in various cities, which competitors attempt to conquer. The obstacle courses are divided into Qualifiers courses, Semifinals courses, and a four-part Finals course which is based at the Las Vegas Strip (sometimes called Mount Midoriyama). The competitor who finishes all the courses in the fastest time wins a cash prize of $1,000,000. Starting with season 10, if one remaining competitor fails on any of Finals course parts but has completed it more than the others in the fastest time, they win a consolatory $100,000 prize. The show is hosted by Matt Iseman (the show's moderator) and Akbar Gbaja-Biamila. To date, only three competitors have won the main cash prize: Isaac Caldiero, Drew Drechsel, and Vance Walker (who is the only competitor to do it twice). Furthermore, Geoff Britten, Daniel Gil, and Caleb Bergstrom are the only three runners-up who have achieved Total Victory.
The series premiered on December 12, 2009, on cable channel G4. For the first three seasons, the show only screened a single qualifying and semifinals course while the top contestants travelled to Japan to compete at the Sasuke seasons' finals course.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4744595. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “American Ninja Warrior” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.