My Review of "American Ninja Warrior: Season 16

American Ninja Warrior: Season 16 has finished up. I am somewhat late for the show. It's too bad because the finals were really exciting this year. There's not a ton of new things for this year but what worked last year worked again this year.

This year we have very similar qualifiers and this one was pretty nice if you've been watching every year. We're starting to get some of the consistent players again. There are a few notable rookies that are squeaking into the picture now. However, the previous generation of teenagers are still killing it.

We can tell that this year is sort of an end of the previous generation. Even though there is a legacy generation still kicking it in the competition. We have some players announcing their retirement from the sport this year. Najee Richardson seems to be announcing his retirement every year so I don't really count that one. There are a few that will be retiring.

You can kind of see it in their eyes and their fire is flaming out. I think they can see the writing on the wall. The fact that the younger generation is straight up demolishing these courses while they're struggling to finish is a big indicator of things to come. Still there are a few that still hang on because you can tell they just love the sport no matter what.

This is kind of a reflection of real life. You have your die hard individuals that will die by the sport but then you have some that will only do it if they think they can win. It's the young generation coming in with so much fire that seems to be intimidating the older generation. I get it because we all see it in ourselves.

In this season, we did have some nice underdogs making it pretty far. I really felt for the weatherman Joe Marovsky missing that last touch to make it to the last stage. We've been watching him forever and have wanted this for him as well. This was the closest he's ever gotten and I guess it's quite disheartening for him to lose that close to the end. Still he's gotten up in age and it's hard to keep up with the kids.

The huge highlight of the season is Vance Walker. This guy is a legend now. In sixteen seasons there have only been 4 winners and he's done it back to back. Did I also mention he's still a teenager? This is absolutely nuts because you can tell how crazy this feat is. There's no way one person can win this thing let alone win it back to back. Watching his win this year was probably one of the most unbelievable sights I've seen in a long time.

You can see how everyone struggles to make it to just the qualifiers this guy is at an elite level above the elite athletes of this sport. That's not to say that there aren't people nipping at his heel. The 5 finalists were all so close and it was a real nail biter this year because of it. They did great camera work to make us think that certain people were going to win the competition. Each one of them did a fantastic job.

Caleb Bergstrom almost won the whole thing. He did say something odd in his interview though. He mentioned that he could have went faster. I was thinking if you could have went faster why wouldn't you give it your all? It's a million dollars and you have a kid on the way. Wouldn't you think you'd go all out? That boggled the mind but then again he's high on adrenaline and probably really messed up from the loss of 2 seconds.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this season. I thought it's nice to have a little bit more stability back in the competition again. We now know who our regular contestants are again and who are the ones to watch to win the whole thing. They didn't need to mess with a winning formula. I have to give this season an 8 out of 10.