Dinosaur Tackles ‘American Ninja Warrior’ Course Despite Stubby Little Arms [Video]

Ninjas are great, or so says the Internet. And dinosaurs are hot, thanks to the summer’s Jurassic World. So, a ninja dinosaur is bound to be double the awesome, right? These are the important questions of our times, and Brentwood Photography is hard at work answering them.

In a video, which you can watch above, Brentwood Photography follows a floppy, inflatable Tyrannosaurus rex as he does his level best to beat a daunting American Ninja Warrior obstacle course.

The would-be ninja dinosaur tackles one obstacle after another, dominating the Quintuple Steps and Rolling Barrel, makes short work of the rope climb and ledge obstacle seen in the American Ninja Warrior finals, but stumbles when he reaches Cannon Ball Alley and can’t make it up the Warped Wall, according to Zap2it.

While the plucky T. rex doesn’t exactly dominate the American Ninja Warrior course, he does remarkably well for a species known for its stubby little arms.

E! Online reports that the man behind, or inside of, the ninja dinosaur costume is Reko Rivera, who appeared in Season 7 of American Ninja Warrior in the “Orlando Qualifying” episode.

In his audition reel for American Ninja Warrior, Rivera showed off his DJing, fire spitting and spinning, dancing and parkour skills in a single shot video that may actually be more impressive than his ninja dinosaur antics.

The ninja dinosaur video was shot by Brentwood Photography at the FTC Ninja Warrior Course in Brentwood, Florida. According to their Facebook page, they feature “over 20 Ninja Warrior specific obstacles” in their course, many of which are tackled by Rivera in his dinosaur costume.

This isn’t the first time Brentwood Photography has unleashed an oddball dinosaur video on the Internet, either. Last week, they released a video of a dinosaur stripper.

Whoever Brentwood Photography stuck in the floppy T. rex costume for that video wasn’t as adept at working the pole in an inflatable dinosaur costume as Rivera was at running the American Ninja Warrior obstacle course, but it’s still an impressive feat for a dinosaur with such stubby little arms.

Everyone but the dinosaur remains fully clothed in the video, but it features a potential NSFW warning anyway, just in case your boss frowns on dinosaur strippers.

Connoisseurs of weird Internet videos may have noticed a pattern here and connected it with another viral video that showed up last September. In that video, a merry group of T. rex entertained a crowd of college students by riding a bike and frolicking around, heads flapping in the wind.

Upon closer inspection, the T. rex costumes in the “Dinosaur Riding a Bike” video look suspiciously similar to the ninja dinosaur costume worn by Rivera. But what is the connection?

The bike-riding dinosaur was the work of a fraternity at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, while the stripper and ninja dinosaur videos are the work of Brentwood Photography in Florida. There doesn’t appear to be any connection at all.

In fact, the dinosaur costume used in all three instances is commercially available, and you can buy one yourself, if you’re able to find it in stock. Run a search on “inflatable Jurrassic World t-rex costume,” and you’ll be on the right track.

The costume has been available from big name retailers like Amazon and a variety of smaller outfits, but it will probably become increasingly difficult to come by as Halloween draws closer.

If you want to become the next ninja dinosaur, or have an even better idea for weird situations to put a T. rex in, you’ll have to act fast.

Since Reko Rivera already has access to the costume, maybe next time the folks at American Ninja Warrior will allow him to run a qualifying round as a T. rex.

Do you think America is ready for a ninja dinosaur?

[Images by Brentwood Photography/YouTube]