Seahawks punter Jon Ryan to compete on American Ninja Warrior
By Josh Hill
Seattle Seahawks Jon Ryan is going to try and prove that punters are players too by competing in the American Ninja Warrior competition.
Who says punters aren’t athletes too?
That’s been an argument for years as players and punters have been placed in two separate categories in the NFL — so much so that it has taken forever for the first kicker to make it into the Hall of Fame. Ray Guy is a trail blazer, but he’s being followed by a generation of punters who are sick of getting kicked to the curb when it comes to being called athletes.
Seattle Seahawks punter Jon Ryan wants to squash all misnomers that punters are anything less than athletic players and he’s going to be a ninja about it.
Ryan told KING 5 News that he plans on competing in the American Ninja Warrior television show and that’s pretty much the most awesome thing ever.
"“I was just a fan of the show and that’s why I wanted to do it. Then when I kind of got into it and trained a little bit, the competitive juices got going. I was training for American Ninja Warrior and I put a couple pictures up on my Twitter account and the next day, I randomly got drug tested. Thought that was pretty interesting, kind of funny.”"
Jon Ryan isn’t the first kicker to have flexed his muscles both figuratively and literally outside of the gridiron. Competing on American Ninja Warrior is something that other NFL players have tried and mostly failed with, so if Ryan can win the competition, it could go a long way in the punter-player relations.
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