Tyler Blevins, also known as Ninja, has quickly become one of the most popular Twitch streamers
on the site to date.
Even if you’re unfamiliar with Twitch, but a fan of games like Halo or Fortnite, it’s
likely that you’ve heard about Ninja, or stumbled on clips of his gameplay on YouTube.
Either that, or you heard about how he assembled a group of unlikely celebrities to join him
in a game of Fortnite, including Drake.
So today, we’re giving you the lowdown on this awesome gamer with our list of the top
10 ninja surprising facts.
10 Most Followed Twitch Streamer As of this recording, Ninja currently sits
in the number one spot for most followers on Twitch, with 3.3 million followers, and
89.7 million channel views.
Despite this, his channel currently sits in 76th for most channel views, but we have a
feeling that he’ll be moving on up pretty soon.
9 Charity Ninja doesn’t just stream for himself – he
once raised 100k for Suicide Awareness while streaming Fortnite Battle Royale.
He managed to raise the 100k in 8 hours.
After the stream, Ninja told his followers, quote, “I love you guys.
We’re gonna celebrate because this is one of the most amazing things I have done in
my entire life.”
You can watch the entire stream on his YouTube channel.
He’s also participated in other charity events in the past, including the 2013 Gamers
for Giving event.
8 He’s Married In 2017, Tyler got married to his longtime
girlfriend Jess, who he met at a Focus Fire tournament in Lacrosse, Wisconsin.
Jess is also a Twitch streamer – Jghosty – and streams games like Stardew Valley
and Dead by Daylight, and also does IRL streams that feature her cooking, sometimes with Ninja.
7 Professional Halo Player Before gaining his mass success on Twitch,
Ninja was a professional Halo player.
He’s participated in over 30 tournaments, and played for multiple different teams, including
Four of a King, Turning Point, Warrior, Cloud9, Team Liquid and Renegades.
On august 13th, 2017, he announced that he would not be competing in the fall season
of the Halo Championship Series Pro League, saying that he wanted to explore his career
in streaming, and dedicated himself to playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and his recent
marriage.
6 His Brothers Ninja is incredibly close to his family, especially
his brothers, who his wife Jess has described as his best friends.
He has two older brothers name John and Chris – John is a youth minister, and Chris is
a teacher.
Both are incredibly supportive of his career.
5 How He Started In a feature video on Ninja by Machinima,
Tyler stated that his interest in video games was because of his father.
He said that his father would play video games at night, till 2 am, and he and his siblings
would then play those games during the day.
As technology progressed, he became more invested in the games he was playing.
He told Machinima, “Halo came out, and it was pretty much over when Halo came out.
That game was addicting.
You just wanted to rank up, you wanted to keep playing.
And that little number next to your name, in the ranking system, was so invigorating
that you wanted another one, you wanted the next level.
The competition kept getting higher and higher and it was more of a drive to keep playing.”
4 His Age While it’s common knowledge these days that
Tyler is only 26 years old, did you know that he first started playing Halo when he was
really young?
His oldest brother John Blevins has said that Tyler started showing an interest in Halo
when he was around “9-10-11”.
John and their cousin were playing Halo when Tyler first caught sight of the game and begged
them for weeks to let him join in.
When they did, John said, I quote, “finally we let him and he just destroyed us.”
3 Family Feud Tyler and his family were once contestants
on the game show Family Feud when he was 22.
He and his family competed on the show, all wearing bow ties.
While the whole clip is pretty difficult to find, Ninja did post their family’s audition
video up on his youtube channel.
2 Detached Retina While he was still competing in tournaments,
Tyler started to get severe headaches in behind his eyes.
Concerned, he took a trip to the doctors and was sent to a specialist, all to discover
that he had a detached retina – which could have potentially ended his career and go blind.
Luckily, after surgery, he was able to gain his vision back, but it did briefly put a
damper on his career.
That didn’t stop him from continuing to push forward, and he continued to compete
once he had healed up.
1 Most Viewed Stream Ninja broke records this March for having
the most viewed stream by a single player.
Ninja had assembled a group of incredibly popular superstars to join him in a game of
Fortnite, which included rapper Travis Scott, NFL rookie turned gamer JuJu Smith-Schuster
and Toronto’s own, Drake.
Initially, Ninja played a few matches with Drake himself before all four teamed up in
the game.
The stream hit 630,000 views, breaking the previous 388,000 view record.
Turns out Drake has been playing Fortnite for a few months now, watching Ninja play
on YouTube while taking breaks from recording his new album.
– just ninja and drake
There we have it!
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