DC ExtraTime: Asaf The Ninja Warrior

 FOLLOW-UP  From Summer '17:

 "The Many Sides of Asaf"

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BY DC CUEVA                        

■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

Courtesy: Elizabeth Morris/NBCUniversal

Seven years ago at this time in the summer of 2015, a young man traveled all the way from the Middle East out to Los Angeles to pursue the most ambitious of any American dream: making it big in the entertainment world. It's a journey that has taken Asaf Goren from the stage of perennial FOX summer staple So You Think You Can Dance to a slew of reality television shows both here in the U.S. and back home in his native Israel, all while achieving a resume both on television and in other forms of this industry of arts & entertainment that would sure make his family proud.

A year after making the Top 16 on SYTYCD, Asaf went onto Season 4 of MTV's Are You The One?... and later on, he flew back to the homeland to compete on a celebrity season of Big Brother Israel and came away with the top prize. Two years ago, Asaf competed on The Challenge: Total Madness and was in and out of Europe in one week... and if you have a good enough knowledge of this whole MTV Reality world -- even including shows you might not watch, then he also went on a date with Teen Mom's bad girl Farrah Abraham. And those are just reality shows: he also appeared in a Britney Spears music video, walked a runway at New York Fashion Week, and collaborated with 80's icon Boy George.

Just a few weeks ago came the latest addition to that amazing CV that Asaf has put together over these past seven years: trying his luck on a show that one fellow and reviled Challenger has mastered. But when a show like one that airs outside the Paramount Global ecosystem features that same kind of high-flying action but with a different kind of game and setting than what we're used to, then the transition from being an all-around reality star into a "Ninja" was a smooth one for this jack of all trades.