Earlier this year, super successful Twitch streamer Richard Tyler "Ninja" Blevins attended an invite-only celebrity basketball game, meeting up with rappers like Tyga and Chris Brown. Only it wasn't the real Ninja - a guy with blue hair blagged his way in and pulled the wool over everyone's eyes.
Blevins' career in professional gaming has spanned over ten years now, from playing Halo 3 for teams like Cloud9, Renegades, and Team Liquid, to a stint playing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds for Luminosity Gaming, then one of the most popular battle royales on the planet, Fortnite.
Arguably, it was the streamer's collaboration with Drake, Travis Scott, and JuJu Smith-Schuster in Fortnite that made him a household name. Check out even more historic moments on Twitch in our compilation below.
Advert
Since 2018, Blevins' Twitch presence has seen a meteoric rise, earning over $10 million in one year and he was honoured with a skin in Fortnite for his contribution in transforming the game into a real cash cow for Epic Games. It was stunning, therefore, that Blevins turned his back on Twitch and entered an exclusive agreement to stream on Microsoft's Mixer. Sadly, this was short-lived owing to "a poor market share and inability to scale in comparison to competing services," and Blevins returned to Twitch, in spite of the "toxicity" he had experienced there.
All of these achievements, yet it appears to be exceedingly easy to pretend to be the 30-year-old content creator and waltz into one of the most exclusive events in the biz. The impersonator is none other than Nick Wold, the lead vocalist of Dreamers, who also sports bright blue hair. In a video published to TikTok, the band explains that Wold wasn't asked for identification or to pull down his face mask when entering the celebrity basketball game. Guests included Jack Harlow, Tyga, Amber Rose, Chris Brown, Bobby Shmurda and other high profile personalities.
Buzzing from how well the first impersonation attempt went, Wold did it again at the busiest bar in Los Angeles. Wearing the same flashy outfit and not removing his face mask, he hired a fake limo and driver to convince passersby that he was Ninja and secure a table at Saddle Ranch. It worked. No one seemed to mind that "Ninja" was exiting the limo with a woman who evidently wasn't Jessica Blevins, and people posed for photographs and danced with Wold very happily. Something, something, celebrity culture, something. Fortunately, Blevins found the whole thing amusing.
Advert
Recently, Blevins expressed his insecurities over being an extremely famous face, albeit adding that he's "blessed" and "grateful" for his success. "Money's great, but even then money can't buy happiness. Look, there are positives and negatives to everything in life," replied Blevins to a Twitch Q&A session. "You guys don't understand. If you have money, 90% of the time or more, you sacrifice a lot. Relationships, family, time, love, friendships."
Featured Image Credit: Microsoft/Adult Swim/Ninja via Twitch
