Ultimate Tag made its triumphant debut on FOX last weekend, bringing sports fans a truly unique kind of athletic competition when they needed it most. Thankfully, the reality series still has quite a lot of episodes – and tricks up its sleeve – and now we have a look at what that will entail. FOX has provided ComicBook.com with an exclusive clip from the series’ second episode, which officially airs tonight, Wednesday, May 27th. The clip shows Professional Tagger La Flair (Jesse La Flair) chasing a contestant through one of the series’ courses, with some pretty surprising results.
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La Flair is a parkour and freerunning expert, who has earned the moniker “the World’s Most Recognizable Pro Freerunner”, a social media following that includes 1.5 million TikTok followers, and over 30 million views on YouTube. La Flair first jumped onto the scene as a fan favorite on America Ninja Warrior, before going on to serve as a stuntman on multiple Hollywood projects, most recently including Captain Marvel and Dark Phoenix.
“The thing that surprised me the most was how challenging it was to play tag in these extreme circumstances,” La Flair told ComicBook.com of working on Ultimate Tag. “Some of the courses are very Parkour or kind of obstacle base driven, but then other ones are like a steel cage floating 30 feet in the air, and contestants and taggers are not wearing harnesses. You’re just literally up there, and for someone like me, who is trained in working at height and has jumped off the edge of the building to other buildings for my own media, but also for Hollywood and doing stunts and stuff, I’m very comfortable up there. But it’s still a challenge to engage and chase, and the cameras, everything adds an element of exaggerated challenge to it all.”
And with Ultimate Tag airing at a time when essentially all professional sports are on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, La Flair hopes the series provides fans with true entertainment.
“I believe this is the exact kind of action fans are going to be looking for,” La Flair explained. “Outside of that, it’s hosted by the NFL superstar sibling trio, JJ, CJ, and Derek Watt. And the show itself, I mean, you have 18 Pro Taggers. You have these characters that you’re going to be seeing every week come back. I truly believe you’re going to build a sort of love or hate relationship with some of these people and these characters that you’re seeing.”
“Sometimes it feels silly to think like, ‘Oh, it’s tag, right? We’re playing tag on TV.’ But when you see the courses and you see how crazy some of the action gets, it’s wild,” La Flair continued. “I mean, people are hyperventilating. These long jumps, people were getting injured. This is a family-friendly show, and I think it has something for everyone. At the end of the day, this was such an incredible mix of a lot of very fun shows that I grew up watching.”
Ultimate Tag airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on FOX.
