The Lead-up to Forged in Fire

My parents and I in front of the airport security terminal. I was actually saying goodbye to my dad here as only my mom was travelling with me to help me move in.

How it all started:

The story starts off in the August of 2021. I was heading off to the University of Michigan for my Sophomore year when all of a sudden I got a DM on Instagram stating that Forged in Fire was looking for contestants for their 9th season, and that they think that I would be a good person to interview for it. I answered back YES.

Obviously, this intrigued me. I knew that if I somehow managed to make it onto the show and was able to eventually compete, I would be rewarded with a non-zero amount of clout just for being on the show. I also knew that if I somehow managed to get a win, I would be rewarded with $10,000 (minus taxes) and even more clout. I had to get on that show.

Throughout the next days, I conversed with people I had never met through texting, Skype, and even voicemails. Eventually the question popped up… “Jesse, we have never done this before, but would you be willing to participate in a gladiator tournament where if you win you keep competing, but if you lose you only get half an episode of screen-time?” I was even more intrigued. "You’re telling me I have the chance of getting more money than $10,000 and even more clout?” Despite the obvious possibility of catastrophic failure and the chance of getting next to zero clout and money, I was definitely considering it.

Me deep in thought during one of my later battles. I though this was a fitting picture for something titles “dialogues”.

My inner and outer dialogues:

The question was a simple one and only had two possible answers, but the answer was obviously hard to come by:

I could play it safe and go with the classic four-person “Chopped” style battle and possibly win $10,000 with a max of one episode of screen-time, or go big and compete in the 1v1 duels and possibly win a shit-ton of money and earn my place in the Forged in Fire Hall of Fame.

I asked my both my parents, my sister, my brother, and a few close friends for their advice. Everyone except one of my friends said to go with the safer option and just compete in the four-person battle; however, my vote was worth 95% of the final decision, and my gut told me to go with the 1v1 duels. I called the Producer and told him my final decision. Hopefully my go big or go home mentality wouldn’t go on to haunt me.

I travelled with some friends to Chicago over fall break, and I took a great picture with a massive metal hippo.

The lead up to the competition:

Eventually after a bunch of boring contracts and even more phone calls, I was set to be in the Gladiator tournament. Yep they finally had a name for the event. It was going to be a part of the History Channel-wide “Colosseum” Event.

During all of this, I was trying my hardest to not fall behind in my classes. I was taking a bunch of Engineering courses that ranged from project classes to thermodynamics. It was tough, very tough, but I wasn’t going to give my parents a reason to tell me not to compete in this competition XD.

Speaking of which, that was a large part of the conversations going into the event. The Producer had given me an estimate as to when they would be flying me out for the filming. It was early January, which is right at the beginning of my second semester of school. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that filming a show and doing well in school don’t go hand in hand. My parents saw it the second I mentioned going on the show, and made sure to engrain the idea that my doing well in University was a top priority, and that whatever I did on the show, I couldn’t let it get in the way of my studies too much. I did the classic teenager “yea yea, don’t worry, blah blah” and tried to avoid the conversation as much as possible whoever it popped up.

As the first semester was winding down, I ran through a vast amount of possibilities for the event. Worse case: I lose my first battle. If this happened, I would be devastated, I would regret it forever, and it would probably tarnish my image of knife making for at least the next few years. Mid-range cases: I win one to four battles. If this happened, I would be sad that I lost to someone and that my position in the tournament wasn’t infallible. I would still be walking out with a fair sum of cash, but not enough to overcome my frankly unrealistic expectations. Best case: I win five or more battles. If this happened, I would be very happy, period. My pockets would be full, I would have taxes to pay, I would have a little too much clout, and I would have carved my name into the history books. Obviously, I very much wanted this to happen. It would be difficult to actually make it happen, but sometimes if you dream hard enough, they come true :D

As the new year rolled around, I finally got my large chain of emails that included the exact date, plane tickets, hotel info, lyft codes, etc. I was mentally prepared, physically prepared, and entirely full of adrenaline.

It was time to see if I was the main character of this tournament or not.

This was me in front of my hotel. It was fairly classy and very homey, I loved living here.

Thrown right in:

After attending my first week of classes in Michigan, I hopped on an Uber to the airport, and boarded my flight to Connecticut. It was a pretty dope flight, I think I slept at least a little. When I landed, I used the code that they sent me in my email, and called my Lyft. It was a fairly long ride, at 50ish minutes, and my driver was pretty nice which was, well, pretty nice.

When I got to my hotel, I was instantly surprised at how expensive it looked. After I got my luggage out of the car, I asked my driver to take a picture of me outside the entrance (the very picture you see to the left), and headed on inside. The reception greeted me, I got my keys, and I navigated the hallways to my destination, a room on the 4th floor.

Once I got to the room, I threw my stuff onto the floor, inspected every cabinet and drawer, promptly laid down on the bed, and passed out like I was a 2 month old baby (it was 4pm, much earlier than my usual bed time)

When I came to, it was completely dark outside. I was terrified because there was a chance that I slept through the entire day, the night, and the entire next day… I reached over to my phone in a panic, and looked at the time and the date. It said 3am January 18th. I let out a sigh of relief, and scrolled down to a text message saying that someone was going to come pick me up at 10:30am. I set an alarm for 9:00am, and went back to bed, hoping to rest up completely for the day ahead of me.

That pretty much wraps up all of the stuff that happened up until my first battle.
Stay tuned, I will be releasing a blog post on my thoughts on each episode I was in.
Thank you so much for reading, I appreciate it greatly :D