Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, one of the biggest names in gaming and streaming, shared some serious personal news with his millions of fans this week – he has been diagnosed with skin cancer.
The 32-year-old Twitch superstar, who has over 19 million followers on the platform, revealed in a post on Tuesday that a mole on the bottom of his foot was identified as melanoma during a routine dermatologist appointment.
“I’m still in a bit of shock,” Ninja wrote. “There was a mole on the bottom of my foot that they wanted to remove just to be careful. It came back as melanoma, but they are optimistic that we caught it in the early stages.”
Doctors have already removed the melanoma site along with a larger area around it in hopes of containing the cancer’s spread. A second dark spot near the original mole has also been biopsied out of an abundance of caution.
While understandably shaken by the diagnosis, the gaming icon remained positive and used the experience to raise awareness about the importance of regular skin checks.
“I’m grateful to have hope in finding this early, but please take this as a PSA to get skin checkups,” Ninja urged his fan base.
The streamer first rose to fame over a decade ago playing games like Halo before becoming inexorably linked to Fortnite. His mainstream success even saw him compete on The Masked Singer in 2019.
