Is that it spawned what makes up like... Half of modern reality tv. The Competition Reality Show where you get a bunch of different guys who are really good at what they do and have them compete can very much be traced back to Iron Chef, even though they evolved over time. Every food network star, ever British bakeoff, every forged in fire, every weird Netflix glass blowing thing, they all started there...

AND IT'S STILL COOLER THEN ANY SINGLE ONE OF THEM

the thing so many Competition Reality Shows don't understand is that the thing that made Iron Chef cool was its panache. it took place in a STADIUM. it was run by a guy who dressed like a FANCY PRINCE. every episode was based around the INGREDIENT-BASED WHIMS of the fancy prince, and he'd stop the entire show to explain WHY THAT INGREDIENT RULES. the challenger would get their own backstory explanation as well, to give you an idea of why the fancy prince thought they'd be fun to watch destroy themselves against the titanic might of the fancy prince's hand-picked ROYAL CUISINE GUARD.

...actually i guess what i'm saying is the thing that's missing from competition reality shows is "monarchy". like so many things, it's bad in real life, but amusing on television

It's absolutely not an accident that the original Chairman Kaga was played by a theater actor best known for his work in productions like Jesus Christ Superstar, West Side Story, and Les Misérables. If your "reality" show doesn't exist in a heightened reality on par with the hallucinatory excess of a Broadway musical, then I may as well be watching the news.