Devonric Johnson co-stars in the gladiatorial combat, state-of-the-art tournament-style,  humanoid robot reality series, Robot Combat League. The reality series airs on the Syfy Network every Tuesday 10 PM EST/PST.

We sit down to discuss why he wanted to do another reality show and his challenging upbringing.

10 QUESTIONS

1) Can you tell us a about where you grew up?

I grew up in a small East Texas country town named Terrell. With 12,000 people in our population, everybody knew everybody. I had a very rough childhood. I lived with two of my aunts about 10 miles outside the city limits. We were very poor. When I was 5 years old, my uncle who was the breadwinner, died of tragic heart attack. This caused our lives to spin out of control and we lost everything. We lived in a small run down storage shed with no running water, electricity, proper plumbing and gas. My aunt became hoarder and the piece of land we lived on became somewhat of a landfill. People would leave their old junk and trash. I hated my home life. When I was about 11, I chose to live on the streets and got involved in a gang. Thank God for football and being adopted by by one of my teammates, Sterling Harris, family and it changed my life at age 13. I went on to graduate high school in the top 5% of my class and received a scholarship to play football at Southern Methodist University!

2) Tell us what Robot Combat League is about?

Robot Combat League is a state of the art tournament-style boxing competition with 9 ft tall 1000 lb humanoid robots. The robots each have their own personality through their own design. Robot Combat League comprises of 12 teams with a Robo Jock who controls the upper body & boxes while the Robo Tech controls the lower body & maneuvers the robot around the ring. The show is similar to the movie Real Steel except these are real machines.

3) Robot Combat League is very competitive reality series. Are you a competitive person?

I am definitely a competitive person. I have been athletic all my life. I’ve always gone the extra mile to keep myself a step ahead of the competition. Plus, I just hate losing!

4) The premier episode of Robot Combat League gained 1.3 million viewers. How does that feel?

It felt incredible! Being apart of a ground breaking series and I get to do some of my favorite things: boxing and playing with robots. I am a nerd at heart so I couldn’t really ask for more!

5) Coming from the VH1 reality show, ‘Kept‘ with supermodel, Jerry Hall years back, why was it important for you to do Robot Combat League; another reality show?

Robot Combat League is a once in the lifetime opportunity. How many times are you going to get to say that you part of history with boxing robots? The technology is so new that none of us knew what to expect. That made it so exciting.