Summoning Salt

Summoning Salt ("Salt" for short) is a pseudonymous American speedrunner and YouTuber known for his video documentaries about the history of speedrunning records. As of May 2026, his channel has over 2 million subscribers and around 275 million video views.

Speedrunning career Summoning Salt is one of the leading speedrunners of the NES video game Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (MTPO).

In addition, Salt has held the record for the fastest Mike Tyson boss fight since 2017. The fight is highly optimized and requires a significant amount of random number luck (referred to in speedrunning as "RNG"), plus excellent execution, to lower any further. He is the first person to finish the fight in fewer than two in-game minutes (i.e., the "1:59 barrier"). As of December 2025, he is the only player to have completed the game blindfolded in under 20 minutes. but revealed his face for the first time in a video in June 2025. The name "Summoning Salt" was coined from a mispronunciation of "seasoning salt", originally derived from a video by British YouTuber Stuart Ashen.

Video documentaries Salt began making speedrunning documentaries after watching a livestream by fellow speedrunner Sinister1 about the history of speedrunning records for one specific MTPO fight. In January 2017, Salt released "World Record Progression: Mike Tyson".

By March 2022, Salt had over 30 speedrun histories documented and 1.25 million subscribers; less than two years later, his documentary count had doubled. His videos have also crept up in length and complexity, frequently hitting the 45-minute mark. Some of his more recent videos are as long as feature films; his MTPO video was over 2 hours long.

According to Salt, the research is the longest step of producing a video: "I have to contact various community members, form a small Discord server, ask questions, watch tutorials, [and] play the game itself."

In September 2022, his video about the history of Mega Man 2 speedruns was repeatedly age-restricted, first for "excessive swearing," and following a successful appeal, breaking a "sex and nudity policy" despite having no sexual or nude content. News outlets reported that Salt's saga exemplified the confusing moderating system of YouTube.

Salt narrated Running with Speed, a documentary about the speedrunning community, which was released on streaming platforms on January 6, 2023.

Reception Salt's videos have been featured on Kotaku, Mashable, Vice, and Polygon. About his video regarding the history of level 4-2 in Super Mario Bros., Polygon Charlie Hall said: "Using archival footage and in-depth knowledge of the speedrunning community, Summoning Salt has created a legitimate documentary of the level. Not only does he explain the tricks and techniques needed to get through it as quickly as possible, he focuses on the evolution of those strategies over time and the people who discovered them. It's a master class in speedrunning a classic Nintendo game, and an excellent entrée into the genre as a whole."

Videography The following are Summoning Salt videos that also released on home media.