In watching a re-run of the original Iron Chef ("Tomato Battle") I watched the challenger Franco Canzoniere battle Kobe. The most fascinating aspect of these shows is the manual dexterity of the chefs. Certainly, they are gifted with creativity and spectacular palettes, but they are equally skilled in all of the fine techniques used in food preparation. If you only have an hour to cook a five course meal, the ability to chop onions quickly, efficiently, and with style becomes rather important. Here's a small video snippet illustrating the point:
Link to video
I'm okay with a knife, but nowhere near this level of dexterity