American Gladiators: Revisited

I have no idea what made me think of this, but this afternoon at work, I thought about the "American Gladiators." The first quasi-reality show. Actually, it was part game show and part reality show. It was much better than what we have to endure now. Shows like Fear Factor and that ridiculous Inferno show on Satan's own MTV. Now back in 2005, these pseudo-celebrities were appearing on brand new shows on different networks. My wrath is reserved today for Kill Reality on E! and Battle of the Network Reality Stars on Bravo. The fact that I have been virtually forced to know some of these people is bad enough, but now they’re trying to repackage this shitfest of wanna-be actors as an exciting brand new series. In fact, Kill Reality has the “stars” basically admitting that they desperately want to be a Hollywood actor. Meanwhile, Battle of the Network Reality Stars just reminds me of a watered-down version of American Gladiators with worse acting. Yeah, I said it, worse acting then American Gladiators.

Does everyone remember that show? Sure, the Gladiators had ridiculous names like Zap, Ice and Nitro to name a few, and yes, the women were disgustingly muscle-bound and probably shaved their face regularly at some point in their lives, but I still enjoyed the show. I’m not quite sure why, but by the time the Eliminator arrived, I was cheering enthusiastically for one of the contestants. Secretly hoping one of them would end up with a life threatening injury. This is the kind of reality show we need again.

You can have your carefully planned and professionally supervised stunts. I want to see steroid infested thugs beating the hell out much smaller people trying to throw a ball in a garbage can. I want to see human beings running around in giant hamster balls. Nothing would make me happier than seeing someone running around trying to dodge tennis balls being fired out of a cannon at them only to take one to face. Most of all I miss that weird feeling I got when the female gladiators were dry humping the female competitors to get them to fall off the rings.

There is a online to bring the show back and I couldn't agree more. Bring back Larry Czonka and his mustache, the red, white and blue spandex, and the Eliminator. You could entire seasons be like 32 person brackets and give the winner a huge payout. This way the dork at your office set up a pool and have you fill out a bracket with a $5 buy in (in my office that would be me). Vegas could set spreads and the network can have a celebrity match. Can you imagine watching Carrot Top getting nailed in the face during the joust or viciously tackled by a guy twice his size? I can and it's glorious.