American Gladiators

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Is the contender ready? Yes! Gladiator — ready? Yeah! Three, two, one...

Popular 1989-96 athletic competition-slash-Game Show where ordinary Joes (and Janes) went up against big, mean musclemen (and musclewomen). Think The Running Man minus Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Dawson, and all the death and gore.

Contenders competed in seven or eight different events meant to test their athletic prowess. The events pitted the contenders in some way against the professional "Gladiators". The contender that scored the most points moved on in the four-round tournament (of which there were two a season), where the winner won a cash prize and came back to face the other half's tournament winner for a bigger cash prize.

Some of the more notable events include:

• Joust: Contenders fight Gladiators with military pugil sticks on a raised platform. This type of contest is still very popular at UK Fetes.
• Assault: A "storm the castle"-type game, where the contender tries to shoot a target above the Gladiator's head before the Gladiator can shoot him with a tennis ball cannon.
• Breakthrough & Conquer: Contenders challenge one Gladiator in a football-style dash, then another in wrestling.
• Powerball: Contenders attempt to put balls into cylinders while the Gladiators tried to stop them.
• The Wall: Contenders scale a 30-foot (40', then 50' in the revival) wall with Gladiators hot on their heels.
• Hang Tough: A game of chicken where contenders face Gladiators on a grid of gymnastic rings, and gain points for reaching the other side or running out the clock without being thrown from the rings.
• Atlasphere: Contenders run around in giant metal hamster balls (pretty much), trying to "step" on the various raised scoring pods. Gladiators in their own balls try to prevent this.
• Swingshot: Contenders attempt to grab balls from a center pole using a bungee cord.
• Gauntlet: Contenders dash through a 50-yard (150-foot) corridor past a series of four Gladiators armed with foam bricks and quarterstaves.
• Earthquake: A game introduced in the revival series, where the contender wrestles a gladiator atop a raised, free-swinging platform, the goal being to throw one's opponent off the side (think Flash's duel with Barin in the Flash Gordon movie, but without the spikes).
• Eliminator: The winner-take-all grand finale of each episode, where the contenders race each other through an obstacle course incorporating elements of the other events.

Originally the Gladiators were to be larger than life characters with fake backstories, but this was dropped from the original pilot and instead they were portrayed as normal ex-jocks with fancy names like Ice, Turbo, Nitro, Sabre, Hawk, Tower, etc. The popularity of the Gladiators helped keep the show going, even as Gladiators themselves left the show with a great deal of regularity over the course of the first couple of seasons. The most popular include Lori Fetrick (Ice) and Lee Reherman (Hawk), the later of which went onto the most successful career of the Gladiators after the show was cancelled. Also of note was contender Rico Constantino, who would later have a short stint in the WWE as...Rico.

Of course, there were the ubiquitous celebrity episodes and special episodes. Season Two of the revival also started with an unofficial Very Special Episode — an amputee competed and, while he made a noble try, it was pitiful in the most literal definition to see him run the Eliminator with triumphant music in the background while it was obvious that he was suffering and his prosthetic simply wasn't designed for this competition.

NBC revived the series in 2008 with a considerably bigger budget (and none other than Hulk Hogan as emcee), but essentially the same format and most of the same games.

There was a UK version called simply Gladiators (which also got a short-lived revival) as well as Russian and South African versions and the occasional international crossover.

The following Game Show tropes appear in American Gladiators:

• Bonus Round: Technically the Eliminator.
• Golden Snitch: In the most well-known version, the points from the first six games were converted to half-seconds of head-start time in the Eliminator. And yes, large deficits have been overcome.
• Personnel:
  • The Announcer: John Harlan did normal announcing duties during the first years of the original run. Van Earl Wright did play-by-play in the revival.
  • Game Show Host: Mike Adamle hosted for the entire run, with Joe Theismann for the first 13 weeks. Theismann was replaced by Todd Christensen for the remainder of that season followed by Larry Csonka from 1990-93, Lisa Malosky from 1993-95, and Danny Lee Clark for the final season (1995-96). Hulk Hogan and Laila Ali hosted the NBC revival.
  • Studio Audience

Other tropes include:

• 20% More Awesome: Wesley "Two Scoops" Berry gives an ever-increasing percentage of effort for every show he wins, topping out at six digits for the championship.
• Amazonian Beauty: Most of the female gladiators are pretty ripped and their clothing did very little to hide that.
• American Title
• Early Installment Weirdness: The first 13 episodes had a lot of differences.
  • Instead of a referee, there was a guy dressed like a Medieval executioner who would use a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to judge rule infractions.
  • The Powerball arena was just a semicircle.
  • The first two swings of Cannonball were not shown, and contestants were allowed to kick the Gladiators (the only event, it was pointed out, where the contender had the advantage, as a result).
  • Assault looked like a World War II set, with prop grenades instead of tennis balls; the Gladiators also wore sunglasses during this event.
  • Joust had a balance beam instead of a platform, and the pugil sticks looked like giant Q-tips.
  • Instead of running the same event for the men and women twice in a row, it was just randomly thrown together; Swingshot was for the women only and never televised.
  • The contestants looked like they dressed themselves, while Mike Adamle wore a sweat suit instead of a business suit.
  • Joe Theismann was co-host (it's said that the first 13 have never been released on DVD at the behest of Theismann).
• Foreign Remake: The British and European versions amped-up the format into a prime-time spectacle way beyond the cheaper-looking style the American version used. The American audience did get a chance to see the British version during the international tournaments, and the NBC revival seemed to be based more off the European versions by default.
• Handicapped Badass: Siren, who was actually deaf and need visual signals in replacement of the bell. This was not hidden -- during a break in the action, Siren actually asked the crowd, because she was deaf, to "applaud" for her by rapidly opening and closing their hands in full view.
  • One contestant named Willie Cooley was also deaf.
• Meaningful Name: The first Lace wore lace stockings.
• Powerball Is Slaughter: The male Gladiators tended to treat personal fouls as a job well done.
• Scary Black Man: What the show initially tried to portray Gemini as.
• Unnecessary Roughness: There were a few instances of the Gladiators and contestants mixing it up in the heat of competition. Once, Turbo actually punched a contestant during Swingshot.

The 2008 revival provides examples of:

• Adaptation Expansion: Like its British counterpart, this version plays out less like a small sporting event and more like a pro-wrestling event, complete with Kayfabe Gladiator personalities.
• Amazonian Beauty: Much like the previous version.
• Commercial Break Cliffhanger: As typical with NBC shows of the time.
• Unnecessary Roughness: Taken Up to Eleven here.