So, what are the odds of a Gladitor coming in next season with the name

Butterfly

??

Or maybe

Snookums

??

No

Chance

In

Hellga!

I could see "Butterfly" as a Muhammad Ali reference, but that's about it. As for "Snookums"...the only thing I could see is perhaps an ironic nickname, a la calling your pit bull "Tiny"...

It has to be better than a few of the old names..."Sunny" was easily the worst. "Tiny" would be better than that.

Men:

Evan 1:29*
Andy 2:04
Anthony 2:10
Molivan 2:13

*competed on the 1-21-08 show

Women:

Monica 2:00
Shanay 2:22
Siene 2:22
Venus 3:37

(neither competitor last night finished the Eliminator in less than 4 minutes......)

These are the winning Eliminator times. Top 4 times for each gender advance to the "Top 8" round (Semi-Finals)

Original American Gladiators host Mike Adamle has now been hired by the WWE.

It looks like his job will start on Sunday during the Royal Rumble PPV and continue on the Monday Night Raw show as a backstage reporter and then other jobs as necessary......

http://www.wwe.com/inside/news/adamle

With the new season starting soon, I'll have a post in a few minutes about what I've seen (mainly from the commercial I saw during the Kentucky Derby coverage, I've not watched too much NBC lately.....), but first I figure I'd give y'all an update on what's happened with Mike Adamle in WWE.......

A couple of weeks ago he was promoted to the announcer position of the ECW brand that's on SciFi on Tuesday nights when the regular announcer got promoted to oversee WWE.com....... However, his wrestling announcing has svcked mightily, to the point that the fans have been giving him major grief around the broadcast table. It has escalated to a point that he walked from the announcer's table before the main event this past Tuesday....... (probably will be a storyline, but you never know....)

and I went to Wikipedia and they got some details!

1. Our winners, Monica Carlson, and Evan Dollard have been rechristened as Jet and Rocket, respectively...... *groan* on the names......

2. There is another new female Gladiator, named Phoenix......

3. New events: Sky Track: However it's the UK version... contenders travel around a figure 8 track chased by a gladiator. Trailing the contender is a detonator that the gladiator can use to eliminate their contender before they finish the track..... Vertigo: (from UK) Contender and Gladiator race across a course of seven flexible poles. The game begins with both participants racing up a laddered pole. Upon reaching the summit, they must then sway their pole in the direction of the next, crossing onto it. The winner is the first to complete the course, grabbing the large hoop at the end which returns them to the ground. Rocketball: Two Gladiators and Two Contenders begin the match at the corners of the arena. When each competitor presses a button, they are launched via their harnesses into the air toward two goals at the center of the arena. The contenders try to score by throwing balls into the hoops, while the Gladiators play defense.

4. Changes to some of the events: Assault: Gone is the sand pit! It's replaced by a bazooka, and the turret doesn't swing horizontally anymore....... Powerball: They've shrunk the opening on the scoring pods and added caps to prevent the contenders from just shooting the balls into the pods......

1. Agreed on the last-season champion names..."Rocket" just doesn't sound powerful. "Missile" would have worked better, and I'm trying to think of a Gladiator name that conveys something having to do with a fighter jet but can't...

2. "Phoenix" isn't bad for a GLadiator name.

3. Rocketball sounds like a variation on Swingshot. Vertigo might be fun, even if the name is a little weird.

4. Those are much needed changes. Now I hope they revert to the old seven-event format and make it tournament-style like in days of yore.

GO RED WINGS!

LAST EDITED ON 05-05-08 AT 01:50 PM (EST)

I missed the other newest male gladiator's name: Zen

(There was a rumor that a TNA wrestler that's about 7 feet tall was gonna be a gladiator this season, and for some reason that nickname doesn't seem to suit him........)

ETA: I originally thought they were showing the return of Swingshot in the spot that I saw...... it must've been Rocketball..........

I didn't recognize Monica, so I completely missed her. I then went to NBC's home page, and I still don't recognize her.

Tribe is pushing up my daisies!

LAST EDITED ON 05-12-08 AT 08:26 PM (EST)

It looks like that Rocketball event is a reverse version of Swingshot: before the balls were on the pole in the middle and you had to return them to your stand...... Now, you have to take the ball from your area, and then launch yourself to the pole which has 2 baskets...... Yellow worth 1 and Red worth two....

LAST EDITED ON 05-12-08 AT 08:32 PM (EST)

that weren't in the wiki entry......

1. Zen who? Try Beast! The TNA wrestler Matt Morgan's Gladiator name is actually Beast.

2. Atlasphere is back!

3. With the newer arena, some of the events have been modified: the Wall is bigger and they're climbing seperate walls...... the Eliminator is much, much bigger and will still end with that Travelator..... although I saw that the rope is now knotted a lot more than last year..... an earlier post noted the changes in Assault and Powerball........

4. There may be more new events/Gladiators that have been hidden.... they're gonna reveal something new each week, I think...... (There's supposedly 8 new Gladiators total..... 4 each....)

Hang Tough is now a bigger grid than last season (which probably puts it around the same size as the original......)

LAST EDITED ON 05-12-08 AT 08:42 PM (EST)

Well, it turns out that the sand pit isn't gone in Assault, it just happens to be the location for that Bazooka and they still get a smokescreen to try to travel to station 4 and the (Compressed Air Nerf) Crossbow....

The premiere was fun! Monica looked good, if not as muscly as the other female gladiators. I didn't get to see the whole thing, but I *did* see her in 2 events: The Wall and Pyramid. I was actually a bit surprised. I thought that she and Evan would maybe get one event to specialise in and that would be that, but it seems that they do get to be full-fledged Gladiators.

Even if Evan/Rocket doesn't have a "special" event that he's only gonna be brought out for, he's the new Ace Gladiator for the Wall.......

Starting at 9:00 Monday morning MTV will have a marathon of Season 1 of NBC's version of American Gladiators..........

Well, last week they debuted Sky Track and it's Figure 8 configuration..... as well as a Gladiator that is called Zen...... from the little I saw of him, he's of Asian descent......

Tonight they debuted Tilt, which is basically the old Tug of War event on those tilting platforms, now over the pool. There is now a brace board so you can try to pull while sitting down on the board...... also another Gladiator has arrived, a female Gladiator named Steel. She seems to literally be the strong, silent type...... I don't think she spoke at all....... I missed her introduction, but she didn't say anything afterwards......

I think Zen is Japanese...at least based on his appearance (I had a few professors in college who were of Japanese descent who are spot-on for Zen's face) and the name (come on. How many other Japanese words make sense for Gladiator names? "Ninja" might work. Actually, I think "Ninja" would have been a better, albeit far too stereotyped, name.)

Steel is kind of odd...the whole "never speaks" thing is an obvious gimmick; maybe speaking only in one-word or two-word phrases would work just as well.

Also, I find Wolf less annoying this year.

And who the hell designed the Eliminator this season, the U.S. Marines? That thing is brutal to watch, let alone run.

GO RED WINGS!

That was always the event I most wanted to try as a kid watching the original version. They teased us with a preview of it in the season premiere, now they need to put up or shut up and show it already!

Now that Atlasphere is coming back, if they'd just work the original theme song back in somehow I'd be completely happy.

Place witty comment here.

LAST EDITED ON 06-09-08 AT 08:04 PM (EST)

In tonight's Incredible Hulk-themed episode, so far we have a green lighting scheme for the Gladiator Arena, the use of the Hulk Power Gloves instead of the usual blocker pads in Gauntlet, and the Powerball balls being green (one contender had solid green and the other had green soccer-style.....)

Now, we get Titan with complete green bodypaint to make him Hulk-like.......... complete with a slight voice change.....

Also, Lou Ferrigno is in the house! (He was the Hulk part of the Dr. David Banner/Hulk character in the 70's TV series......)

Apparently, they also would now rather prefer to have a 90 minute slot, because they are doing 6 events plus the Eliminator now. They showed highlights of two events for both the men and the women that they went completely scoreless on. (Full version of the events are supposed to be on NBC.com, however......)

I went to a taping. Since they tape several episodes simultaneously, It's pretty ridiculous, but I love watching it. Unfortuantely I work til 9 on Monday, so I can't watch the show at 8. Thank god for DVR!

I always wondered how different it would be in person...seems to me that anyone who isn't there for a contender is usually cheering on a favorite Gladiator and doesn't really care who wins. Is that pretty accurate?

Congrats Red Wings! 2008 Stanley Cup Champions!

Let's see if I can pick up from where we left off, shall we?

Events: Sideswipe: 3 Gladiators become Human Cannonballs with the intention of knocking the contender off of a series of platforms that the contender is racing across with a ball and put through a target at either end. (The balls are attached to the lip of the platforms where the targets are.)

Snapback: The Gladiator is holding on to a bungee cord attached to the contender. The contender's job is to try to hit a button at the end of the course to score 10 points and lauch the Gladiator into the pool. There are scoring zones for however far the contender gets at the end of the time limit.

Gladiators: Huuricane: Sounds like a superhero, looks like the Miz. Allegedly an Olympic Javelin thrower.......

Panther: Feline. Female. Fluid. She's African-American, with a frizzed out hairdo.

Next Week: It's the Semifinals! Atlasphere returns! (Classic mode, no less!) The Beast is unleashed!

Hurricane does look like Miz, who I'd LOVE to see on here. But I don't think it's him....do you?

LAST EDITED ON 07-15-08 AT 01:40 PM (EST)

It's not the Miz, Hurricane's voice is too deep.........

ETA: The dude's name is Breaux Greer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaux_Greer

Well, the semi-finals are upon us and that means that Atlasphere has returned!

Atlasphere: Both contenders and gladiators are inside steel hamster balls/cages and the contenders' mission is to roll the 'sphere over the center of the 4 scoring areas and trigger the scoring mechanism and release a steam burst. 2 points per score.

There has also been a change to the scoring of Gauntlet: to score you must now complete the course: 5 points for doing so within the 30 second time limit, 10 points for doing so within 20 seconds (this is one of the scoring versions used on the original series.....)

Now to the Beast: he's listed at 7'0, 310 lbs (the announcer's reaction to his appearance: "Holy *beep!* He's big!") He made his debut on Joust and obliterated the contenders in nothing flat.

Both matchups had the record holders win their semi-final match and improve their record times to boot.........

They have to be very careful with these new Gladiators. I didn't catch most of tonight's episode, but I did see the final scores for the men. When your semi-finalist is going off with seven points, something's starting to go wrong. The players must be able to beat the Gladiators every so often: there have to be events which neutralize size and strength advantages. Too much like Joust, Gauntlet, and Pyramid turns the show into a bullyfest.

It didn't help that the contender in question was actually the first alternate by eliminator winning time..... After the 4th event, the original contender had dislocated his finger to the point that the trainers said that he either bow out or risk permanent injury/disability in that hand.........

The remaining male events left were Skytrack, and the aforementioned Joust........ and the alternate went scoreless,,,,

It's definitely getting to the point where the Gladiators are virtually unbeatable, or at least some are. Winning at Pyramid is usually on accident, winning at Joust is either impossible (Beast, Justice, and Crush come to mind) or a fluke, and Skytrack and Tilt are the most inane events ever contrived. No wonder Atlasphere is a fan favorite.

I say they need to bring back Breakthrough and Conquer (Wolf would work well for either event, and imagine taking out Hellga in Conquer) and incorporate the Gladiators into the Eliminator so that way the whole game doesn't turn into "let's showcase people getting the snot beaten out of them for six events and then marginalize whoever did best by riding everything on the Eliminator." As such, the Gladiators could play a role in a toned-down Eliminator, much like on the old-school Eliminator, and for crying out loud, do away with the contraption at the end. The travelator, or whatever they call it? The drama-killer.

Congrats Red Wings! 2008 Stanley Cup Champions!

More hard-hitting action this week, with the biggest highlight being an incredible male Eliminator. The lead was about 12 seconds, and by the time they got to the rope swing that lead had evaporated, except for the trailing contender landing practically face-first on the rope swing's landing platform and falling into the pit of the commando lines. No matter, because he climbed back up, crossed the hand bike and the rolling pin and practically pinned his opponent at the start of the climb up the Pyramid to the zip lines. At the zip lines, he ended up going down backwards (just a tad dangerous......) and was also sporting a cut above his left eye which may be why on the teeter totter he was a little unsteady. The challenger who was in the lead at the start ended up winning the Eliminator, but it was probably a lot closer than it could've been

Next week, the third and final Semi-Final, in which those who win the Eliminator must beat the time of the slower of the first two Semi-Finals to advance to the Season Finale, which will air immediately afterwards.

2-hour Finale next week!

And as predicted, the short, zippy guy won, thus proving that you need to do well in exactly one event these days - the damn Eliminator. All the Gladiators are officially just props with cool nicknames (well, some are cool nicknames...still not feeling "Hurricane," and I'm thinking "Raptor" might have fit the season 1 champ better than "Rocket.") But that's neither here nor there.

It's time to make a few changes for next season:

1. No more Skytrack. If the contenders can't even beat Zen, and the event is always aired during the recap, maybe it's time to toss that event.

2. No more recaps. Either compress the show and get more events into less time or just cut out an event. Or do 90-minute episodes and cut into the airing of some crappy NBC repeat sitcom. If an event is so dull that it has to be crammed into the recap all the time, it isn't worth even having. That also goes for Tilt.

3. Bring back Assault. That event fvcking rocks. And do whatever old-school Gladiators did that made Joust winnable. Even I could beat most of these contenders.

4. Make the Eliminator more layered. Involve the Gladiators - maybe make them do a human cannonball at one point, start off by Jousting each other, with the loser having to climb up the pedastal and jump off it to start while the winner dives right in (the "head start" could be settled by a Gladiator enforcing the time limit...preferably Justice, Beast, or Hellga,) and while we're at it, make them try to get past a Gladiator Gauntlet-style and, say, pull a rope to release a drawbridge or something while we're involving the Gladiators. I could think up a doozy of an Eliminator - I've been a fan since I was about nine.

5. Either retire Jet and Rocket or use them more. We hardly see them.

I was watching a really old episode of Gladiators on ESPN Classic the other night, clear back from the dawn of the show, and I realized just how low the production values were. The host wore a warm-up suit and so did the referee, who reminded me of Happy Gilmore's caddy, and the Eliminator could be finished by a retired offensive lineman in under a minute. It's just so weird looking at the very beginning of the show (and realizing the reason they have a pool now - it's a hell of a lot easier to set things up in a pool than it is to move mats in and out) and even seeing that some of the Gladiators back in the day just weren't so tough. Beast would make most of the cry for mama.

Congrats Red Wings! 2008 Stanley Cup Champions!

Short, zippy guy? Are you referring to Tim? He might have been a little on the dorky side, but I thought he was a great all-around player. Gamble was a short, zippy guy, who should have been gone long ago. He barely edged out the doctor.

There was one guy, I can't remember his name, but he was the one who had lost the 100 pounds, and he was awesome. Physical master. I wouldn't be surprised to see him back.

Skytrack: Not a big fan, so I will agree with you.

Recaps: Again, agree.

Assault: Now that I think about it, I don't recall seeing it and can't figure out why. So again, I agree.

Eliminator: I would rather see them joust each other than to have someone like Tim or even Gamble go up against someone like "The Beast" or even Titan. When your gladiator is knocking them out in one or two seconds, something is really wrong.

Jet was around a lot more than Rocket this year. I wonder if it's because they had lives outside of Gladiator. I thought Jet looked awesome.

surfkitten summer sigshop 2008