Her mother hovers nearby. “I’m so worried,” she says.
American Gladiator: Blood, Sweat & Jeers
It looks like an emergency room after gang warfare here on a backlot in Burbank, California. People are moaning, holding their heads, hurting bad. “Oooh,” whimpers Claudia Valdiviez, 23, facedown on a trainer’s table, ice pack on her back.
Claudia, a pint-sized, world-champion powerlifter for her weight class (97 pounds), just collided with more muscles than a linebacker — on a woman twice as mean who goes by the stage name of Storm. “She’d never have body-slammed me if I’d been 20 pounds heavier,” groans Claudia.
Most likely, she’ll live. But for the producers of “American Gladiators,” the weekly, surprise hit show in its fourth season, Storm’s bone-crushing body slam — and Claudia’s agony — will make great TV, and spell perhaps even higher ratings.
“Call me an ambulance,” says the trainer, shaking his head. “I think it’s just a bruise,” he consoles Claudia’s mother. “We won’t know for about 30 minutes. See how she feels then.” Then he spies Buz, a.k.a. middle-aged Mighty Mouse.
On another table, Buz Rosenberg, a 160-pound wine distributor from Jacksonville, Florida, watches his dreams ooze away with his blood. His pinkie finger is broken so badly that the bone is sticking out. As a contender Buz had won his heat, even after the finger, and was a good bet to go all the way. Now his shot at the grand prize and bygone-jock glory is gone. Blood gushes. There’s unspeakable pain. But Buz doesn’t wince.
“Buz, you’re a stud!” says a nearby Gladiator, awed by the pint-sized stoic who earlier had run rings around the much larger muscleman in Powerball.
“I’m too old for this shit,” sighs Buz, once a University of Georgia star deep safety — and the oldest contender at 41, but packing enough chutzpah to play an over-the-hill Rocky any day.
Time for a casualty recount. “Call me two!” barks veteran trainer Tony Spino, upping his ambulance order. Suddenly, in limps another victim, an Atlanta policewoman who back home busts Bubbas with ease (and a .38). She just broke her leg while going mano a mano with one of the show’s muscled mamas.
“Cancel that,” says Spino. “Tell ‘em we’re gonna need three. And make sure the orthopod [MASH talk for orthopedic surgeon] knows they’re on the way!” He shakes his head. “It would take three or four seasons of college football to equal the number of injuries we get shooting just one show.”
Welcome backstage into the howling, growling locker room at “American Gladiators,” where human cannon fodder is salvaged or shipped home during the six weeks every summer when the season’s 26 shows are taped. The success of the show — which airs in 175 TV markets covering 95 percent of the United States and 30 countries overseas-still baffles many critics.
And if you think that only bozos watch it, consider this: It’s among President Clinton’s favorite shows.
In fact, market research shows that it draws viewers of all ages, sexes, and persuasions, rating as one of the top five syndicated TV shows in the country. Viewers get hooked on the spectacle — amateur athletes daring superhero look-alikes with minimal padding, muscles abulge, bodies revealed, all in living color.
Since the first season, when male viewers led the fan pack, the show has skewed evenly between men, women, and kids-teens — fans who say they find the contests wonderfully weird, and the violence so exhilarating.
It’s not hard to figure: Hunks drawing real blood always spells money. Especially little guys fighting uphill against much bigger guys. Add women fighting women to the mix — in scanty spandex — and it’s a no-brainer. Not to mention that the competition is real, just like the violence.
That’s what brings us to the arena at CBS/MTM Studios, where everyday men and women fight to make the grade against overgrown Gladiators twice their size, for a fourth season of televised mayhem.
“If you’re a contender, you better have a plan, because we can be deadly and dangerous,” says a Gladiator who asks not to be identified. One reason for the advice: Some fellow Gladiators secretly pumped up on steroids can be volatile, says the source.
“That’s news to us,” said one show official. “We regularly test them for steroids, and that’s just not the case. If we ever documented anyone using steroids, they’d be off the show.”
Few use them, says the Gladiator, but for the ones who do, “raging ‘roids in big guys and girls can make them very vicious. If you’re smaller and not on steroids, watch out — you could be the tin can that gets run over by the truck. There’s so little padding. It’s flesh and bone against flesh and bone. So a lot of people go out on stretchers.”
On TV it may look easy: Get hit, brush yourself off, jump right up. What viewers don’t see, however, is the agony backstage, where the hurt is real, and Buz and other washouts lie battered but unashamed. “Along with whoever wins in the end, I’ll be the only undefeated contender,” says Buz, who won his heat before the trainer ruled him too wounded to fight on.
Buz was among only 52 contenders who were selected out of 15,000 everyday athletes in tryouts across the country. They yearn to become dog food for Hollyweird hunks and hunkettes with names like Turbo, Nitro, Ice, Zap, Blaze, and Lace, whose job is to get in their face and in their way as they compete against one another for fleeting fame and $200,000 in prize money.
The roster of dead meat this year includes a deaf athlete, a mother with two kids, a female fire fighter, a 38-year-old doc with her own family practice, and an ex — Miami Dolphin turned fireman. To win, amateurs must score the most points in a series of offbeat games, filmed as they happen here each summer and then edited into shows. So who won? Sorry, that’s a secret until the third week in May, when the Grand Champion is revealed.
You may be a fan, or simply curious. But I had a personal reason for taking this assignment: I was humiliated when I tried out for the show last year, and wondered what it would be like to make it all the way. Boy, was I relieved that I didn’t have what it took: It’s a high price to pay — to get bashed and smashed before millions-and by no means a pretty sight.
So much blood.
So much sweat.
So many jeers.
I remember standing in line for tryouts in a Burbank parking lot. “Wanna see me do a standing backflip?” asks a Newport Beach fitness trainer named Larry Cohan, 30. He doesn’t wait for my answer.
Boinnng.
Larry’s head snaps back like the lid of a Zippo as he leaps high into the air, grabs his knees, and flips head over heels onto the asphalt, landing perfectly on his $200, ultra-light New Balance NBX 2000 running shoes. Boing. Another flip. Boinnng. Not again.
“Feel the shoe,” he says, momentarily upright. “It’s got traction.”
Boing-Boing Cohan awaits his turn as a contestant in a bizarre competition, vying to be plucked from 4,000 people who are lined up for the show’s West Coast regional tryouts. They wish to test their mettle for a shot at national TV and a chunk of the prize money. He backflips to psych out potential opponents.
Larry looks and sounds like a winner, and he’s typical of a muscled crowd pumped up on steroids, adrenaline, or both. Larry is an ex-Marine boxing champ, a former state champ on the trampoline, and a killer kick boxer who spars regularly with one of the world’s best.
To merely qualify as a contender, Larry must whip off 25 pull-ups in under 30 seconds, climb a 40-foot rope in under ten seconds, and sprint 40 yards in under 5.5 seconds … and that’s just to qualify for the chance to qualify.
It’s Larry’s turn now. He’s not one bit nervous. “Sports is my life,” he says. “There’s nothing I can’t do.”
Only Larry isn’t fast enough.
Larry flunks.
Soon it will be my turn. I stand five foot seven and weigh 160 pounds. Most contestants stand taller, heavier, and are years younger. Sporadic jogging has failed to trim off my love handles. My most satisfying achievement ever in organized sports: sustaining a cracked collarbone in college wrestling, which gave me an honorable excuse never to have to wrestle again.
But little do they know (heh, heh) that today I am something of a ringer: No matter how poorly I perform, whether I qualify or not, I’ll be waved through the preliminaries in the interest of journalism, to report what it feels like to eat or be eaten for lunch. My free ride in the trials, however, only guarantees that I’ll make the punishing finals, a head-bashing ordeal called Powerball.
Time-out for terms.
Powerball: a demented one-on-one game of football without pads, basketball without rules. The object: to smash or dodge your defender and dunk a volleyball into a big traffic cone. The defender tries to knock you to the ground in any way he can. Kicking, gouging, and biting are discouraged but won’t necessarily get you the boot.
One nervous contender who is roughly my size confesses, “I’d rather fight one of the women.” Together, we eye the muscled crowd more closely. He reports the obvious: “The women are bigger than us, too.”
“Athletic prowess is number one,” says producer Brian Gadinski, “but we’re looking for people with a winning desire, a sense of humor, a story to tell, who can come through the screen into your living room. It’s not ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’”
At those tryouts, when we first met, there was no mistaking Gadinski for a Gladiator — he was scrawny and pale. (After reading that I’d called him scrawny, he started working out, and this time he is awesome, transformed, a baby Schwarzenegger … sort of the way I used to look.) He stalks talent in dark sunglasses and purple shorts, hunting an attitude, a look.
Over by the Powerball mats, he seems to visibly shudder as he watches monsters clash. “Wouldn’t dare try this myself,” he confesses. After one tryout (they’re held in cities around the country — watch for notices) he, too, confessed humility. “I told my wife, ‘Julie, I’m joining a gym.’ I felt so humbled when I saw these people.”
After focus groups discovered that viewers like real sports and not too many clothes, the female Gladiators got skimpier attire and cameras zoomed tighter on pectorals and male Gladiators’ tushes. It was also documented that viewers wanted less cardboard in the characters, so sports were beefed up and the phony strutting toned down, allowing the real people behind Gladiator and contender to emerge.
Monday Night Football meets Thunderdome.
More games and rules:
Assault: You dodge air-powered bazookas firing killer tennis balls at 125 miles per hour.
The Wall: You try outclimbing a Gladiator up a 32-foot wall as he or she tries to yank you off. (You do have a safety rope.)
Hang Tough: A 60-second confrontation in midair, 15 feet off the floor. Swinging across the arena on rings, the contender tries to elude the Gladiators, who catch him and yank him off with a leg lock.
The Joust: Contender and Gladiator, each armed with seven-foot pugil sticks, whack at each other on small platforms seven feet off the ground.
Human Cannonball: You’re a demolition ball on a rope, swinging down at giants with padded shields who are perched on pedestals 15 feet off the ground.
And two new games:
Swingshot: A dangerous spectacle in which two contenders and three Gladiators who are supported by bungee cords that are attached to the rafters bounce up and down like rubber bands while attempting to retrieve Velcro balls from a high platform without colliding.
The Maze: Like it sounds. Each contender has 45 seconds to navigate a labyrinth half the size of a football field. Only there’s a twist: Not only is it filled with dead ends, but Gladiators hide behind corners, ready to ambush contenders and run out the clock.
As with all shows vying for the syndie jackpot, “American Gladiators” began with a concept: a David and Goliath for the nineties. Johnny Ferraro, 38, an Elvis impersonator from Erie, Pennsylvania, conceived it with a pal at summer picnics where ironworkers busted chops for fun: fights on rolling logs in the river, guys tied back-to-back for reverse tug-of-war. “We’d put a $50 bill in a tree, tie guys leg-to-leg, and watch them climb and fight for it,” he says. “It wasn’t too bloody.”
After using the games to crown a king of the county, Ferraro rolled it into a fundraiser for needy kids, including the first American Gladiator event, held at a local high school in 1981; 5,000 people turned out.
“I called it the Hard Hat Olympics,” he says. Shortly afterward, he hired a screenwriter to develop a gladiator movie idea that he peddled when off-duty as Elvis. “Spent seven years and $100,000 of my own money trying to sell it,” he says. “Everybody turned me down — studios, producers, directors, agents. They said, ‘It won’t work.’ I said, ‘Sure it will. It’s been around more than 2,000 years, since Rome, since before Jesus,’” when Spartacus was Schwarzenegger.
Only nobody even read his script.
Eventually, in 1987, Ron Ziskin, an independent producer who had developed “Prime Time Pets” for CBS, got it, signing Ferraro for a $2,500 option.
With the Samuel Goldwyn Company ponying up money for a pilot, Ziskin dressed up Gladiators in Roman-style togas, parading them about for the 1989 program buyers’ convention in Houston, where “people went nuts,” he says.
It made the nightly news. A shtick was born. In the first season, 108 stations signed on, many doubting that underdog “Gladiators” would best its slick rival in syndication, “Roller Games,” hyped as Roller Derby meets MTV
“Roller Games” died after 13 shows from too much attitude and a flawed premise — Roller Derby itself never drew a large audience. “Gladiators” stalked its niche. After a Gladiator named Malibu — who had no sports experience — wound up bloody that first season, flattened by a lummox on a rope, Wrestle-mania personas were toned down and athletics was tuned up.
“‘Gladiators’ fits somewhere between the American appetite for sports and game shows,” Ziskin explains, “where the average person can watch and say, ‘Hey, maybe I could do that.’ You’ve got characters to hang your hat on. You’re rooting for average people, but Gladiators aren’t perceived as villains, either. They’re just trying to stop the contenders from scoring.”
Think of “American Gladiators” as a human video game. The contestants are Pac-Man. The Gladiators are the ghosts, the malevolent obstacles.
So I was there again when the cameras rolled and bodies crunched and the season’s shows were taped before a ravenous studio audience. The contests are never fixed, say the producers. “The events take place, and we cover them,” says Ziskin.
The show is apparently addictive for a growing cult, and it looks to be profitable, too. “In this business, you risk millions to make millions, and if you’re lucky, mega-millions,” says Dick Askin, president of television for the Samuel Goldwyn Company, ecstatic at a regular viewership in excess of seven million — and an almost doubling of the ratings since the show’s debut.
And I found human proof of the surveys, as fanatics jammed the parking lot to gain entry to the live taping — Cub Scouts with autograph pads in hand, juveniles from a boys’ home, gay men, lesbians, confessed male-chauvinist retro-pigs, nostalgic ex-jocks cheering underdog contenders, teenagers — even grandmothers like Dianne Abasta, swooning over Gladiators like Turbo (six foot one, 245 pounds, with ripples galore). And she’s not alone: Her yearning is shared by grown daughter Maria, 36, and granddaughter Christy, 12, a seventh grader with an orange bow in her hair, green shorts, green socks, and a rainbow tank top. “I love Turbo,” she sighs. “He’s so cute.”
Christy had to educate her grandmother, who made a big mistake: She tried to change the channel when Turbo was on. Now she’s hooked, too. “A lot of girls want to grow up and marry guys with big muscles,” says Grandma.
“Let’s hope Christy picks a brain first,” sighs mother Maria.
“I want someone like Turbo,” says Christy, stomping the bleachers as the contenders race against time in a dangerous game called the Eliminator: go up a treadmill incline, run a rolling log, climb a rope ladder, swing down a rope, dodge a gauntlet of robot tackling dummies.
“There’s Turbo!” shouts Grandma. “That’s my Turbo!” shrieks Christy. “Mama mia,” sighs Grandma, “look at those muscles.”
“They seem like nice guys,” says Maria.
So what’s the appeal here? “This might sound bad,” says Grandma, “but it’s the body first, overall looks second, personality third.” She sighs. “My husband doesn’t have muscles anymore. Oh, sure, when we married he had a body. But now he’s 200 pounds…. Okay, so I cook. I’m Italian.”
So how does she hide her yearning when the show comes on? “I don’t go ‘Oooh’ and ‘Ahhh’ around him,” she says. “He’d be jealous. But here I can let my hair down, like at Chippendales [a male strip club for women only].”
“Mother’s wild and crazy,” giggles Maria, in blue leggings, sandals, and a provocative black blouse with lace.
If Turbo were to invite her to dinner, would she go? “Damn right!” says Grandma, eyes aflame. “These guys could tempt any woman any age.” Is there a lesson here for husbands? “Yeah,” she says. “Keep in shape, and keep your women happy!”
A public relations woman asks the girls if they’d like to meet Turbo in person. “Oh, mama!” says the grandmother.
“Oooeee!” says the mother. Christy stares them both down: “Turbo, he’s mine!”
Inside the control room, the air conditioner hums and dozens of tiny TV screens explode with action from the arena. Suddenly, a fuming Gladiator named Viper grabs a contender’s pugil stick. “Great!” says veteran director Bob Levy, barking camera orders. “A pissed-off Viper. Go tight!”
“It’s a high price to pay-to get bashed and smashed before millions-and by no means a pretty sight.”
Levy juggles it all — dozens of cameras, 44 audio feeds that pick up every grunt and groan, a technical crew of 30, helmet cams — ensuring that Gladiators get equal airtime. Then there are the fans to please. “We’ve got to shoot enough male bodies for the women, enough great sports moments for the beer-drinking crowd, and enough comic-book-hero scenes for the kids.”
This can present a problem, especially since surveys show that female fans want tight shots of the male Gladiators, front and back, below the belt.
So what’s the problem? “I can’t get the men to shoot men right,” he says. “My cameramen accuse me of being gay when I ask for a crotch shot or tight on the glutes. I need to hire some female camera operators and just let them shoot what turns them on.”
He’s also got to think about, well, the women fans who watch it for the women. “It must be a big charge for the lesbians when a Gladiator locks her legs around a woman hanging from the rings and tries to pull her off,” he says.
“If we added some music, we could make some real good soft-core videos,” quips a technical director who waxes poetic about a certain flexing move by Diamond, a.k.a. Erika Andersch, a voluptuous bodybuilder.
“If they want to look, look,” Diamond says. “It’s their problem, not mine.”
“Her pees are so strong,” sighs the tech director, “she could empty a tube of toothpaste between her breasts. That’s why we shoot her with a high camera looking down. We’re also shooting a lot more belly buttons this year. Did you notice the French-cut uniforms? The only thing I’ve enjoyed shooting more is ladies’ mud-wrestling.”
When the surveys last season showed that “Gladiators” was losing teens, a focus group was assembled. “They said they wanted more action, more hitting, and all the young women wanted exactly the same thing: more shots of men,” said one male show editor. Some female gripes about “disgustingly huge muscles” were discounted. “Most women think a penis is ugly, too, but they wouldn’t mind having one,” he added.
On another screen a contender, Shannon Williams, who is jousting in yellow spandex, bests Elektra, a sinewy veteran of Grease and A Chorus Line. Elektra is tall, five foot ten, with a fine balance achieved as a rock-climbing champ. The host, Mike Adamle, sticks a mike in her face: “She’s short but she’s tough,” says Elektra. “Hit me hard, had me dazed. I admit it.”
On another screen, Storm storms about, furious that her contender has survived. “Great! Storm’s angry on camera four!” barks Levy. Storm puts her face right in the lens and shouts, “Aaargh!” The booth cracks up.
Why men like it is easy to understand: Half the Gladiators are women who tend to be young, robust, and lacking restrictive garments. Gaga staring, however, can lead to friction in the peanut gallery. “Can you believe how he’s just staring at her!” says Nicole Jimenez, 16, of her boyfriend. Her is the Gladiator named Diamond, who is very curvy. “I think he wishes I had bigger tits.”
But Nicole’s not a fan of too many muscles. “It’s gross when their veins pop out,” she says. She eyes her skinny boyfriend. “He’s fine just the way he is.” She hits him, playful. “Quit staring! I bet she’s got silicone breasts.”
“Maybe so,” says pal Jaimie, 15. “They’d bounce more if they were real.” What upsets Jaimie is a “little brother who’s in love with all the girls on the show. He gets all perverted when they come on, won’t let me change the channel until it’s time for the guys.”
Down below Diamond struts about, waving. Nicole’s boyfriend shouts, “Turn around!” He wants a better look.
“Total silicone,” sniffs Nicole.
“She is sexy,” concedes a girlfriend. Nicole’s boyfriend snags an autograph. “Love D,” writes Diamond.
What sort of sport would they like to see the Gladiators try next? “I’d like to see them fight on a bridge with real alligators below in a pool of mud,” says Shawn, 16, “so if someone got knocked off, you know…”
Good clean fun.
“They thought about calling me ‘Venus,’ ” says Diamond, Miss New England Bodybuilding come West with her pale green eyes, a classic Nordic blonde. This morning she’s pumping up a 38-25-37 physique on her off-day at the World Gym in Venice Beach. “A lot of women come on to me,” she says. “It’s hard because in the back of their mind, they’re thinking, someday I’ll persuade her. When it happens, I just say, ‘I’m not like that. but I’d like to be your friend.’ I’m happy with my husband.”
It’s easy to see why: Brian Regan, 34, a muscled ex-Marine drill instructor and Navy SEAL, cheered her on as a lover, coach, and manager to be all that she can be. He’s got a tattoo of a three-leaf clover on his right arm, a Marine Corps bulldog on the other. Regan was an ironworker until a girder knocked him off a building. He fell 20 floors, and then in love with Erika at the Boston gym where he was working out to recover. She asked him to help her with a workout. and he became her mentor. “Now I’m living my former life as a body-builder through her,” he says.
Gold’s, another Venice Beach gym, is also Gladiator country. Many of the show’s regulars and wannabes — including last season’s Gladiator Shari Pendleton, a former University of Nebraska track star and Olympic qualifier — get ready, pump iron, and preen. I find Shari ripping leg curls in skintight gray sweats, a lady killer in a killer outfit: pink tank top, matching socks. “These are called ‘prison reps,’ ” she says. “The routine that makes guys in prison so strong.”
She pumps them out, rocking back and forth, flexing well-defined glutes that leave zero to fantasy in the fan photo she signs: powerful sinewy legs exploding down like tree trunks from a tiny waist and naked derriere, body glistening with oil … a gazelle of terror who weighs 145 and can squat-press 410.
“We’re sort of like the lions — we chew up people for sport,” she says. “I’m probably the strongest woman in here …. You want to know a question I hate to be asked?
“Sure, so I won’t ask it.
“’Do you think the skimpy costumes you wear exploit women?’ What I usually answer is, ‘It all depends on what your idea of a woman is.’ I’ve run track in skimpier outfits.”
She nods toward an awesome body-builder who ripples. “See that girl? I blew her away when she tried out to be a Gladiator.” They had faced off in Powerball. “I just imagined I was a brick wall and she ran into it. She thought I’d move. She bounced on her ass. You’ve got to be more than just look big.”
“I had my wisdom teeth out two days before those tryouts,” explains the foiled challenger, a 35-year-old mother of two who is preparing for another tryout. “I was on pain medication. My dentist said, ‘Don’t get hit in the mouth,’ so I held back.” She grins. “I’ll never hold back again.”
‘“It must be a big charge for the lesbians,” says a director, “when a Gladiator locks her legs around a woman hanging from the rings and tries to pull her off.”’
At five foot five and 155 pounds, the challenger boasts 15-inch biceps, 16- inch calves, and legs that can press 1,000 pounds. She insists that Shari “was scared of me. I could sense it. I used to play on a men’s soccer team. I scored against her, too.
“Bad memory,” scoffs Pendleton. “She didn’t score once.”
After missing the 1984 Olympics due to a pulled hamstring, Pendleton wound up on “Gladiators,” flipped a larger woman out of the ring, and discovered, “I get a rush from fighting. It’s just in me. Most women wouldn’t admit it. But I’ve been training to be a Gladiator all my life. It’s about not being afraid of anyone.
“Our job is to be serious attitude adjusters,” she says, nodding toward more muscular women across the weight room. “A lot of women here use steroids. They look big but have no strength. It’s artificial muscle — they just use it to intimidate.”
Among the most dangerous are the lesbian contenders, she says. “We attract a lot of dykes. About 80 percent of the women who try out are gay and want to get their hands on you … biker types. They’ve got cocky attitudes, plain Janes with no makeup who bring their wives to the set. A lot of ‘em fight dirty, so we’ve got to play dirty back.”
“If another woman ticks you off, you can take her out,” says Marisa Pare, a former Gladiator. “I’d never hit a guy — it’s not in my heredity. I’d shoot him.” She takes target practice with her .357 Smith & Wesson at the Beverly Hills Gun Club.
Focus groups of fans confirm that they want skimpier outfits, so the show pays homage to sex and ratings. As producer Brian Gadinski predicted last year, “You’ll see more skin for sure, but it’s not a sex show. We designed the uniform for the pummeling they go through. We need durable outfits that highlight their great physiques.”
Ah, yes, makes me flash back to the day I tried out. I remember thinking, “It’s a beautiful day to die, or at least rupture something.” I step up to the chin-up bar. A construction worker nearby advises, “Hyperventilate like crazy,” then “pinch a sensitive place hard — gets your adrenaline going.”
I bend down, breathe fast. pinch myself. I haven’t done more than five pull-ups in years.
“Go!” says the ref.
“One, two,” he counts, “three, four.” I’m red in the face. “Five, six, seven … eight … nine … ”
I qualify — as a woman. Men are required to do 25 in 30 seconds.
“A few women can only do one or two,” says a show staffer, trying mightily to be kind. Next the rope climb. “Gentlemen, you’ve got to slap the tape at the top in nine seconds,” says the starter. “Go!” I go half the distance before he calls time, and suffer rope burn sliding down.
This time I fail to qualify as a man or a woman.
En route to Powerball, across the parking lot. I bump into a burly Rico Costantino, 29, a human truck at 215 pounds who wears a bejeweled belt that certifies he’s a season champ on the show, a contender who won $10,000. “Stay low and juke him,” he advises. “If you’re bigger, go through him. If not, around him.”
“Pick your opponent,” says the referee. There’s only one problem: No one’s under six feet and 250 pounds, except Murray Loomis, 28. He doesn’t look that big. In fact. he’s a mere five foot eleven, 190 pounds … about the size of your average college tailback.
“I’m your ticket to the finals,” I say, shaking hands. Only Murray doesn’t smile. He does politely warn me that he’s an ex-Marine who played football at San Jose State, where he boxed, ran track, played rugby, and studied tae kwon do. He now works as a guard at the same California maximum-security prison that holds Charles Manson. He’s busted up fights, stabbings, and shootings. He runs five miles a day, pumps iron, and wants this bad.
“You’ve each got 20 seconds to score,” says the referee. “No tackling or holding. You can block each other. Just about anything else goes.”
I pick defense first, stick close to the goal. He charges, feints. I lower a shoulder, hit him low, bounce off. Loomis spins and scores, leaving me flat on my back, staring up at the sky. It’s a pretty shade of blue.
Stunned but still conscious, I’m up for more. He charges again. Time slows waaay down. He’s coming straight at me. Surely he’s about to dodge, right? Wham! I go flying backward, knock over the goal, and wind up staring at the mat. It’s also a nice shade of blue.
Murray calmly picks up the cone and slides in the ball.
The last time I attack. I keep coming at him, even after he knocks me on top of the goal, rolling to trip him up. He scores again.
My turn: I charge, bounce off, spin, bounce off, spin, lunge for the goal and miss, failing to score not once, not twice, but three times. Shut out.
Dazed, my right shoulder numb, I zigzag toward a pretty blond woman on the sidelines who seems to be … smiling at me. You smiling at me? My first fan? Does she want an autograph? Does she want to … comfort me, perhaps?
“I wasn’t smiling at you,” she says. “I was smiling at him.”
It’s Murray’s fiancee, a Fresno court reporter. His father, Tom, 52, a retired Navy parachute rigger, smiles benignly. “Thanks for going easy on my boy,” he says.
Makes me want to hug him.
I am curious about something, so I ask Murray, “How come you didn’t laugh when you saw me? You kept a straight face.”
“I’ve learned from working in a prison, you never judge a book by its cover,” he says. Is he referring to short, fat convicts with knives? He never says.
Past midnight, I’m hunting painkillers on Ventura Boulevard. I wander into an all-night market. A cashier with blond hair, grandmotherly, shows me around the rack of balms and ointments. “How’d you get hurt?” she asks.
“Tryouts for a TV show, ‘American Gladiators.’ Ever heard of it?”
“Watch it every week,” she says. “I love the little guys who do their best. You make it?”
No, I confess, flattered to be mistaken for a contender. She rattles on, ticking off her favorite hunks on the show. “But I like anyone with the courage to take them on, too,” she says. “Hey, you better get some Tylenol.”
Come morning I’m immobile, but curious about my rival. So I dial Loomis’s father. “Boy’s a little sore,” he says.
And that makes my day. It’s the nights that remain a problem — nightmares, the mental replays. What did I do wrong? Where did all the muscles go? So I have returned to this season’s tapings to confront humiliation again, and fear, to soak up what might have been: the stardom, the money. Check out how it feels to be a bona fide contender, to be stalked by real Gladiators.
“Hooo! Hooo! Hooo!” shouts the crowd as a Gladiator named Salina, nimble as Spiderman, scats up the Wall, a giant plywood wall 32 feet high, where contender Tracy Jernegan is hunting for handgrips. Salina grabs Tracy’s ankle and yanks. Tracy holds, kicks. If she makes it to the top, she wins points. It’s a long way down, but everyone’s tethered in safety harnesses.
‘“We’re shooting a lot more belly buttons this year,” says a tech director. “Did you notice the French-cut uniforms? The only thing I’ve enjoyed shooting more is ladies’ mud-wrestling.”’
“I told Tracy, ‘Nice guys finish last,’” says her roommate, Gina DeMichael of Newport Beach, watching the drama on closed-circuit TV backstage. “I said, ‘Trace, it’s not a popularity contest. Kill! Kill! Kill! Go out and kick some butt!’”
“Tracy! Tracy! Tracy!” shout 20 friends in the stands who drove up to root. But Salina won’t let go of her ankle. She yanks again, and Tracy floats out over the arena. She’s history. Afterward Tracy says, “I tried to shake her, but she was hanging on to my bum leg.”
Excuses, excuses.
It just happens that Salina, a Shakespearean actress from New Hampshire who may be the best all-around female Gladiator-athlete, is also a champion rock climber and karate champ. So goes the quest.
But later, when the overall scores come in, Tracy wins her round. Her friend Gina, a caterer, credits her recipe for pancakes and pasta, calling it “the diet of champions!”
In real life, some Gladiators aren’t nearly as mean. “I’m their comic-book character come to life,” says Shirley, a.k.a. Sky, reverent toward the role model she is for children as a mother of two daughters. She stands six three, 188 pounds. “Very few have fathers my size.” Back in Bakersfield, little boys ride bikes up and down her street to catch a glimpse. “One spent all his allowance to send me flowers,” she says.
A former ramp model and ex — society wife to an oil-industry executive, Shirley had it outwardly perfect for a decade: lavish lifestyle, big house, swish parties for 300. Her ex stood five foot 11 and liked her in high heels. So she towered over him at six seven. They separated and later reunited, but when she began training, “The more I did sports, the more he pulled away. He fought my growth. I just didn’t want to go through life thinking that all I had done was be an executive’s wife.” She tears up. “The hardest part was losing my best friend.”
Back home her daughters, three and nine, flex in front of the TV. How does she take the gazes of those who see her as a sex object? “I’m flattered when someone finds me sexy,” she says. “But I guess I’m also shocked when a man finds me attractive.” Then there are the women, which comes with the turf. “Gay women tell me I’m beautiful, and men are not nearly as picky as women. So I’m doubly flattered. But there’s a gentleman in my life. I hope I can appeal to everyone. If I inspire them or give them a fantasy, whether it’s men or women, that’s fine.”
On her walls back home there are nudes of her breast-feeding. “I’m a mom first,” she says. “I give them roots and then I’ll give them wings.”
“Buz! Buz! Buz!” the crowd chants, as the middle-aged Mighty Mouse sprints onto the field for the game called Assault. While a Gladiator fires down with air-powered tennis balls, the contender races for his weapons and fires from five “safe” zones, with 60 seconds to hit the target or be hit.
Buz races out as the cameras roll. He picks up a crossbow, fires a plastic arrow, and hits a red bull’s-eye on his first shot, high above the Gladiator. Steam whooshes up. You can’t do any better than that. “Buz! Buz! Buz!” they chant, adopting him as a· long-shot favorite.
Next he climbs nearly all the way to the top of the Wall, leaving behind a Gladiator named Tower, who can’t pull his hulk off the ground. Only Buz climbs into a dead end and can’t hold on. Still, he’s ahead in his heat. Then it’s time for Powerball.
It’s Buz against Laser, an ex-line-backer at Montana State who played pro ball and then became Mr. Montana. Quick as a rabbit, Buz scores twice. Then Laser gets mad and flips him by the neck, headfirst into the mat. Boing. Buz sees stars. Helmet back on, he wobbles, weaves, and misses the bucket.
“We don’t call it unless it’s flagrant,” says referee Larry Thompson. “You want to protect people, but it’s highly combative, and the show must go on.”
“Let’s hear it!” shouts the MC, as the crowd erupts in applause, loving the violence, the wrath, the revenge. Backstage, Buz packs on the ice. “I got smashed,” he says.
He’s still handily ahead when he hits the Eliminator. Up the ramp, up the rope, over the top, past the dummies, through the tape. He’s won his heat, creating a buzz backstage about a 41-year-old guy who just might go all the way. Only he’s clutching his hand. There’s a lot of blood. It’s over.
Now comes Claudia Valdiviez, the pint-sized powerlifter. Coming in at 97 pounds, she’s about to face off against Storm, a muscled personal trainer and high school all-American in track and field. At 165, Storm outweighs Claudia by almost 70 pounds. In Powerball she hoists Claudia, smashes her into the mat. Attitude-adjustment time. Afterward Claudia hangs back. She doesn’t want to get hit again. Then it’s over. Claudia limps, stunned. Storm hugs her.
“Outside, she wouldn’t hurt a fly,” a friend says of Storm. Little consolation. Claudia goes on to finish the Eliminator, then collapses on the trainer’s table. A camera crew rushes up to capture the pain. “Let’s get a close-up,” says the shooter.
“I just wanted to finish,” she says.
Storm wanders over, pats her. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength,” she says. “So I picked her up, but I didn’t see her land.”
“Claudia was a cheerleader, ran track,” says her sister, speaking in the past tense, as if rendering an obituary. “She won a world record in powerlifting for her weight, squatted 319 pounds. And she’s only four feet nine.”
“Four feet 11!” shouts the corpse, coming back to life.
Nearby, there’s also good news: Contender Bernie Miller wins his heat. “Tremendous!” gushes his girlfriend, Cathy, 24, who’s studying accounting at San Diego State. “It’s the kind of thing he lives for.” She’s no slouch either, and works out on his machines. “We’re not couch potatoes,” she says. “We go to bars and dance clubs. It’s nice to be with someone who doesn’t want to get into that sedentary, get-fat, American lifestyle, ya know?”
She shoots him the look. He’s 31, built like the ex-high school wrestler he is. She’s five one, a drop-dead Tinkerbell. “He’s more than enough man for me,” she says. “What do I need with someone taller? If I’d ordered him custom, I couldn’t have found a more perfect fit.”
Now that he may be on national TV, is she at all worried about other women? If so, she doesn’t let on, but she does put on a gloss of extra-bright red lip-stick, “to make her mark,” he says. They aim to celebrate.
“This is maybe a one-glass-of-champagne night,” says Cathy, “with a Jacuzzi and full-body massage. Can I get anything for you?” she coos.
“She’s the only girl who’s been able to tame this thing,” he says.
“I didn’t tame you,” she laughs, “just keeping you somewhat in check.”
It’s Saturday morning in the coffee shop at the Sportsman’s Lodge, the day after Buz Rosenberg broke his finger and washed out while ahead. He waits for a taxi to the airport. He’s flying home, cast on his hand. Well-wishers lean on his table. “So how’d you get such a good physique?” coos a Suzanne Somers look-alike, batting blue eyes.
“I play a lot of racquet ball,” says Buz. “That body doesn’t come from racquet ball,” she swoons, pressing on. “No, really, how do you stay in such good shape?”
“Quit eating too much.”
“Phenomenal!” she says. “You don’t do anything and you look so incredible! They should put on a parade just for you!”
“Save the parade,” he says, the gleam back in his eyes. “I’ll be back next year. Check with me then.”
We really have nothing much to add to this slightly frightening account of the world in the early 1990s. You can still look up more about “American Gladiators” should you have some wish to do so. We will say that these days one will often hear older folks trying to explain some societal issue to others by saying, “It was a different time.” Many times we need understand the implied follow-up to that explanation: “And it was embarrassing.”
