YMMV / American Gladiators

• Awesome Music: That triumphant Bill Conti theme, which combines late 80's/early 90's rock and roll with a Roman trumpet fanfare. Mike Adamle has reported that he still wakes up at night humming it, and Nitro has said he heard the theme in his head when he was having sex. The remix used beginning in 1993 is pretty awesome too.
• Game-Breaker: Wesley "Two Scoops" Berry was a walking one, as he seemed to set records every time he showed up. (That said, he wasn't immune to failure, as his Jousts tended to end badly.)
• Growing the Beard: After the first 13 episodes, the stubble appeared as the budget improved, allowing for a larger set and an actual referee; the beard was fully grown by the time Larry Czonka arrived.
• Harsher in Hindsight: With the increased scrutiny on many professional sports leagues on concussion health, the interview with Malibu after he returned from being kicked in the head is painfully stuck in the 90s view of health. He, in character, explicitly mentions not going to a doctor and letting the sun heal him.
• Narm Charm: Let's face it, the show was full of crazy, goofy events that you'd never see in an actual sporting event. But they took it so seriously and it could be genuinely exciting at times, and it just grows on you.
• Retroactive Recognition: Plenty of Gladiators made this their first "acting gig".
  • Probably the most notable from the original series is Lee Reherman, aka "Hawk".
  • Lynn Williams (Sabre) would become Jax in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and fight against Deron McBee (Malibu) who played Motaro.
  • Contender Rico Constantino would later become a WWE pro wrestler, while Mike Adamle became General Manager for the Raw brand and arguably one of more polarizing wrestling personalities in the history of the organization.
  • From the 2008 revival, Gina Carano, then best known as a Mixed Martial Arts fighter, was "Crush". Soon after, she would retire from MMA and pursue acting full-time.
  • Before primarily being known for NUMB3RS, Dylan Bruno was contestant on the show.
  • Going the other way, some of the Gladiators appeared on TV before the show began. Nitro was a football-player extra on the HBO original series 1st and Ten, Gemini appeared as a contestant on an episode of Press Your Luck, and Zap appeared in an episode of Card Sharks arm-wrestling Bob Eubanks.
• The Scrappy: Viper, who was usually booed anytime he showed his face. Whether this was because the crowd just loved to hate him or if they genuinely disliked him (he was a noted dirty player) is unclear.
  • Might've been because he was supposed to be the replacement for the original "dirty player", Nitro, who was well liked but left due to the producers refusing to give the Gladiators a piece of the merchandise profits (only to return in season 6). Some might've not liked the "Nitro-lite". He also wasn't that great in the events: he sucked at pretty much everything.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • The production values dropped noticeably in Seasons 6-7 (1994-96) and made some awful set design changes, the quality and range of events decreased, and the Eliminator was changed to start with a Versaclimber (boring, difficult to catch up on) instead of the travelator/reverse treadmill (moved to the end...which was, in fairness, pretty cool).
  • Not to mention that the spinning cylinder was replaced in the final season with...a Chuck E. Cheese-esque ball pit. Not only did it take forever for the contenders to wade through them, it added more than a dash of Narm to the proceedings.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • When they switched to the more modern-looking set halfway through Season 1 and increased the lighting, the last few rows of "spectators" were shown to be cardboard cutouts. (According to this AV Club article, the tapings went long because of difficulties in taping the events, forcing this as fed-up Universal Studios visitors left.)
  • In one game of Atlasphere, the smoke that would come out anytime a contestant scored failed to work. (This may have been why after the move to Gladiator Arena, they added chase lights around the pod sensors, just in case the smoke failed again. They also redesigned the pods to not be recessed in the center, to prevent the cage balls from getting stuck within the pods; this happened at least once.)
• The Problem With Licensed Video Games: American Gladiators was available for the NES, Genesis, SNES, and PC. Probably the nicest thing that could be said for them was the biographies of the Gladiators.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • One of the rules for Powerball was "no tackling around the head" for safety reasons. Fair enough, but at one point in Season 1 they actually made it illegal to tackle the contenders at all, which left the Gladiators trying to strip the ball or just shove the contenders out of bounds. Not only did this cause the Gladiators to flounder in their attempts to stop the contenders, taking the aura of might away from them, but the contenders went down to the ground several times anyway, and in one instance in the women's event two of the Gladiators were disqualified, leaving just one of them to defend against the two contenders.^note (In a bit of Hilarious in Hindsight, that one remaining Gladiator was Blaze, who probably got disqualified more than any other Gladiator for being over-aggressive.) Thankfully, this was quickly done away with.
  • The shortened Season 7 (which included claims that they would return) had two ball pits replacing the spinning cylinder in the Eliminator. This new obstacle was tremendously-difficult to wade through, took forever, and blew up the contenders badly, turning the Eliminator into an overly-long nightmare that you would think they tried no practice runs on.
  • The revival's Eliminator was even longer and more soul-crushing, albeit for a different reason. The first obstacle was an underwater swim under fire jets and right after that, there was a 30-foot cargo net climb. Most competitors were completely drained from those two back to back obstacles and from there, they would move sluggishly throughout the course and would practically collapse at the end. The first season had it the worst, the competitors had to climb an 8 foot wall first before jumping in the pool. This is most likely why the wall was removed in season two and the underwater swim was at the very start.
• The Woobie:
  • Dan "Nitro" Clark's off-camera life was pretty sad, as he revealed in his memoirs.
  • Debbie "Storm" Clark (no relation) and her son were homeless for over two years due to fleeing a violent relationship, having no family to help her and being unable to work due to a knee injury. Fortunately, several former Gladiators rallied around them to help her bounce back and she eventually had knee replacement surgery.

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