TV Guide Reporter Battles the Gladiators!
Nothing is small in the Gladiator Arena. Not the light-soaked, 31,152-foot stadium. Nor the spandex-clad Gladiators. Even the 100-pound demolition balls used in the new Hit and Run event seem oddly huge.
Right now, the only small thing on the set of NBC's revamped American Gladiators (Mondays, 8 pm/ET, NBC) is, well, me. At 5-feet-9 and 155 pounds, "formidable" isn't a word often associated with my name. I didn't think it would be a problem — until I stood at the base of the Pyramid.
On paper, my mission seemed simple. Scale a set of stacked, giant foam-rubber blocks to reach the 35-foot-high apex. The problem? Off paper, a 6-foot-8, 290-pound Gladiator dubbed Justice (Jesse Smith) stands in my way. While Justice and his peers (whose backgrounds include black-belt martial arts, the U.S. Marine Corps and Cirque du Soleil) underwent a two-week boot camp, my only train