The Eliminator vs. The Agro Crag

[originally written for overtimecomedy.com on 10/26/07]

Exhibit A: American Gladiators

Contenders ready! Gladiators ready! Go!

Just watching American Gladiators qualifies as a calorie-burning activity. Joe Whatever from your local gym competes against a world-class bodybuilder, who gets paid to beat the shit out of the Joe Whatevers of the world. Nowhere else was the ferocity more apparent than the mother of all obstacle courses: The Eliminator.

Named for Charlie Sheen’s curve ball in Major League 2, The Eliminator was a basic training course with a case of ‘roid rage, manned by Gladiators just itching to enforce the 7-second penalty. The modern Eliminator got even more intense by not only making the course longer, but by putting the incline treadmill at the end, where you barely have the energy to stand, let alone climb. Intense!

Exhibit B: Guts

Do-do-do-do you have it? GUTS!

As kids we either had WB’s lame-ass Gladiators for Kids, or Nickelodeon’s extreme kid Olympic competition, Guts. Even those of us that could barely muster the energy for gym class wanted to be on this show. They took regular games, and added bungee cords. My cheap-ass school said it was too expensive to install the rigging in the gymnasium. Fuck those guys.

The peak of Guts supremacy was when Mo (oh, Mo. My first love…) announced the start of the Agro Crag. This foam mountain was so cool that first prize was actually a piece of it. To win, you had to navigate confetti, Styrofoam rocks, um…

Conclusion: Yeah, maybe if they parked a couple Gladiators at the summit, the Crag could measure up. The Eliminator kicks the Crags ass any day of the week, then comes back the next day to thrash it while it’s in traction. Come to think of it, though. Maybe they should bring back Guts, with Gladiators. I should pitch that to Nickelodeon. Anyone have any connections?