Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators

I was never a fan of Gladiators in the UK let alone American Gladiators which was the original show that went on to spawn the international versions.

Therefore my decision to watch Netflix's mini-series Muscles & Mayhem was a highly speculative one.

Having now watched all five episodes I am glad that I did watch, I found this to be a genuinely interesting, entertaining if "unauthorised" take on the once hit series.

I will take most of what I heard as gospel as it came from the mouths of the major gladiators themselves, and as they were there, they sure ought to know what went on!

Perhaps rather surprisingly I warmed to the featured gladiators almost without exception and felt genuinely sorry that they did not share in the vast revenues that were generated.

Goes to show how important either having a good contract or a better agent is when it comes to this business called show.

Their sacking from the show no doubt precipitated the show's demise and can be seen in retrospect as the beginning of the end.

Nonetheless, it was a show that went on to "inspire" many other shows that followed in its wake.

I would recommend this series without hesitation.

But in the end, it did just that. The fun, light-hearted nostalgia-filled romp through the late 80's and early 90's carries the first few episodes. I enjoyed these as much as any, but the shining star of the series for me was saved til the last.

I couldn't help but smile as names and faces of original Gladiators floodes back to memory and left me reminiscing of lazy Saturday mornings. Sure the TV only went up to channel 13 and the only other options were fishing or cartoons, but it's hard to express just how special and unique this idea was for it's day.

The doc does a great job of taking a cast of characters who were obnoxious, egotistical, and somewhat laughable on the show and captures everything great (and at times dark) about the real people behind the characters. By the end, I was tearing up by myself in the dark as gladiators shared personal struggles and victories to wrap up a surprisingly loveable series.

The show first of all gave a good sense of the late 80's early 90's things WERE different then. Schrezegger and Stallone ruled at the movies American pride and nationalism were high so this was the right show at the right time. Now its interesting because it really foretold all the competition reality shows we have now days. They dont gloss over the sterorid abuse but at that time it wasn't the same issue as it would be today. Steroids were not well known outside of high end competitive athletes and rules were just starting to go into place mainly due to what was happening with baseball at the time. The big lesson here and you can see it when they interview the producers is hollywood will squeeze and squeeze and then blame it all on the people that had no control. Im betting those producers just moved on the athletes didn't And I remember this show very much they started out when I was in College and the whole football team would get together with woman from Track, basketball and swimming to watch in one of the big training rooms. We loved it. But when they fired everyone (which I just found out is what happened) most lost interest because it was about the gladiators they had been set up like pro wrestlers so they had a certain character and personality and when they dumped those people everyone lost interest. They absolutely if done right could still be going to today. Sam Goldwin Jr. Seems to be the biggest villian in this story for not giving them better money and part of the merchandising and he basically ran over the goose who laid the golden egg.

5 episodes, 30-45 minutes each with interviews of most of the actual Gladiators, producers, show runners, etc with zero filler. Each episode had a good theme to it and they flew by fast. I never lost interest.

Unlike the other Netflix doc, "Pepsi, Where's my Jet?" which is the WRONG method to do a documentary, the American Gladiators documentary is by far something worthwhile to watch.

Even if you've only watched a single episode of the show when it was on TV, give this little mini series a shot. It's informative and interesting but most importantly - it's entertaining to watch, just like the TV show.

Watching this documentary reminds me of the time when I showed my kids an episode of He-Man. And the cartoon looked so old. I was never very into the American Gladiators program, but I remember watching it from time to time and thinking that it looked very good. I mean aesthetically it looked very good. But clearly I was mistaken. It does not look good at all. About the actual events of the story, I'm struck by a few different thoughts. The first is that it was really strange how concerned the production was that their athletes might have been using steroids, when they did not care at all about basic safety procedures to protect their athletes. And the other thing is that the show was only on for seven seasons, but it could have kept going if the company had wanted to keep investing in its development. They had a chance to create a new sport entirely. It seems like they were only interested in squeezing out as much money out of the idea as possible in the quickest amount of time. So it's kind of strange how they sacrificed a lot of potential money for a little bit of real money. As for the athletes themselves, only a few seem to be sympathetic characters, but that doesn't mean that they deserved to be exploited and after watching this series that's exactly what seems to have happened. So if you watched the show when you were younger, or you want to have free good explanation of a pop culture phenomenon from 30 years ago, it's a good watch.