Chris DeLine

This past weekend the next generation of American Gladiators was unveiled unto a national audience craving an end to the ongoing writer strike. First hand accounts left me interested, could the Gladiators honestly be back? Well, this really depends on how you look at the program, is it simply a medium for muscle-clad athletes to peddle their wares again on national programming or rather is it a showcase for some of the nation’s finest unknown athletes to trump steroid-bound jokes? This new version of the Gladiators (or best YouTube has shown me) pretty much leaves me to believe that the new program is nothing but a last straw at grabbing some ratings by resurrecting a universally recognized brand name, one which has historically had a patronage calling for its revival. But the new Gladiators lack that one piece to the puzzle, that one defining aspect that defines what the show is about, those two simple words: Two Scoops!

A while back I posted a brief reminder, long before ruminations about the new Gladiators began, about the best contestant in the history of the program, Wesley “2 Scoops” Berry. I was greeted with a few brief comments, one of which came from someone claiming to know Berry, “The legendary saga of 2 scoops continues…I am part of a ministry where I go to San Quentin prison monthly and play basketball with a select few of the inmates. I had heard a rumor that one of the guys on the inmate team, who introduced himself to me as ‘Preacher’ or “2 Scoops” was an American Gladiator. So just for fun, I tried to find him on the internet which led me to your site. All this to say that Wesley ‘2 Scoops’ Berry is alive and well and still displaying his crazy athletic ability for others to enjoy. He is now called ‘Preacher’ as he has fully given his life over to Jesus Christ and ministers to other troubled inmates while serving out his remaining sentence.”

A man of troubled circumstance nonetheless once shocked audiences as he displayed superhuman charisma, ability and athleticism. Plain and simple, he dominated the American/International Gladiators in a fashion that will never be seen again. That, my friends, is what’s missing with the new American Gladiators.

(Alternate title for this post: “The New American Gladiators Are A Joke Because…”)

[This post was first published by Culture Bully.]