Gladiators, ready!
Legend, Fire and Nitro are back to throw down the gauntlet to members of the public on Saturday-night TV
BBC/James Stack/Hungry Bear Media Ltd
- Emma Cox
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Legend is picking at a loose thread on his exceedingly tight lycra shorts. We are filming our interview*,* so the Gladiator is worried about looking scruffy on film. Er, I don’t think anybody will be looking at a loose thread, I say – they’ll be too busy staring at your thighs. Honestly, dear reader, they are huge!
On BBC1’s Gladiators, swinging around a big arena, surrounded by other super-fit athletes, Legend looks pretty muscly. But here in an east London studio, dwarfing the plastic chair he’s sitting on, his legs appear extraordinary to this mere mortal.
“I do have to go through doors sideways,” he admits. “I’ve been classified as an actual weapon. I’m so strong, I have to be careful – I broke someone’s arm yesterday just by shaking their hand.” It seems Legend – otherwise known as Matt Morsia, a former long- and triple-jumper, European Championship silver medal-winning powerlifter and successful YouTube creator (under the name MattDoesFitness) – is clearly very much staying in character for this interview, to promote the second series of the hit Saturday-night show.
Maintaining his alter ego is fun, but I’m slightly confused about whether I’m interviewing Legend and his fellow Gladiators Fire and Nitro, or their real-life counterparts Morsia, Montell Douglas and Harry Aikines-Aryeetey. Is there much of a difference?
Fire, Gladiators. BBC/James Stack/Hungry Bear Media Ltd BBC/James Stack/Hungry Bear Media Ltd
“We were always told just to amplify who we are,” says 36-year-old Aikines-Aryeetey, a former Commonwealth gold medal-winning sprinter who recently appeared as himself in the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special, as well as last year’s Celebrity MasterChef. “We go out in the arena as ourselves and we play and we entertain. When the super suit comes off, I’m just as energetic as Nitro, Montell burns just as brightly as Fire. I’ll let Legend answer for himself, though…”
I’m so strong I’ve been classified as an actual weapon…
Matt Morsia, Legend
“It’s true that some of the others dial it up a bit,” says 38-year-old Legend/Morsia, “but I’ve had to rein it in. I actually stopped training a couple of years ago because the production team said, ‘Listen, you’re too good now’. So instead I do a lot of signing autographs and motivational speaking.”
Righto. I crack on with the interview, realising that Morsia is not going to break out of character – although when he asks for a heater to be placed nearby, it’s hard not to have a little giggle. One can’t imagine Legend admitting to being cold.
Maybe Douglas can shed a bit more light on the difference between her on- and off-screen personas, given that the 38-year-old has just competed on Strictly Come Dancing very much as herself. Was that nice, or weird? “It was both,” she says. “Weirdly lovely. We do call each other by our Gladiator names, so it was really strange to be called Montell on Strictly. They’re similar shows in that they’re both platforms to show your skills and to perform, it’s just that on Strictly I was very much a novice. And I definitely used my Fire spirit to perform on Strictly, because the feeling before you go onto the dancefloor is exactly the same feeling as when I’m about to go into the arena on Gladiators.”
After a 24-year gap, Gladiators returned to our screens last year with a new team of super-fit athletes and bodybuilders competing in a series of ultra-tough challenges against members of the public. With Bradley Walsh and his son Barney taking over presenting duties from Ulrika Jonsson and John Fashanu, the programme otherwise retained everything that made it so popular: from the catchphrase, “Contenders, ready? Gladiators, ready?”, to the pointy foam fingers dished out to a hyped-up arena audience.
We’re sending out the message: anything’s achievable
Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, Nitro
The new generation of Gladiators admit they were surprised by how hugely successful the reboot was: particularly with a younger generation. Aikines-Aryeetey says, “We knew it was good but we didn’t think it would go down as well with children as young as three. We see videos on social media afterwards and they’re turning their living rooms upside down, shedding this energy they’ve just built up watching us for an hour.
“More kids are trying climbing, because they’ve seen me climb The Wall ridiculously fast; they’ve got into more sports. Kids are channelling this energy now. They’re having fun imagining themselves in the arena, and we’re sending out the message: anything’s achievable.
Gladiators series 2 - Nitro BBC / Graeme Hunter / © Hungry Bear Media Ltd
“I did the same as a kid. I watched it and I’d make a fort and climb the stairs thinking it’s The Wall. I couldn’t be a Gladiator, so I became an Olympian instead, and now I’m both!”
I wonder how tough it is to train as a Gladiator, and whether it requires a different kind of fitness from their day job. Douglas, for example, is a former Team GB sprinter who held the British woman’s record for the 100m at 11.05 seconds, smashing the previous record that had stood unbeaten for 27 years. She then also added competitive bobsledding to her skillset and, in January 2022, became the first female UK athlete to compete at both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.
Before the first series, she admits, she trained for six hours a day, six days a week, and started lifting more weights to increase her power. “I’ve enjoyed this because it changes your body and you use it in a different way to your sport. I’m not a bodybuilder, and there are bodybuilders as part of our team, so I lean on them to figure out what I should be doing to look a certain way. You add new skills to your CV.”
Similarly, Aikines-Aryeetey had to change his training regime, having previously been discouraged by coaches from certain strength exercises, as sprinters can’t carry too much weight in their upper body.
As for Morsia, his training regime is slightly different. “I typically wake at 3.30am and spend the next four hours watching videos of myself, which sets me up for the day,” he says. “Then I eat a 7,000-calorie breakfast, which is primarily goat.”
I definitely used my Fire spirit to perform on Strictly
Montell Douglas, Fire
Although all the Gladiators had a public life before appearing on the show, one imagines they are recognised far more now than ever before. The first series averaged 8.3 million viewers, with that elusive 16- to 34-year-old group accounting for more than a million. Are they enjoying their new fame?
“It’s one of my favourite things,” says Douglas, “not in the sense of being recognised, but because of the impact the show’s had on families. Young kids and their parents who watched the show years back are watching together and to me, that’s what this show is all about. The kids all have their favourite Gladiator. Mine are like my little flames, and I really feel that connection. It’s cute.”
Legend/Morsia chips in, “I try to avoid mixing with normal people as much as I can. People cry with joy when they see me, they propose; it’s embarrassing. I’ve learnt to live with it: it’s the burden I carry for being so fantastic. It is inspirational, though. They’re never going to reach my level but at least they can watch me and better themselves. It gives people a goal.”
So, what can we expect from the new series? Did the contestants come along with any new tactics having watched the first series? “They did come with more fire in their belly, excuse the pun,” Douglas says. “They wanted to come and beat us. That didn’t always go to plan, but they were definitely of a great calibre. Last year was a bit of a shock for them. They often said, ‘Goodness, you make this look easy!’ But we’re Gladiators, that’s our job!”
Some of the contestants really studied us
Harry Aikines-Aryeetey
“Some of them really studied us and made a point of understanding who would swing with their right arm first or their left arm, or whatever,” adds Aikines-Aryeetey. “People took it seriously. They needed to because, ultimately, they’re not going to be faster or stronger than us, they’re not going to be as handsome as us, as Apollo would say. So they had to think about their tactics.”
It’s rumoured there are new games, as well as new Gladiators – including a female villain who may challenge Legend’s reputation as the baddie of the show. Is he feeling put out by that? “That’s not a concern,” he says with a shrug. “If Cristiano Ronaldo’s team signs a new player, he doesn’t care, does he? He’s still the best. I don’t concern myself with things that are beneath me. Besides, we all have a shared goal, which is to ruin the contenders’ lives and crush them and inflict as much pain as we can. In that sense, we’re all on the same page.”
There’s plenty of rivalry between the three Gladiators in front of me, and it’s very much tongue in cheek, but I wonder if any of that competitive spirit is genuine. As professional athletes, they must want, to some degree, to be the best on the night?
“As much as the show is called Gladiators, it’s not really about us,” Aikines-Aryeetey says, “it’s about the contestants. It’s about them showing the nation that whether you’re working a nine to five, whether you’re a mechanic, whether you’ve got four kids at home, you’ve got an opportunity to take on great athletes and potentially win.”
Contender, ready?
RT’s Morgan Jeffery gets his hands on a pugil stick…
Morgan Jeffery
Last August, I was invited to Sheffield Arena to face off with a Gladiator — but on the day of my visit, the filming schedule had changed and safety restrictions meant this was no longer possible. I pretended to be disappointed, although I was secretly relieved I’d escaped a round of Duel and an inevitable walloping. Even the “smaller” Gladiators (never call them that while they’re in earshot) are intimidatingly mammoth in person, with the likes of 6ft 6in Bionic towering over this meagre journalist when we met for a quick photo opportunity.
Instead, I was invited on a backstage tour of the arena, including a peek at the changing rooms — most striking, alongside the pugil sticks and training equipment,
was Giant’s tiny leotard, left hanging beneath his nameplate. For a Gladiator of his size, it looked positively miniscule — one can only assume there’s plenty of stretch…
I also got a front-row seat to a filming day for the second series. Happily, I can report it’s just as fun to watch in the arena as it is at home, though I had to get comfy — just one episode takes a whopping nine hours to film, most of that wait time between events. Each game, be it Powerball, Collision or the Gauntlet, has to be built and then disassembled by a tireless crew, so anyone coming along to watch filming can expect lengthy breaks.
But this is where the Gladiators come into their own. During the downtime, they engage in audience Q&As and a few other non-broadcast segments. For example, the day I attended happened to coincide with the reveal that Montell Douglas, aka Fire, would be competing on Strictly Come Dancing, so we were treated to a sneak peek of her fancy footwork.
As for what to expect, well, this series sees all the familiar stars and favourite events return, and you can also look forward to some new games, maybe even a new Gladiator or two. Beyond that, at risk of a pugil stick pummelling, I’m sworn to secrecy. But rest assured — this entertainment behemoth is still a big hitter.
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Authors
Emma Cox
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