|
|
GSNN
Primes |
|
Previous Episodes May 12 May 19 May 26 June 9 June 16 June 23 June 30 |
|
Forty men and women have come to Hollywood with one goal: to take on the next generation of American Gladiators for a shot at $100,000. Recaps by Joe Mello, GSNN FACT FILE: Hosts: Hulk Hogan & Laila Ali Gladiators: Gina Carano (Crush), Monica Carlson (Jet), Alex Castro (Militia), Robin Coleman (Hellga), Evan Dollard (Rocket), Breaux Greer (Hurricane), Beth Horn (Venom), Mike O'Hearn (Titan), Tanoai Reed (Toa), Justice Smith (Justice), Erin Toughill (Steel), Corinne van Ryck de Groot (Panther), Valerie Waugaman (Siren), Jennifer Widerstrom (Phoenix), Xin Wuku (Zen), Don "Hollywood" Yates (Wolf) Referee: Al Kaplon Announcer: Van Earl Wright Creators: Johnny Ferraro & Dan Carr EP: Howard T. Owens, Mark Koops, Johnny C. Ferraro, J. Rupert Thompson Origin: Gladiator Arena, LA Sports Arena, Los Angeles Packager: Reveille, Room 403 Productions, MGM Website: nbc.com/gladiators |
|
Copyright Statement Powered by 1&1 Internet |
|
Preliminaries 8 It’s another week of games, hits, Glads, and this week, a Yoko practically old enough to break up the Beatles. It’s American Gladiators, y’all.
We start our penultimate preliminary playoff with women’s Joust. Crush takes the event off tonight and instead, we’ll have Steel. Annie gets off-balance and falls on Steel’s platform—an automatic DQ. Yoko does get the first hit in, but she loses the old-fashioned way. Our night starts scoreless. To the men we go and Pyramid.
Tim will go against Titan and Alejandro gets stuck with Wolf. The dolphin trainer is able to break the scoring plane for 5, but he ends up being Tim’s big break. An errant toss from Wolf puts he and the contender into Titan, giving him Tim enough chance to break through and score 10 points with 7.7 seconds remaining. For the first time in this iteration of Pyramid, we have a 10-5 result. Now we go to women’s Pyramid. Yoko must face Crush while the young Annie gets the newbie Panther. There was no score this time around, but Crush seemed to be having a little too much fun, sending the senior down with at least 3 vicious take-downs. It’s still 0-0 on the women’s side. Next up for the men is the Wall. Alejandro is getting Wolf again and Tim gets Rocket. Our champ-turned-Glad tried to go up and under again, but he just had to settle with an old-fashioned pull-down to get Tim off. Wolf never got the chance, as Alejandro blew up the Wall in 33 seconds for 10 points. After 2, the pendulum swings to 15-10 in his favor. It’s back to the base of the Wall for the women’s turn. Yuko has Venom while Annie deals with Phoenix. Our 50-something does manage about half a minute before being pulled down while Annie impresses even herself with a 49-second run up the wall for 10 points, the first of the match for either contender. We wrap up the 3rd round with men’s Snapback. It’s another rematch as Tim has to deal with Titan, and Alejandro must face Justice. It was a tough match in which the dolphin trainer managed to hold onto 4 points. Titan, however, got the catch of the day (with Tim playing along) to make the men’s score 19-10 in favor of Alejandro. Wrapping up the proceedings for the women were Hang Tough, in which Yoko was able draw with Siren, and Snapback, in which Yoko got Crush off-balance enough to earn another 4. Annie failed to score in either, so it’s 10-9 heading into Women’s Sideswipe. Annie will go first in this game of human Frogger and will try to avoid Jet, Siren, and Phoenix. She gets one, but forgets to take a ball along for the trip back. She isn’t able to get another chance, as Phoenix T-bones her on the third run to end her night. Yoko tried to deke her way to victory, but Phoenix nailed her on her return swing to end the game at 1-point all.
After a tough start, the women got on track, and the 50-something now only trails the 20-something by a point. The men’s side of the ledger saw the high-scoring men come to a complete halt thanks to shutouts in Tilt and Skytrack. So it’s still 19-10. Despite all the shutouts, there may be some hope, as the Glads for Sideswipe are the veritable B-team of Zen, Militia, and Hurricane. Tim got 5 before getting clipped by Militia. Surprisingly, he’s able to grab onto home base and score his 6th before Militia got a 2nd lick in to finish the job. Alejandro got 2 in expedient fashion, but his momentum took him right into Hurricane and then the drink
Tim cut into his deficit, but there’s still a 5-point gap. However, Tim keeps saying he’s going to pass by his opponent sooner or later. We begin our Eliminator runs with the women. Yoko made it interesting by only making Annie’s head start .5 seconds, but that was as interesting as it got. Annie was the clear favorite from the word “go” and won the Eliminator in 3 minutes flat. Yoko did finish eventually, but she almost needed a search party to get out of the ball pit.
With only one week left of prelims, Annie’s a lock. We’ll have to see if 3:36 will still be the A standard. On the men’s side, Alejandro’s 2.5 second lead looked to hold up okay, but all that talk from Tim was actually right. He passed Alejandro on the cargo net and never looked back. If you thought 94 seconds was hot, try 84.
For all our worries about how impossible the Eliminator would be, now it looks like the impossible feat will be finishing the Eliminator in under 130 seconds. Will it happen? Tune in next week to find out. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||