American Gladiators returns to television this evening. The kid in this blogger is kind of psyched for this. I’ve been waiting for this since… Well, I guess since I realized that American Gladiators wasn’t on television anymore.

I don’t have any idea what channel it used to be on, but I do remember watching reruns on USA(?) at my great uncle’s house. I’d be switching through channels and would always stop on AG. I thought it was just the cat’s pajamas.

Then Nickelodeon came out with GUTS, which I also watched whenever I could.

What was the allure?

Perhaps it’s seeing people appear to get hurt. Everything on Gladiators and (some of the stuff on) GUTS looks like it hurts. In reality, everyone is safe and walks away with little more than a bruise or two – but damn it if it isn’t fun to see someone get hit in the head with a tennis ball shot from an air cannon. Am I right people?

Gladiators was originally on in the early 90′s and an entire generation has been waiting for a comeback for some time now. Personally, I lobbied for it’s return when I was in college, but no one took action because I was lobbying to my roommate who didn’t have many connections that could help me to realize my dream.

In my incarnation of Gladiators, I pictured “The Miz” and other reality stars that had shared similar workout styles with Roger Clemens. Of course NBC went another route and came up with people like Gina Carano – or “Crush” as she’ll be know on the show- an MMA fighter with a 5-0 record. (She’ll fight Feb. 16 on the next Kimbo Slice card)

While I still think The Miz should be involved in some facet, I’m hoping that NBC got it right. It would be a travesty if this didn’t work. I don’t want this to be a just another terrible remake that rapes our memories.

If you’re interested, ESPN  sent somebody to check it out and he got tossed around (with video!) by a couple of the Gladiators. From what I saw, it still looks like it could be pretty sweet.

I know I’ll be watching tonight. I plan on seeing some violence, pain, and… did I mention violence? (I did? Okay, just checking.) I just hope it was worth the wait.

Links via: ESPN, MMAjunkie.com, IMDB and good old fashioned Google