Deadliest Warrior

Hey everybody, I’m back! At least until classes start up again. Okay, so I haven’t talked about all the lame cartoon shows I grew up with, but I’ll pick that up again another time. Right now I would like to talk about a new-ish series on Spike called Deadliest Warrior.

Deadliest Warrior is an awesome show about history’s most deadly fighters killing each other to death. What’s not to love? Okay, so the battles are all fought on Slitherine Studios’s computer battle simulater, so no one actually dies.

These three guys gather experts on warriors and weapons and perform tests on dummies, dead pigs, sides of beef, and ballistics gel torsos to see what the weapons would do to people. Geoff Desmoulin designs the tests and operates the high speed camera. Dr. Armand Dorian examines the wounds on the weapon targets and tells everyone just how dead they would be if they were a real person. Meanwhile, the other experts trash-talk each other and congratulate themselves on their manliness. Finally, Max Geiger programs the battle data into the magic computer and we see who wins. And just to be sure the winner isn’t by a fluke, he does this one thousand times. After that, a couple of actors fight it out to show us what the fight might look like.

So thus far, they’ve made nine episodes, and a second season of thirteen eps has been confirmed for spring 2010. Here’s the rundown of who’s the deadliest.

1.) Apache Brave vs. Roman Gladiator

The Apache kills the gladiator, being quicker than his opponent. While the gladiator had armor to protect him, he wasn’t armored in the right places.

2.) Viking vs. Samurai

Well, if my ancestor had to lose out to someone, I’m glad it was the samurai, ‘cause samurai are awesome.

3.) Spartan Hoplite vs. Ninja

SPARTANS!! PREPARE FOR GLORY!!! ‘Nuff said.

4.) Pirate vs. Knight

I didn’t really buy the results here. I mean, yeah, the pirate had guns, but the tests showed that the bullets wouldn’t penetrate a knight’s armor. I guess if they hit a spot where the knight wasn’t wearing armor—oh wait—he’s armored on every inch of his body!

5.) Yakuza vs. Sicilian Mafia

Modern warriors in a five-on-five gunfight! And somewhere, a Yakuza boss is being delivered a gi full of dead fish.

6.) Green Berets vs. Spetsnaz

I’m sorry to say, the Ruski’s beat our boys, but it was a fight almost too close to call. So I wouldn’t count America’s special forces out just yet.

7.) Shaolin Monk vs. Maori Warrior

So it turns out, being beefcake is not enough to overcome someone who has rocking-awesome KUNG FU!

8.) William Wallace vs. Shaka Zulu

Everybody remembers Braveheart, and a few people probably heard of that movie Steven Spielberg made. Well, Wallace won, despite Shaka being insane enough to put poison in his mouth and spit it in his enemy’s eyes.

9). IRA vs. Taliban

Erin geo do! The real fighting Irish taught the Taliban a lesson they’ll never forget. Because they’re dead. And dead people can’t forget things. Besides, you didn’t really think they’d let the Taliban win on an American show, did you? If only this country’s leaders would follow that example…

Now, some people on the internet get pissed over the results because they are a bigger expert on ninjas than the experts who came on the show, and they know that a ninja would win. But these people are missing the fun part of the show. It’s not about who wins or loses, it’s about how much ass gets kicked! The real fun of the show is watching them destroy stuff in the tests. And hearing the experts dunk on each other.

Not only that, but their criticisms have no basis in reality. For instance, if you check out youtube, you’ll find people who dissect the fight at the end, coming up with a blow-by-blow account of how their guy should have won. But they obviously weren’t paying attention! The result of the fight is determined before the stuntmen even get into costume. And it’s determined by pure statistics. The computer just calculates the results based on points awarded to each weapon and probably some other variables. But the fight we see is not created blow-by-blow on the computer. That part is just the actors showing how awesome the warriors are.

And as for the statistics, just because the Spartan won overall, doesn’t mean he would win every time. The final score on that episode was 653-347. That’s three-hundred and forty-seven dead virtual Spartans who can attest to the fact that ninjas are hardcore. So quit with the sour grapes “scottbaioisdead!” And if you say you’ve made a better video, at least have the decency to choreograph an actual fight so those of us who took the time to sit through an ungodly amount of buffering aren’t disappointed when they realize the entire video is just a whiny rant by a fifteen-year-old!

So, from the looks of things, season two is going to feature the same warriors matched up differently. I hope that’s not all they do. What I want to see is a few new guys matched up, because, let’s face it, if they only show the same bunch of guys each season, the show will get stale and boring. Not to mention, they’ve already tested the weapons each guy will be using, so if they don’t introduce new weapons, their just going to be running the same tests every time.
Although they could answer the question of Pirate vs. Ninja.

But the show has been awesome before, so I have faith that it will continue to be awesome.

Or else…