I’ve been patiently and excitedly awaiting the return of American Gladiators and last night the show made its glorious (and muscular) return to National TV with a 2-hour premiere event. Terry “Hulk” Hogan and (less importantly) Laila Ali host the revived series and both did a pretty decent job… but the Hulk did way better, brother.

This time American Gladiators is not a stand alone show. It’s based on a bracket system where competitors must win several times in order to win the grand prize of $100,000, a brand new SUV and to become the next American Gladiator.

Like many of you, I grew watching the original Gladiators such as Nitro, Zap, Gemini, Malibu and Blazer beat the ever-living piss out of the contestants and loved it. Wait. Blazer was a character on Dodgeball. Pretend I said Blaze of Laser instead of Blazer, ok? Anyway, some of the new characters weren’t quite as cool as the originals, but I do have a new favorite. If you watched the premiere you know who I’m talking about, none other than the howling, over-groomed facial haired badass himself, “Wolf.” The dude’s only real gimmick, outside of (kinda sorta maybe) looking like a human wolf, is that he howls at any given opportunity… and you know what? That rules! For example, when the ref (who if you look carefully, you’ll notice is Al Kaplon, the ref from Dodgeball) asks the gladiators if they’re ready, “Wolf” just howls and grunts “yeeeeeaaaah!”. Perfect. All of the others are pretty lame, especially “Titan” and “Toa,” which must stand for super-lame in Samoan. On a side note, “Toa” is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s way less cooler cousin. Not that you care.

The female gladiators were all pretty butch and gross as per everyone’s expectation. The best (least worst) looking one was, by far, “Crush.” And the grossest gladiator award goes to: (drumroll) It’s a tie! “Fury” and “Hellga” are both equally gross in my book. Congrats, you two!

Onto the games!

I was glad to see them bring back some of the classic gladiator games such as Joust, Hang Tough, Assault and the Wall. Strangely absent from the two-hour premiere was, at least in my opinion, one of the best events to ever grace the gladiator arena: Atlasphere. Instead of letting us enjoy watching the contestants roll around in human-sized hamster balls, we were “treated” to a new game, Earthquake, in which the contestant and gladiator wrestle on a circular platform for 60 seconds or until one or both of the wrestlers are thrown or fall off the edge. It was a super-weak game at best. I hope they drop it soon in favor of Atlasphere.

Finally, there’s the Eliminator, the last and most difficult challenge; The one that pushes the contestants to the limit. They’ve re-vamped the course by mixing up the order, dropping a few elements and adding a few new ones. They start by climbing an 8-foot wall and then they must dive into a pool of “fire” and swim beneath the flames to the cargo net. They climb the net to the top and then roll back down to the ground by holding onto some large, padded cylinders. Then it’s onto the Hand Bike that seems to kick everyone’s ass. After the bike they run down a balance beam and then climb “The Pyramid.” Once on top of the pyramid they fly down the zip line and then ascend the infamous “Travelator.” Finally, they crash through a wall of foam to complete the course. They made lots of changes, but were able to retain the eliminator’s badassness.

At the end of the show, I was left wanting more, which is good because there’s another airing tonight. I’ll be watching LSU stomp Ohio State instead, but you can bet my DVR will be set to record. If you’re a fan of the original, you won’t be disappointed by American Gladiators 2.0.

Fayetteville Flyer Rating: 3.5 Human Growth Hormone shots out of 5. Not too shabby.

American Gladiators airs Mondays at 8/7 Central on NBC.