Michael Wilson thinks the ‘Gladiators’ reboot is “too friendly”.
Michael Wilson thinks the ‘Gladiators’ reboot is 'too friendly'
The 60-year-old athlete, who was also known as ‘Cobra’ on the original ITV show in the ‘90s, revealed he believed the new version of the programme isn’t rough enough and is overly “Gladiator-friendly”.
He told the Daily Star newspaper: "They need to change The Duel - it is too friendly.
"The platforms are too close, a smaller guy can duck and dive and out of the way of them pugil sticks usually. But the heads of the pugil sticks are too big.”
‘Cobra’ also emphasised he believed that larger contestants had an unfair advantage over those with a slighter stature.
He explained: "I can't see anyone at the moment like a smaller guy being able to win against their big legs, knocking them off.
"They need to be able to duck and dive and make the other guys lose their balance. You need to spread them apart.”
"Also, there's another game called Danger Zone where we use huge grey balls against a consistent running across a bridge, what we've got now is rubbish and not as effective.
"They won't cost a lot of money to use the balls so they need to bring that back. I think it probably needs another series to perfect everything.”
Michael had also previously admitted he was not a fan of the new ‘Gladiators’ costumes, because they were “really unflattering”.
He explained: “The outfits ... They're really unflattering and just horrible really. I thought they could have done a lot more with them.”
As well as having problems with the reboot, ‘Cobra’ revealed also took issue with the original series, and said he was paid less for ‘Gladiators’ than for his appearances in pantomimes.
He explained: “People don't realise the best money really weekly was panto. When you see the papers often say, 'They've ended up doing some panto', and some of these big soap stars were getting £20,000 a week. Frank Bruno was on £25,000 a week in the '80s.
"He used to get a ribbing for it, but it was that much money in the '80s, let alone now. Paul O'Grady, when he appeared in the Birmingham Hippodrome, he was on £100,000 a week short-term.
"The best money I got was from that and personal appearances. You might have five in a week and we get between £750 and £2,000."
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