Wesley "2 Scoops" Barry won the championship on the American Gladiators TV show, I think it was the 1993-1994 season. He's the single best athlete I've ever met in my life, and I've met quite a few.
American Gladiators was a hit TV show, beginning in the late 1980's and into the early 1990's. I wound up working on the stage crew for its last four seasons. We had a lot of incredibly athletic people on that show, both the Gladiators themselves, and the contestants, or "contenders" as they were called. The contenders had to make it through a physically tough tryout, then get weeded down, to make it on the show. We had college athletes, Olympic hopefuls, military people, firefighters, cops, wrestlers, gymnasts, martial artists, and even college cheerleaders, compete on the show.
But in the four seasons I worked on the crew, one guy stood out above all the rest, and that was Wesley Barry. I met him on day one of that season. As a spotter, I was one of those guys with the white karate pads on the sidelines, trying to stop people when the ran out of bounds in several of the games, during the shows. That's the part people of our job people saw on TV. But the American Gladiators taping season actually took place over about 6-7 weeks the previous summer to when the shows aired. The first 7 or 8 days we would set up two of the games each day, so the Gladiators and contenders could learn and practice each game. The grips, riggers, and us spotters would roll in the set-up for each game, and then the Gladiators would practice on one game, on one side of the huge stage (Stage #3 on the CBS Studios lot, in Studio City), and the contenders would practice the other game on the other side of the stage, after lunch, they'd switch sides.
Obviously, since it was a TV show, and the Gladiators and contenders were the stars, the producers didn't want any of them getting hurt during the practice sessions. They wanted everybody full bore on the days their shows taped. So us spotters were the test dummies, pretty much. We would hook the athletes into climbing harnesses for the wall and Swingshot, the bungee game. But on every game that required opponents, we practiced against them. Powerball, Breakthru and Conquer, Joust (pugil sticks), and the others.Yes, that was a lot of fun, and yes, I got my ass kicked many times, by men and women, on practicing those games.
On the first day of practice on Wesley Barry's season, I remember we practiced the Swingshot game, which we just called "bungee" on set. In the game, the contestants would jump off of towers that were about 10 or 12 feet high, while hooked into bungee cords. They would land softly (hopefully) on the ground, take a couple of steps, and use the bungee to jump about 15 feet up, and pull foam balls off a pole in the center (see video below). Then they turned around, hit the floor again, and jumped back up to the towers, where they would put the balls into a basket on the tower, and then jump back to get more balls. The balls were of three different colors, and had different points for each. The contestants with the most points won.
But on the other side of the arena, the Gladiators would also jump off towers, crash into the contenders, and try to keep the contenders from getting balls back to score. You can see Swingshot in the clip below. During the practice day, first, every contender and Gladiator got on the towers, and we had them jump off with different combinations of the three sizes of bungee cords we had. The riggers, high above us, in the grid, would drop down different cords, and us spotters would hook the contenders climbing harness to the bungee cords, until we found a set that worked well for their size and weight. One of the production coordinators wrote down the combo for each person, and everyone got a few practice jumps. That part was more tedious then fun for them. After that, everyone got back up, three at a time, and tried to get their jump down, and grab balls off the center pole, and get the the hang of the game. That's when the contenders had a little more time to have fun.
We ended practice that afternoon, and Wesley Barry was on my tower, and he had worked up a sweat trying to get as much practice on the game as possible. It was the end of day one, the beginning of about 7 weeks of first practice days, then taping the shows themselves. I could tell he was athletic, but so were several of the other contenders. None of them stood out that much after one day. Wesley and I were just sitting there for a moment, on the tower, before he climbed down. He said, "I think I'm going to take this thing," in a quiet, but confident voice. I asked,"Swingshot?" He replied, "No, the whole thing. I think I'm going to win the whole thing." I just thought, "OK, we'll see." It was really early to be that confident.
The Wesley Barry we saw those first 6 or 7 days practicing the different games of American Gladiators wasn't the over-the-top showman you see in the clips of the shows. He was a confident, but not a really arrogant athlete, and worked hard to figure out each weird event. He grew a bit more confident as the days went by, and a bit louder when joking around heckling the other contestants. He knew deep inside that his particular physical abilities, and mindset, were geared to do well on the show.
After two or three days, someone on the office crew took him aside, and shot that footage in the clip above of Wesley jumping over the car. It blew their freaking minds, and word spread around the crew and contenders, "That Wesley guy can run and jump over a car, a big car." None of us saw him do it, but some of the crew saw the raw footage. We began to pay more attention to Wesley Barry.
When we began to tape the shows, we shot two shows a day, with two men and two women competing against each other on each show. So most of the 80 or so contenders were hanging out at the hotel all day. We had the Gladiators, and 8 competing contenders, and then four alternates, in case someone got hurt, on set. Wesley began to stand out from the get go, and the "Two Scoops" thing, and the "250%" effort, and his wild, on camera personality just snowballed as taping went on. The contenders that won their first show, came back several days later, and we had quarterfinals and semifinals, and then the finals. The grueling taping days were closer and closer together at the end of the season.
As Wesley Barry became "2 Scoops" on the set, the male Gladiators hated him more and more. He was fit, he was confident, he was loud. But mostly he was good, and so freakin' quick. His combination of sort of a track sprinters body, and martial arts background, frustrated the Gladiators to no end. His loud interviews after each event added to it. The Gladiators were good at those games, and they were bigger, physically, than nearly all contenders. But Wesley was just so quick, even where power was needed, he used his quickness to kick ass, and he won the season of the show. By the time it all ended, the Gladiators had a lot of respect for Wesley Barry, as mad as he made them during taping. They respected raw ability, and he straight out had it. Then we started hearing of his crazy recovery from the fire, a couple of years before, which made him even more inspiring.
As over the top as he comes across in the clips, he was a really cool guy to work with, and blew our minds every time he came on set. The one little thing that sticks out in my mind was at lunch one day. We shot our show in the summer, when most other TV shows were on hiatus, or summer vacation. Since we had such a big cast and crew, about 100 people total, we used a small sound stage for our catered lunch. We walked in one day to lunch, and the tables were standard folding tables, set end to end, in two long rows. So there was a center aisle, and two side aisles. Wesley, and several other people were in the center aisle. I was behind most of the contenders, in the right aisle.
Once in there, we figured out the start of the serving line was on the far left. A couple of the guys in that aisle joked with Wesley, "Don't worry 2 Scoops, we'll save you something." He laughed, and took one step, and jumped over the chairs sitting outside the table, over the folding table itself, and over the chairs on the other side. And he jumped at an angle. It was a 30" to 33" high, 8 or 9 foot long jump, from a one step take off, into a little spot next to those guys. He landed softly, barely making a noise. Seriously, it was like something out of a ninja movie. Wesley just laughed, as our jaws dropped. He did it without thinking.
The other thing that stands out, was that 2 Scoops climbed the 32 foot high climbing wall in 11 seconds, and it was set at about 5.10/5.11 difficulty rating, if you're a climber (routes set by Paul from Climb-It holds). That didn't look possible either. Making it up the wall in 30 seconds was a solid performance.
Like Wesley Barry told me on day one, on the Swingshot tower, he won the American Gladiators championship that year,and that's no easy feat. He came back the next year, to help train the new contenders, and later won the clash of champions show above. He also traveled to the European show, called Gladiators, and did well there (not sure is he won, but he probably did). Here's a fan-made clip from that show.
I met a lot of high caliber athletes working on Gladiators, including former pro football players, a Heisman Trophy winner, and a few Olympic champions. I also have known many top pro BMXers, skateboarders and snowboarders in my other work. Wesley Barry, I can say confidently, is the single best athlete I've ever seen. It was a couple of amazing summers, working with him as a crew guy, on the set of American Gladiators in the early 1990's.
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