Tough Enough 4: Episode 8: Who is the American Gladiator?

Not much news to report centering on the show this week, as everyone gets ready for the final results on the December 17th edition of Smackdown. Even the piggybacked segment of TE4 is pushed back beyond its normal running-time in the program. Which is a bit funny in itself - the TE4 segments were the first seen each week on Smackdown in the first few weeks, then moved to the second quarter hour, and now finally to a segment new the three-quarter mark of the program. It's obvious from all this that WWE expected the TE4 segments to bring in viewers, and then began pushing it off to later and later in the program due to a lack of interest.

We do get promos from each of the three finalists during the program to try to entice sticking around to see then later in the program. All the promos show the three finalists, Mike Mizanin, Justice Smith, and Dan Puder wearing boxing gloves and giving their best in their arguments that they would win any "Dixie Dogfight" planned for the two finalists on the December 12 Pay-Per-View, Armageddon.

Mike is first and he goes for a standard "I can beat either of these two guys" promo. Nothing wrong with that, but his wording is quite odd (at least from the captioning, which admittedly is not always right): "I'm not going to be good. I'm not going to be bad. I'm pure and solid all in your butt. That fact is I'm going to welcome you to my reality. You step into my home. Into my ring."

Mike's promo demonstrates a common problem with the contestants on the show this time around - all seem to have a tendency to go for very oddball choices in what they decide to say when given a chance. He doesn't want to be good in his match? Fair enough, I guess. As for a guy who started the whole contest off by trying to downplay his Real World association, he seems to be bringing it up more and more as the contest goes along.

After a recap of Justice's cross-dressing from last week (there was none for Mike shown, by the way), Justice does his promo. Whereas Mike went for the performance in his bit, Justice appears to be going for sincerity, telling the camera that he doesn't care if it is Mike or Dan, just "bring it on."

Finally, there's a recap of Puder's cross-dressing, and then his promo. His falls into the Mizanin category, spending a majority of time talking about it would be a tough match if he had to fight Justice, barely mentioning Mizanin. He ends the promo by saying that he doesn't care who he goes up against, he'll take that person "down as far as I have to in order to win the contract."

As mentioned above, at the three-quarter mark, Al Snow comes out with the three finalists to the stage area in the arena. He introduces the three and then announces that the viewers had decided to cut Justice Smith from the show. Justice shakes hands and hugs Mizanin and Puder quickly before leaving the stage, and then Puder and Mizanin get into each other's faces to appear threatening and menacing to each other. Frankly, the cross-dressing from last week was more believable.

Al directs their attention to the ring and asks that the air-mattress left there by someone be moved. Must have been there for some type of commercial for those comfy air-mattresses you can take on trips and then it just got out of control. Oh, wait, that's actually there for the competition they are about to do. The air-mattress that fills out the ring has to pedestals in the middle. As they walk to the ring, Al explains that they will be given clubs (i.e. giant inflatable q-tips), made to stand on the pedestals in the fight area (i.e. cheap carnival moonwalk game), and battle it out (i.e. nervously push at each other) until one loses (i.e. Mizanin).

The first round finds Mizanin too aggressive and he immediately falls off of his pedestal more from his own efforts than from Puder. In the second round, Puder gently pushes at Mizanin and Mizanin falls off. Puder wins the two-out-of-three falls contest and the entire "Junior American Gladiators" competition is over within less than 15 seconds. Mizanin throws his giant q-tip in the air in disgust and then gets on the pedestal to glare at Puder. Puder bounces around to show he's ready for a fight. That or he has to go to the bathroom really, really badly. One of the two. A reminder is mentioned on how to vote and also about the "Dixie Dogfight" at the PPV.

With Justice gone, at this time we would like to congratulate Dan Puder for winning Tough Enough 4. If the boxing match had been between Smith and Puder - a martial arts follower and a former UFC competitor, respectively - it may have made for some interesting action to watch during the PPV. With Mizanin remaining - a contestant who has is much too manic in his promos and has won only one competition, which was a cross-dressing contest - there isn't quite the feeling of excitement in the PPV match that could have been there. Mizanin seems to be banking on winning from his past television experience and frantic nature instead of what he can deliver in the ring. Meanwhile, Puder came out of nowhere and has proven to be the serious competitor who has won over viewers with his charisma in the competitions and his ability to handle himself well on the mic so far. Mizanin came into the contest with the advantage, but Puder has consistently proven himself to be the "talk of the town" from response seen from WWE fans so far.

In reviewing this column and in previous columns, it occurs to me that I appear to be dumping a bit too much on Mizanin. Sometimes a target is easy, and for that I should apologize. If I saw Mizanin doing a dark match in OVW, my thought about his character would probably be, "This guy has potential, but he's got a lot of work ahead of him and needs to really tone down on the spastic nature of his character before he'll win the audience over one way or the other." That's without really knowing how he is as a wrestler, which we have not had any chance to see in the program so far. If we as viewers could be given a chance to see how these two match up as WRESTLERS instead of as competitors in contests that have little or nothing to do with the sport, then we may be swayed a bit more to pick one of the other. Perhaps they should have started with the cutesy stuff like cross-dressing earlier on and then built to the contestants taking on Angle in the ring. Instead, we devolved the contest to kiddie games, which hurts the show, the promotion, and the contestants. Are either of these two guys going to be helped in their future wrestling training by being reminded that they won the "terrifying Q-Tip Fight" of TE4? Questions to ponder if WWE ever decides to do a Tough Enough 5.

We'll be back in a few days with a look at the PPV "Dixie Dogfight" between Mizanin and Puder, plus the finale that will see a winner named on the December 16th edition of Smackdown (and you can bet good money that whoever loses will be involved with some type of beatdown on the winner as the setup for a short-term Smackdown feud before they are sent to OVW). Until then, as Cub Koda always said, see you at the record bins.

You can e-mail Dale about this column or his other projects at justabob@iglou.com. You can also click here to buy his book, The Urban Legends of Rock and Roll: You Never Can Tell, or any of his other books.

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