It has come to my attention that not enough people know about BATTLE DOME.
Let's go back to the early 2000s, a cultural wasteland of amped-up, testosterone-addled, hyper-sexualized garbage. At the apex of that pile was BATTLE DOME, a short-lived TV game show that aired for two years in syndication, presumably to low viewership. BATTLE DOME attempted to blend the over-the-top athletic competition of American Gladiators with the hypermasculine, character-driven soap opera of professional wrestling.
The result was maybe the stupidest show ever to air on television: an extraordinarily dangerous game show where competitors regularly walked away with serious injuries, interrupted by scripted melodrama that played like it was written by and for horny middle schoolers. It is spectacular. And it's almost too unintelligible to be offensive.
For the sake of demonstrating what BATTLE DOME is, we're gonna walk through a single episode from season 1.
(Heads up: Things get violent and problematic after the break. And there are a lot of images. GET READY.)
Season 1, Episode 12
Welcome to BATTLE DOME, filmed at the now-demolished Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, previously home to the LA Clippers until they moved to the Staples Center for the 1999 season. Now that it's been abandoned by professional sports, it has been converted into the BATTLE DOME, a dangerous playground for the damned and depraved.
Our masters of ceremonies are Steve Albert (right), professional sportscaster; and Scott Ferrall (left), shock jock, Y2K style icon, and professional feral man. Albert does the play-by-plays, while Ferrall screams incoherent horny color commentary in a gravely voice that sounds like he's been smoking six packs of cigarettes a day since kindergarten. They are truly a dynamic duo.
The stars of Battle Dome are the WARRIORS, a collection of walking stereotypes played by an assortment of underemployed Los Angeles-based bodybuilders, stuntmen, and MMA fighters. The first season of Battle Dome has a framing story about the Chairman of Battle Dome ranking the Warriors based on their performance. The champion gets to hold onto the BATTLE DOME CHAMPIONSHIP BELT. It's mostly an excuse to manufacture some drama between the Warriors. Roll with it.
Today, the #1 warrior is MIKE O'DELL, a grotesquely muscular dude presented as a white-clad golden god with Aryan overtones. Bringing up the rear are Sleepwalker, Payne, and DOA, three characters who were mostly used as substitutes whenever the main cast was out. We will not see them today.
Introducing our heroes
The events in Battle Dome are not subtle. Our first event is TAKE DOWN, where our competitors have to fight their way past the Warriors and hit a button on the wall behind them. It's like football, but even less safe.
The first Warrior of the night is T-MONEY, WHO IS PLAYED BY A YOUNG PRE-FAME TERRY CREWS IN HIS FIRST ACTING ROLE. T-Money is accompanied by The Posse, who stand next to him and carry a briefcase full of prop money. In hindsight, getting Terry Crews on this show was an incredible casting coup. Crews plays T-Money at full volume, and the show benefits every second he's on camera.
Then comes O'Dell, surrounded by the Dahm Triplets, who I have been forced to learn were a group of minor celebrity triplets who modeled together. They walk out the gate accompanied by a dramatic brass band. The show never explicitly comments on the ubermensch tone of the O'Dell character, but that has to be intentional, right?
But there's drama! O'Dell doesn't want to play Take Down today. The moment passes. This is conflict, I guess. In the Battle Dome universe, everyone is a prima donna. There are no heroes.
The game is played. It is extraordinarily violent. The competitors — referred to as "civilians" by the show — wear the thinnest safety gear that could constitute padding. They are visibly out of breath and struggling to walk afterwards. They almost certainly all got concussions. Only two goals are scored the entire event. If you want to see Terry Crews beat the shit out of random people, Battle Dome is a great delivery vehicle for that.
After the event, T-Money is furious about O'Dell's poor performance. I think we're supposed to be getting invested in this melodrama, but the fact that Battle Dome doesn't take place in a hermetically sealed world like wrestling makes it even more transparently fake.
"Look at this, we got a brawl. We got a brawl!" Scott Ferrall yells as O'Dell and T-Money glare at each other. "Look out! Eye-gouging! They're throwing punches, shovin', pushin', talkin' about each other's mothers! Towels flying!" Ferrall is exaggerating.
As the Warriors triumphantly exit the Dome, T-Money stops to kicks someone in the audience.
Wheel of Fortune (X)
The next game is the BATTLE WHEEL, "a merry-go-round gone bad," as Ferrall puts it. There's a lot of dangerous shit on Battle Dome, but this might be the worst idea of all: a giant pyramid with 30-degree slope spinning at 20 mph. The goal is to get on top and drag the Warrior down to the bottom. In the first season, two people (include one Warrior) seriously fucked up their ankles on this one. As a result, the Wheel was significantly tamed for season two.
But the competition has been paused! During Take Down, the yellow player was injured when he got slammed to the ground with his full weight on his wrist (pictured) and has been forced to withdraw! Yellow gets replaced by a new meatbag who will almost certainly also walk away with long-term injuries. Substitutions like this are alarmingly common on Battle Dome, though even more alarming when the wounded competitors keep going anyway.
Luckily for the viewers, the Chairman has ordered T-Money and O'Dell to settle their feud by competing in ULTIMATE BODY SLAM. What is Ultimate Body Slam? YOU WILL FIND OUT.
("I want it now! Bring it on! Ultimate Body Slam!" Ferrall shouts. "Slam 'em! Slam 'em! Somebody's gonna get slammed in the head!")
At the top of the Battle Wheel is CUDA, "the Jamaican Brawler," "the Voodoo King," one of the more regrettable characters on Battle Dome. He's also one of the sources of magical realism on Battle Dome. In some episodes, he places a "voodoo curse" (?) on his enemies, which the announcers treat as real actual science and matter-of-fact.
Providing cover for Cuda is "the mad biker" JAKE FURY, who rides in on a motorcycle with his emotional support babe ANGEL. I'll give this to the actors playing Fury and Angel: they go all in on their characters. In a show frequently lacking chemistry, Fury and Angel are the only convincing romance, like there is genuine fire in their eyes for each other. I think these two are gonna make it.
(Nevermind that their characters are constantly fighting and breaking up and Angel is always cheating on him. All women in the Battle Dome universe are portrayed as unreliable and disloyal. This show might have issues with race, but it has WAY more issues with gender. In one episode, Scott Ferrall calls a competitor a femboy, which I know was intended as an 2000-era insult but is mostly too funny in retrospect to take seriously.)
Fury embraces his role as the comic relief on this show. He does a lot of screaming and flailing like he's playing for the cheap seats at a Victorian pantomime. ("He needs help, doesn't he?" Albert comments.)
I want to take a moment to highlight Seth Stockton, who was the referee for both seasons of Battle Dome. His thighs are absolutely massive.
The competitors do much better on this one because they have gravity on their side. Nobody breaks any limbs. All the warriors are furious. The game is all tied up with 50 points a piece.
I cannot imagine anyone taking these characters seriously. I have frequently asked myself what the difference is between Battle Dome, which I love, and professional wrestling, which I do not care for. I think the difference is that Battle Dome kayfabe is punctured by the existence of real people competing against the Warriors. In wrestling, the fantasy world of roided-up supermen and scripted conflict exists in its own stupid universe. In Battle Dome, it's like people getting dragged on-stage to perform at a renaissance fair. I will absolutely root for these fictional characters to beat the shit out of the ordinary people* who have decided to compete on this show.
*For varying definitions of ordinary. Anyone who's decided to go on Battle Dome is at least slightly unhinged and willing to make bad decisions. I googled one of the competitors in season 2, and he made local news for getting into a swordfight outside of a steakhouse.
Bubba Time
Now it's time for one of the greatest Battle Dome events, AERIAL KICKBOXING. One competitor and one warrior have to hang onto these violently shaking monkey bars. The goal is to kick the other person off the monkey bars and not walk away with permanent spinal injuries.
Competing in this event is the people's champ, BUBBA KING. He is the cockiest motherfucker alive, and the audience eats it up. If it's not obvious, he's a redneck-themed character. (Regrettably, in this episode, he's wearing a Confederate flag hat.)
The look of a man who just realized he's going to get his head kicked off by Bubba King.
Images that precede unfortunate events.
Desolation. Every competitor goes down in seconds. It's a miracle any of these people lived to the end of the episode.
Bubba King is the closest I have come to understanding the hype around wrestling characters. With exceptions, most everyone else on Battle Dome seems to take the show seriously. Bubba steps out with a shit-eating grin and the confidence that he's going to absolutely dominate his event (through the entire run of Battle Dome, I think he only outright loses Aerial Kickboxing once). Even though he's a huge asshole who teabags his opponents, he's fun to root for, god help me.
Bad times in the Dome
The final event of the evening is the high-scoring ANTI-GRAVITY, but before we can get to that, there's some more drama happening backstage! Be warned, this is going to get really problematic really fast!
"This all happened during a sensitive interview about ancient voodoo ritual," Albert explains, convincing no one and making me regret writing about Battle Dome. Fury cuts off one of Cuda's dreads! Cuda is furious! Nothing in this scene resembles real human behavior. I don't know who this show is for!
I'm not gonna belabor what happens next, but it's pretty bad. Cuda brings out a voodoo doctor with a life-size voodoo doll of Jake Fury. There's some weird racist "voodoo magic" happening that involves spitting a lot of stage blood. The voodoo magic seems to actually grievously injure Jake Fury, who is escorted off-stage. It would be more objectionable if it wasn't so weird that voodoo is real in the Battle Dome universe.
It's unclear why the producers and writers wanted to interrupt the show with this ill-conceived storyline. Apparently it wasn't received well, because the soap opera aspects of Battle Dome were removed in season 2. Evidently people wanted the bloodsport with none of the manufactured wrestling-style hijinx.
Anyway, here's our next warrior, THE COMMANDER. He's like Kirkland-brand Duke Nukem, and he's exclusively trotted out for the high-scoring end-of-game events like Anti-Gravity. He's accompanied by KAREN KO, the wife of the Chairman who has decided to manage the Commander's Battle Dome career, with the implication that there's something going on between them behind the scenes ("I'd love to have his manager Karen Ko in my platoon!" Ferrall tells Steve Albert, making subtext into text.)
This is one of the weirdest recurring plotlines on Battle Dome. I think, in both Battle Dome and wrestling, that trying to pretend there's a fictional company running the show with competing layers of management is one of the most absurd suspensions of disbelief you can ask from the audience. Combined with the confusing Commander-Karen-Chairman love triangle that the show insists on bringing up, it goes nowhere.
I'm also baffled by the existence of fake soldier characters like the Commander, because I'd think the target audience for a show like Battle Dome would be incensed by the idea of stolen valor. In fact, this character is made out to be tougher than actual veterans! "He's seen more combat in a year than most soldiers see in a lifetime!" Albert announces. Take that, soldiers. He is the best soldier.
But now we're into the final event. As mentioned, the last event in season 1 is always worth a lot of points. Because it's so difficult to score during the rest of Battle Dome, this last event serves as a catch-up mechanic where anyone can win if they perform well.
Anti-Gravity might be one of the few events that would actually be fun to participate in. The competitor is strapped to the ceiling with a harness, and they have to pull themselves across the floor, hitting actuators along the way. The Warrior's goal is to pry the competitor off the ground and send them flying into the air.
I said this event looked fun to do for real, but I was wrong. In practice, the Warriors fight by choking out the competitors and pounding on their arms until their bones are about to shatter. In the parlance of Scott Ferrall, this sort of activity is known as "cranking" and "yanking."
This is it, but first...
After everyone's arms were annihilated by the Commander, we've narrowed it down to the top two competitors who will head into the final event. Battle Dome sideline correspondent Kathleen McClellan checks in our finalists, who are chronically unable to trash talk. Once again, the illusion of Battle Dome is briefly dispelled, this time by two dudes with no onscreen talent. They're no Bubba King.
But wait, we have some unfinished business to take care of. It's time for ULTIMATE BODY SLAM.
Introducing ULTIMATE BODY SLAM is the Chairman's secretary, BOBBIE HAVEN. Bobbie Haven is barely sketched out as a character and mostly shows up to wear revealing outfits, make pouty faces, and yell a lot, the apotheosis of Battle Dome's tortured relationship with women. It's also strongly suggested (mostly by Scott Ferrall) that she's sleeping with the Chairman, adding another person to the terrible love triangle that I don't think anyone watching this show cared about.
So what is ULTIMATE BODY SLAM, you ask?
The Warriors mount these disks...
... they're raised into the air...
...and slammed together! Whoever falls off loses. It's extremely loud. It feels like you'd get whiplash just by sitting next to it.
ULTIMATE BODY SLAM is mainly used for story events like this. However, it's also used for contestant tie-breakers, with one notable difference. It's clearly a struggle for contestants to hang onto the edge of the disk, so instead, the Warriors are allowed to get a firm grip on the support cables, and their falls look like they're staged. It's another gap between the real and fake worlds that Battle Dome tried melding together to mixed results.
T-Money triumphs. It's exciting but will mean nothing by the next episode.
And now it's time for the final battle! A dome-shaped cage lowers around the arena, and the Warriors lower down with it, circling the competitors as pyrotechnics go off. An extravagant, silly display. This show must have been amazing to watch in person.
In the final event... the competitors have to beat the shit out of each other until one of them falls off the platform. In season 1, there are no combat rules, so it usually devolves into both competitors hunkering down and dragging each other over the edge. In some episodes, there's no time limit, and the stalemate continues until someone physically gives way or concedes. It's brutal, but luckily in this episode, it's over quickly.
After a brief struggle, grey player wins!
For all his effort, he receives a Battle Dome ring from Bobbie Haven and a grand prize of One Thousand Dollars!
That's right: Winning Battle Dome and enduring life-changing injuries nets you an entire $1,000.00. If you want to win more, you have to come back for the semi-finals. Was it worth it?
The tagline for the show was "Real Warriors, Real Pain," and at least the second one of those is correct. Pain is the only real thing in the bizarre world of Battle Dome, where emotional truths have been replaced by body slams.
This is clearly not a good television show, and it is incredibly fun. 20+ years removed from airing, it's much easier to laugh at. If I wanted to show someone what American culture felt like at the turn of the millennium, I would show them Battle Dome. I would show them its bacchanalia of testosterone, its bizarre miscalculation of human drama, its Tommy Wiseau-style acting and understanding of women, its unrelenting grinder of human bodies, and then I would get popcorn.
So where do I watch Battle Dome?
It's not easy! Season 2 can be purchased on Prime Video. For some reason, season 1 is unavailable; my friend Molly and I had to track down the DVDs!
I think this is a good example of how talking about stuff you love is important for preservation. I learned about Battle Dome from Giant Bomb creative director Dan Ryckert, who streamed the entirety of Battle Dome on Twitch in 2022. If I hadn't caught his stream at the right time, I would never have heard about this show.
I know people get hyperfixated on lost media, but sometimes I think the bigger concern is neglected media, things that are already accounted for but nobody has bothered looking at in decades that are going to wither away from disinterest. Sharing something you're enthusiastic about it is the first step towards keeping it alive — even if that something is Battle Dome.
