“I’ve been waitin’ for this chance to start bashing skulls.”
So says Jason, 27-year-old therapist and competitor on Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge, the show devised and hosted by former WWE wrestler, your friend and mine, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
Unfortunately for Jason, there aren’t many opportunities to literally bash or indeed break any skulls other than the competitors’ own. There are, however, plenty of opportunities to prove that you are one of the “toughest badasses in America” that Steve is looking for.
Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge is a bit like if Gladiators was made on a budget in the desert by a former pro wrestler with time on his hands and madness in his eyes. In fact, it’s almost exactly like that. That may even have been the pitch.
Each week, Stone Cold takes eight bulked-up athletes down to the Broken Skull Ranch and pits them against each other in tough physical competition. Three elimination rounds separate the wheat from the chaff, followed by a one-on-one grappling match to determine the victor.
The winner goes through to take on the Skullbuster – a 1/2 mile-long obstacle course that, supposedly, no one has been able to complete. If they manage to beat the Skullbuster, they walk away with a cash prize of $10,000. It’s a decent chunk of money, but when you consider that you could win £250,000 just by telling Noel Edmonds which red box you’d like to open next, it’s a bit of a gyp.
The elimination rounds change each week, but let’s just use the first episode to give you a flavour of the show. The first round is the subtly titled TRENCH WARFARE. Two competitors get in a water-filled trench, at either end of which is a bell. All you have to do is ring your opponents bell before they ring yours. Inevitably, this results in two blokes thrashing around and almost drowning each other.
Already you see what this show is about: it’s about being manlier than the other man (it’s not just for dudes, though – the second episode is all-female). “I love the smell of combat in the morning,” Steve Austin bellows, the first of many unintentionally hilarious outbursts from the six-time WWE Champion. “That man just proved his toughness,” he yells again, pointing at a victor. What Steve Austin lacks in poetic grace he makes up for with sheer, unrestrained volume.
Round two is THE PULVERISER. The four remaining competitors are given a sled attached to a rope. They have to pull the sled to a set of weights, fill up the sled, then pull it to the next set of weights, and so on. It’s a full-on race, and by the looks of things, fucking hard work. “That was closer than two bears in a phone booth,” says Steve Austin. It’s hard to say whether Steve Austin is trying to be funny, but regardless of his intentions, he’s a riot.
Steve Austin is the perfect host for this show. If Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge was a radio production, it would just be people competing to be the loudest at shouting. This is the physical equivalent of being the loudest at shouting, so it makes perfect sense that you’d have someone who is the Intercontinental Champion of loud shouting to do shouting all over the show.
Round three is THE JUNKYARD, which literally consists of a race to move 600 lbs of junk from one end of a course to the other. As soon as you’ve shifted all the heavy, rusty crap, you can get into THE PIT, where the two remaining competitors fight to the death. Wait, no. The just try to push each other out of the ring, but there is no doubt in my heart that if the two finalists were handed broadswords, they would do everything in their power to end each other, right there on reality television.
“My strategy is to get to the pit first, wait for him to finally show up, then I’m just gonna explode,” explains one plucky finalist. It’s a good strategy – nothing guarantees success like spontaneous human combustion.
Finally, THE SKULLBUSTER. It’s amazingly easy to take the piss out of ultra-macho dick-measuring contests like this, but the final challenge of Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge is genuinely punishing; the finalist’s fingers are literally bleeding by the end of the ordeal. Here it is:
*deep breath*
First you have to carry a 60 lbs log for 1/4 of a mile, then crawl under 30ft of barbed wire, then swing across a mud pit, then cross 60ft of cargo netting, then walk across balance beams and see-saws, then crawl across a rope suspended 12ft in the air, then jump over three walls increasing in size, then go over and under wooden beams in freezing water, then run up a giant hill and back down, then climb up a 17ft rope and ring a bell.
If you can do all of that, you get the $10,000. Not only that, you also set the time for all other competitors to beat. Each time they fail, you get their $10,000 as well.
Needless to say, this show is ridiculous – ridiculously entertaining. If you appreciate physical fitness and amazing feats of strength and endurance, you’ll enjoy Steve Austin’s Mad Bastard Challenge. If you appreciate overblown machismo and former pro wrestlers shouting nonsense at the kind of people who stole your backpack at school, you’ll enjoy Steve Austin’s Muscular Death Wish Challenge.
Hell, if you have eyes and a brain, you’ll enjoy Steve Austin’s Testosterone Fist Fuck Challenge. In fact, you don’t even need a brain to enjoy Steve Austin’s Throbbing Dick Fight Challenge – just shut up and watch it.
Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge is on Dave, weekdays at 7pm.
