Not More Top 10s... Kidding, That's Exactly What It Is

The Confederator *final

     Bad TV can take you down so many twisted rabbit holes. Jaimee Foxworth played Judith on the hit sitcom Family Matters, but after 4 seasons as the youngest Winslow daughter, she was retconned—meaning her existence was erased from the show for the remaining 5 seasons. Foxworth’s mental health was devastated when she was written off the show with zero explanation by the writing staff. Her next gig was on Celebrity Rehab, season 1. 

Serial killer Rodney Alcala claimed anywhere from 9-130 victims, and appeared on The Dating Game in 1978. Almost as troubling, the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory ran for 12 seasons and 279 episodes. And as we’ll learn in this story, a new character joined the American Gladiators in the final season of the show. He was a southern rebel known as The Confederator. 

Born in Woodley, Alabama, on the day of the moon landing, Richard “Richie” Taters was the 13th of 15 children sired by Trish and Travis Taters. Ma and Pa Taters played dueling banjos outside the local Cracker Barrel to support the family. The booming clan lived in a crowded shack at the end of a dusty cul-de-sac. The Taters were high on pride and low on biscuits, so Richie soon got in the habit of fighting, biting and scratching for table scraps and hugs from his Ma. In the Tater home, love often took a backseat to competition. 

Young Richie Taters achieved his lifetime goal as a freshman in high school when he gave himself a Daisy Duke tattoo on his back. But he wasn’t satisfied with that. He kept striving for that next biscuit—never content. 

He was the dreamer in the brood. He had many flaws—conceit, cruelty, and ignorance among them—but he was not lazy. From heaving tractor tires to digging ditches to saving up his paper route cash to buy a gym membership, Taters #13 was a hustler with a sun-scalded neck. 

Foul-mouthed, brash and buff, Richie earned a spot on Gladiators in the show’s twilight year. Like certain wrestlers from Nashville, he’s not widely known in the north, but in the south, plenty of folks will sing his praises. 

The Confederator is the most-arrested cast member in the history of the American Gladiators, but there’s a lot more to his legacy. For instance, the cops gave him dozens of warnings, too. 

But in order to best express all the triumphs and downfalls of this proud southern man, I reached out to Nitro, one of the most iconic Gladiators. I found Nitro on Instagram. His most popular video is one of him doing pushups beside a collection hat on the Vegas Strip. I asked for an interview in the comments. He said yes, on the condition that I fly out to see his one-man show, “Saturday Nitro Live.” 

I wish the man was less biased, but as it turns out, Nitro and The Confederator are bitter enemies. In the interest of fairness, I tried to get feedback from other Gladiators, but they’re all either dead or they don’t understand how cellphones work. Regardless, I’m grateful to get this insight from a credible, esteemed source named… Nitro. 

Hello and USA-USA-USA, everyone. It’s your bro Nitro here. If you wanna know my real name, you’ve got to come to the Vegas Strip and donate to my hat like everyone else. As for this bozo, The Confederator, he is a real stain in the gym shorts. I didn’t like him one bit. He once put superglue on my pugil stick. Hell, I had to stand up in my brother’s wedding holding that pugil stick. Folks got photos of my brother on his wedding day trying in vain to rip that pugil stick out of my hands—and that’s not funny! In the locker room, he’d flush the toilet when I was in the shower, and he never gave me respect for my ability in the crochet arts. 

Worse of all, I’m a proud citizen of these United States, and I’ll never forgive the Confederator for his rebellion against the American Gladiators. 

You may call him a hustler, but let me tell you, he was only hustlin’ to find some blow for the studio suits. But when it came to guys like me and Gemini, he wasn’t as fast finding coke. I get that he was party buddies with the show’s creator and also Jeffrey Epstein, and he could spin a pinball machine over his head like the rest of us, but I wouldn’t call those things credentials. Hell, I took a bullet for OJ Simpson just to get an interview. And I wasn’t even his bodyguard! I was just a guy at a club who loved The Naked Gun and saw someone draw heat on him. I did the right thing! 

On his first day, I gave Taters the grand tour of the Gladiator Arena. That meathead had the audacity to scoff at the Eliminator. 

“You call this the ‘Liminator?” he said. “Treadmills, balance beams—what, are we trainin’ for the Chick Olympics in Gay Paree? This here ‘Liminator ain’t no match for me: the Confederator.” 

Then he spat tobacco onto the sacred inclined treadmill. I lost track of how many times that slimeball spat on the Eliminator. Siren tried to reason with him. She told him that every time he did that, an angel would get paralyzed by a barbell squat gone wrong. But again, the Confederator only scoffed. He never shot a chew loogie at a contender directly because that was forbidden. But he got around that by spitting on one of the medicine balls and swinging it at a guy as he ran across the balance beam. Can’t lie, he could be a clever S.O.B.

Early and often, The Confederator raised heck. During practice, he used to shoot the tennis ball gun at folks. Custodians, maintenance, electricians, Make-a-Wish kids, children of Gladiators with names like Spark and Jab—it didn’t matter. When someone told him to knock it off, he’d holler back that he’d “done it for Shits and Giggles.” Shits and Giggles were his 2 best pals from Alabama. They were always doing lines off the Powerball cylinders and daring Richie to pull off some Chris Kyle shenanigans with that tennis ball shooter. 

For his morning commute, Richie rode a Honda 3 Wheeler to the arena. Was it street legal? Well, is Gemini a slouch on the Soloflex? The answers are no. He’d be chugging Jim Beam with one hand, blaring an air horn with the other, and steering with his knees. You call that professional?!

As the new guy, he sure had a lot of demands. Before the first event, the PA would always play “The Star Spangled Banner” to inject America into our Gladiator hearts. Well, Richie demanded an anthem for southerners, “Sweet Home Alabama.” And I don’t mean the studio version, which is almost 5 minutes long; I’m talking about the extra-long, 8-and-half minute live version from Southern by the Grace of God. He was the only cast member from Alabama, and besides, the rest of us were into heavier stuff like Poison and Bon Jovi. He was one selfish dude. 

We had a TV set up in the weight room. I cannot tell you how many times I had to break up a fight because The Confederator had to watch Dukes of Hazzard but Tower wanted to watch the A-Team. I took several weight-plate blows to the skull trying to be the peacemaker and my brain has never been the same. 

He hated the Atlasphere, just because of the name. He’d protest, “I ain’t gonna use no word what sounds like it been named by a Harvard boy from Europe!” 

Gold challenged him. “You got a better word for it?” 

“Yup,” The Confederator said. “I calls it a Roundy Cage, thank you very much.” 

His troublemaking was too much. We knew he was a threat to our Union of Gladiators when he attacked Gemini, our unitard-wearing brother in arms. He did something to a fellow Gladiator that we took a blood oath to only do to contenders. He tackled Gemini off the face of the Wall. In doing so, both contenders who got a head start successfully cleared the Wall and high-fived each other. It was a bad look for us. 

Gemini and The Confederator grappled on the safety mat, 2 bitter and defeated Gladiators. Gemini called him out. 

“What in the name of Carl Weathers is your problem?!” 

“You’s a slow climber!” Richie said. “It’s survival of the fittest—ha!” 

It took a combination of Turbo, Malibu, Jazz, Laser, Lace, Viper, Elektra, Sunny, Cyclone, Joe Theismann, myself, and a fire extinguisher to stop the brouhaha. 

What a disaster. Afterwards, we tried to get him fired, but he was still really good at finding blow for the suits—and Shits and Giggles took it to another level. In solidarity, the American Gladiators united against The Confederator, and we agreed to buy a little less coke from him too. 

One night he crashed a Jacuzzi party at Zap’s condo. Moonshine in hand, he taunted our girl Zap for “Doin’ the Human Cannonball like a giiiirrll.” She hammer punched him in the sternum and bit off his earring as he squealed like a tortured pig. Zap was one righteous babe you did not want to eff with. 

Around this time, The Confederator got dumped by his girlfriend. She happened to be the chick who played Snow White at Disney World in Orlando. Well, Jazz was dating the Evil Queen, and she got the dirt on the breakup. She left him ‘cause he kept inviting her coworkers into the bedroom to “Let the Dwarfs watch.” What a sicko! You can bet your butt we gave him heck about that. And he battled back. 

Only, he tried a sneak attack. That man landed a speaking part as Thug #3 on an episode of Renegade, so I’m here to tell you that he could act. He got into the character of a kind and calm man who had learned from his mistakes. He kept this up for a month, then invited the gang to his home town for a charity event. 

We should’ve known he was up to something. None of us had ever heard of a Civil War reenactment for charity. But inside every American Gladiator is a generous spirit. Plus he promised us some cheap blow. 

At first, the crowd at Robert E. Lee Park in Woodley gave us a warm welcome. I signed my John Hancock on so many Fanny Packs my hand started to cramp. But once we put on those blue Union uniforms, those southerners changed. They booed us without mercy. An old guy whipped his dentures at me. A kid in a wheelchair called Turbo a “no-good poopy pants.” It got ugly real quick. 

Then The Confederator and dozens of his cohorts stormed over the hill at us, waving that Confederate flag. We Gladiators took aim with our muskets and fired, but it was no use. 

“Southern Man can’t be hurt by no make-believe bullets!” Richie sneered. 

The blanks were useless if they refused to play along. 

The Confederator clubbed Gemini with his musket, then shoved Zap into a pricker bush. Meanwhile, Shits and Giggles hurled sacks of skunks at us. We were forced to retreat. It was the worst defeat the American Gladiators had suffered at the hands of The Confederator. Plus, we found out later that the “charity” was just a way for him to pay off his gambling debts to a Colombian drug lord. 

They chased us all the way back to the Gladiator RV in the parking lot. Fun fact: that RV used to belong to the cast of MTV Road Rules. Bloodthirsty Confederator-ites and their leader swarmed the vehicle. We gasped for air in terror as they smacked their muskets against the doors and windows of our sanctuary on wheels. Clad in a gray tanktop with his biceps glistening in the hot sun, The Confederator stood on the hood and taunted us with double birds through the windshield. 

Thankfully, we had a stash of pugil sticks and tennis ball shooters in the RV. We also had a safe with special supplies inside, for emergencies like this. We needed that instant boost of strength and aggression to save us. I don’t want to get into details, so let’s just say Popeyes ate their spinach. And when I say “Popeyes,” I mean “Gladiators.” And when I say “ate,” I mean “shot.” And when I say “spinach,” I mean “syringes filled with anabolic steroids.” 

I led the charge through the side door, bulldozing through a horde of Alabamans who had poked us Gladiator bears ‘til we gave them the beating of a lifetime. I found that toothless old man and crushed his groin with my pugil stick. Turbo had found a banana cream pie in our mini-fridge, which he smushed into the face of the kid who called him poopy pants. Malibu proved he was no sexist, as he pelted both men and women in the face with tennis balls at point-blank range. Zap, Jazz and Gold formed a beautiful yet vicious tornado-ballet attack with their pugil sticks that concussed a quarter of the adult population of Woodley, Alabama. 

On the roof of the RV, Gemini tossed one of his 2 pugil sticks to The Confederator, and they dueled one-on-scumbug. Legend has it that the moment before he was bludgeoned into a coma that lasted 3 weeks, Richie’s last words were, “Can I have some ‘roids too?” 

It was a proud day in American history when the Gladiators brought that sleepy town to its knees. And though we were sued by the people of Woodley for assault, battery, and pie-facing that kid, our lawyer Johnny Cochrane got all the charges dropped. 

“If it was in self-defense, then the prosecution relents,” Johnny argued. When he said that in court, we had no clue what that meant, but hey, it won us the trial. Best in the business. RIP, Johnny!

When he woke up from his coma, one of the suits told The Confederator that he was no longer a performer on the show. He got demoted to a custodian for the American Gladiators, so he stayed in the Union, so he was relieved to keep his paid holidays and dental plan. He would’ve been fired outright for his insurrection, but the suits still believed in him, as a good coke dealer. 

As much as I’d like to begrudge Richie Taters, in spite of my daydreams of pumping iron on his grave, I’ve got to admit he’s a resilient SOB. He’s outlived friends of mine like Thunder and Siren and even after his demotion to mopping floors and cleaning up our sweat in the weight room, he never lost his swagger. I’d taunt him with a pugil stick and challenge him to a duel when he had a broom in hand. He’d hold his head high as I snickered at him. 

The Gladiators got canceled. On my last day on the job, when our final show was a wrap, I lingered in the showers, all the memories washing over me. Suddenly the water turned cold and I yelped at the sound of a toilet flushing. I heard Richie’s laugh. I wasn’t even mad.

I had to ask him, how could he still laugh and joke around when we had put him in his place, made him surrender. 

The man once known as The Confederator shrugged and said this: “I’m just always fightin’ for my next biscuit.” 

I suppose he found one of those biscuits a few years back when he landed the job of custodial specialist for Kid Rock. He brought along Shits and Giggles too, because they were good at cleaning toilets, and finding blow. 

Back in the showers on my last day at work, I stood there in front of Richie nude and vulnerable. I didn’t have a response to his comment about the next biscuits. I didn’t need one. I gave him a nod of respect and that was it. 

We would’ve been cool to this day, but as I walked past him, he whipped my bare ass with a wet towel. It really stung! Then he ran like hell laughing and I never caught him. 

Eff you, Confederator! Just… eff you! 

Anyway, I hope this helps with your story, Nick. By the way, I’ve seen pictures of you on Instagram. I’d like to insult your body, destroy your self-esteem, then encourage you to lift weights. The problem is, I can’t decide which part of your body, which is quite bony and underwhelming, to insult first. I’ve got it narrowed down to your skeleton shoulders and sticklike forearms. To be honest, it might come down to a coin flip. Let’s keep in touch until I can figure this out. 

From the bottom of my heart beneath my massive, swelling pecs, I want you and your audience to hear these words of wisdom: USA, USA, USA!

Yours truly,

Nitro