Wrestling championship titles come and go, but for the rest of his life, the title of American Gladiator can never be taken away from Jessie Godderz. But for the athlete now known as “Steel,” one lapse in strategy almost let that opportunity slip away.
Godderz, however, proved that Steel may bend, but in this case, it surely didn’t break—and as a father, it’s a lesson he hopes his kids can learn from. He was selected, along with 15 other athletes, to compete on the classic show—which drops its Season 1 finale on May 1 on Prime Video—and the rest can be streamed for eternity.
“I went for broke every time,” he says. “I just outperformed everybody at the event right before it. They knew what they were going to get out of me.”
Relishing his new Gladiator role, the shredded sports star is perhaps best known as the former 12-time OVW wrestling champion—aka “Mr. PEC-Tacular”—or the arrogantly entertaining bad guy from his stint on Big Brother nearly two decades ago and most recent reality show House of Villains. Love him or love to hate him, whether he’s hoisting one of his belts in the air or making reality TV housemates cringe with every double-biceps flex, one thing has always been certain: Godderz is determined to maximize every moment of every opportunity.
However, as he shares, in this one moment going all out can backfire. He admits that during a bodyweight challenge portion of the American Gladiators football-combine-style auditions, giving 100 percent nearly cost him the chance to put his name alongside Gladiator legends Nitro, Malibu, and Zap. Godderz says he dominated the pushup and pullup portion of the tryout, knocking out around 100 pushups in a minute, followed by 46 pullups.
Then came the third event—a high rope climb—that left him with nothing but noodle arms, unable to complete the ascent. Luckily, he says, his overall performance was enough to offset the rope blunder.
“I was like a cheetah after running 70 or 90 miles an hour—and then there was nothing left,” he recalls, laughing. “There was about a zero percent chance that I was getting up that thing. If there was ever something that’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life, that was it.”
He can laugh now, standing alongside Gladiator teammates such as Bull, Mayhem, and Neon for the first season of the show reboot, but preparing for American Gladiators’ demanding 10-episode schedule was no joke. And as the arena’s elder statesman, this time he was going up against competitors nearly half his age, although you’d be hard-pressed to see the gap in his still PEC-tacularly flawless and seemingly ageless physique. The lifetime of gains he says are the results from more than two decades of steady weightroom work.
“I’ve stayed pretty consistent my entire life, and I encourage or implore anybody to try and find a bad photo of me or without abs,” he says. “That’s two-plus decades of having abs, and I’m very proud of that,” he says.
To pull off the role of Steel, Godderz says he had to shift his training from bodyslams, power bombs, and his signature “Adonis Crab” to learning how to navigate events like the Joust, Powerball, and the Gauntlet. Both competitions demand elite athleticism, but becoming leaner, faster, and more powerful became new objectives. And like he’s done at each stage of his career, Godderz came up big at the right moment.
“I just solely wanted to focus on this because I didn’t want to lose,” he says. “It’s such an honor to be an American Gladiator. I wanted to literally go out there and make sure that when somebody said my name and they knew that they were going up against Steel, it was one of those like, ‘Not this guy.’”
Prime Video
The Gauntlet: How Jessie Became an American Gladiator
He may now be 40, shows no signs of slowing down. And Jessie Godderz will be the first one to tell you this.
“As far as I’m concerned, I can still be booked as a 20-year-old,” he says. “Just throw some lipstick on this pig and send me out there.”
His tryout tribulations were far from the first time the one-time bodybuilding champion pushed himself to the limit—Godderz has been giving this type of max effort for decades. Check out some classic YouTube clips and you’ll find the former two-time TNA World Tag Team Champion—then one-half of the BroMans with partner Robbie E—blasting back with bodybuilding legend—and former American Gladiator Mike O’Hearn, aka Titan—banging out minute rounds of high-rep pullups. So it was fitting that O’Hearn was one of the first to congratulate him on his new role.
“He just said, ‘Welcome to the family. Do us proud,’” Godderz recalls.
Going from Mr. PEC-Tacular to Steel required Godderz to tweak his tried-and-true bodybuilding-style workouts. “I didn’t want to stray away or lose the size that I’ve had, because that’s what brought me to the show,” he says. “I was always doing a bro science bodybuilder split my entire life.” Chest day. Back day. Arms. Shoulders. Legs. Heavy weights, high volume, one rest day.
His new role required a more specialized approach. Workouts were broken down, he says, into A and B days—one focused on strength, the next on speed. For the first time, Godderz was incorporating dedicated footwork into his routines. Sprints, cone drills, ladder work, and sport-specific movements helped him adapt to moving on narrow overhead beams, a far different task than simply owning the top rope in wrestling. While he still prefers to throw down when needed, this new type of training prepared him for the exciting, overhead battles Gladiator fans expect.
“Mr. PEC-Tacular was more ground and pound,” he says. “For American Gladiators, I definitely had to tap into my inner Jeff Hardy. Once you start climbing up on top of stuff—we’re 30 or 40 feet up in the air during an event like the Joust—it’s just mano a mano. You have 30 to 60 seconds and you have to go wide open. You need to be total full-body exhaustion, or as far as I’m concerned, you didn’t try hard enough.”
Eating Like A Steel From OVW Champ to Full-Speed Steel
Other than revamping his training program to meet the demands of an American Gladiator, producers left it up to the contestants to decide what kind of physique they would bring to the arena. After all, it was their already-ripped athletic bodies that helped pave the way for this legendary opportunity.
While wrestling was more hectic due to travel and unpredictable schedules, becoming a Gladiator required a tighter, more structured nutrition plan. Godderz hired nutritionist Tyler Garceau to help him put together a program that allowed him to both stay both bodybuilder shredded and athletically agile. “I wanted to be as full as possible. I wanted to be as big as I possibly could at my frame and still be able to move my feet,” he says.
He kept his calories between 2,200 and 2,700 per day, with the higher amounts reserved for high-intensity days. His protein stayed consistent at around 212 grams daily.
Unlike the grind of wrestling—where a few hard-boiled eggs from a deli could pass for a protein-packed meal on the go—catering on the Gladiators set made it easier to stay locked in. “They treated us like kings and queens over there,” he says. “They did a phenomenal job of trying to preserve everybody’s energy and nutrition. couldn’t have asked for anything better.”
On event days, this timing became critical. Godderz added fast-digesting carbs, like Vitargo, before taping to stay pumped and powerful for those 30- to 60-second bursts. “I was taking, like, full servings before, so I’d want to pump up and be as full as possible as soon as we started,” he says.
Maintaining a Legacy and Sharing Lessons
Becoming an American Gladiator has been a dream come true for an athlete-celebrity who continues to reinvent his career while maintaining the youthful physique that helped launch his wrestling and television run nearly 20 years ago. Like everything else he’s earned, he went all in—and came away with the honor of standing alongside some of his boyhood idols.
“You grow up watching this,” he says. “Not one person has any kind of ill word toward American Gladiators. Everybody, as soon as you utter the words, is like, ‘Oh man, I used to love that show.’”
At 40, he still carries the same PEC-Tacular persona he’s built since becoming both a champion and a hard-to-hate reality-show heel. But what makes this new role different is that he gets to share the moment with his young sons. At the end of the day, father remains the most important title on his résumé.
“My 2-year-old, 3-year-old, 5-year-old can just hear the music, and they just start saying, ‘Daddy, Daddy’s on TV, Daddy’s on TV.’”
Sharing the message of consistency with his kids is the most important reason why Jessie Godderz, at any age, will always keeping pushing to make it to the top of the rope.
“I want my son to make sure that he knows he can’t ever give up,” Jessie says. “And I want him to see that, as an American Gladiator, Daddy never gives up either.”
