User reviews

Don't get me wrong. This ranks up there with my other low brow comedy shows on Spike like "1,000 ways to die." It's great for something to relax to, and watching people get splattered makes it all the more fun. But accurate it is not.

Their firearms knowledge is ludicrous. For example, on the Yakuza vs. Mafia episode they stated the Yakuza used the Walther P-38 pistol. Yet the graphics they showed were of a P-08 Luger. These are two totally, totally different looking pistols designed close to half a century apart. They had the IRA carrying a Boer War period .455 Webley revolver and they touted its reliability over a Makarov. I own both. There is no comparison between the Makarov and the Webley. You can't hit the broad side of a barn with a Webley.

They do not test uniformly. In the Yakuza vs. Mafia episode, the Mafia had six machine gun targets they had to hit with the Thompson. The Yakuza only had four they had to hit with a Sten. That gave the Sten an easier score. Worse still, they used completely different ways of testing the Russian hand grenade and the US hand grenade. Why not do something logical - put three pig carcases up in an enclosed room and see how each grenade does? It's a uniform test? I shouldn't expect too much from Spike. It's unabashedly guy TV, and I like that. But they could do a lot better job with a little more care.

I must first say about this series that the premise is outstanding, and one that has crossed my mind on numerous occasions. What would happen if a medieval knight met up with a samurai? Who would be victorious in battle?

The show then attempts to determine whom is the better warrior amongst two different kinds in history - in many cases two warriors that are separated by many centuries. The arms and armors available to these warriors are demonstrated, both in their lethal potential or in their stopping power in the case of armor. The demonstrations are fascinating, including weapons experts that strike or fire their weapons at ballistics gel encased, and presumably reproduction skeletons. A physician or medical specialist then examines the footage, or the dummy in some cases, and describes the type of trauma inflicted. At the end, we get a well choreographed fight between two re-enactors dressed in costume to simulate the potential outcome of such a contest, as well as a statistics model that determines the winner in 1,000 contests. I like this concept because despite the advantages a particular warrior might possess over another, the randomness of combat will ensure that even the presumably better warrior will lose at least a percentage of the time.

The problems with the show are many, however, and seriously challenge the credibility of the participants. As others have pointed out, a warrior is more than the sum of his weapons and armor, which the show spends the most amount of time demonstrating. I think the premise could be dropped and have the show focus on weapons demonstrations only. Although the mindset, culture, tactics, and goals of each warrior are mentioned, these descriptions are brief and superficial. In addition,the hypothetical combats displayed are all duels. Most of the warriors portrayed would rarely, if ever, be faced with a duel situation, instead fighting in a unit of many soldiers/warriors. The worst part for me has to be the banter or trash talk between the weapons experts representing each respective warrior. It reminds me of a WWE matchup or a pre-boxing/MMA trash session instead of a presumably serious and/or scientific look at a hypothetical combat situation.

At any rate, I do enjoy the show because it has many good aspects. But the flaws do not make for "must-see" TV. If they would focus a little more on the tactics, drop the banter, and perhaps consider tactical unit combat instead of duels, I believe the show would be much improved. The producers are obviously trying to cater to a younger, action thirsty crowd, perhaps in an effort to make history more interesting. I applaud this rationale if nothing else, but the more discriminating viewers with a desire for logical and factual history, such as myself, are often left wanting.

If any wish for a superior show with similarities to DW, check out an earlier History Channel series called "Conquest" with Peter Woodward. The latter is more mature, yet still with some light hearted moments. It covers nearly every criticism I have for DW and then some (see my review).

EDIT: I had not seen Season 3 prior to this original review, and S3 does cover some of my criticisms for the first two Seasons. The banter here has been toned down substantially and the combats all consist of units fighting each other. The warrior's mindsets, values, and motivations are explored with the addition of Richard Machowicz. I also liked the addition of the "X Factors" as well, or somewhat intangible characteristics such as mental health or physical fitness which could positively or negatively impact a side's performance. Overall the changes added a more serious and scientific component to the show that was a substantial improvement IMO.

There are still a few problems that I saw, particularly with the tendency to match two opponents who were not a very good matchup to begin with. Hannibal and Genghis Khan was a good example, as they were separated by nearly 1,400 years and Khan's armor and weapons technology was far superior. Same could be said of William the Conqueror and Joan of Arc. It was a little silly to see a unit of five men firing a heavy artillery piece at each other as well. The elite modern soldiers did not have weapons that they most likely would have carried. I am particularly thinking about the Rangers/North Korea and Gurkha/French Foreign Legion in that all these soldiers would have probably carried hand grenades and a pistol of some kind. Roosevelt/Lawrence of Arabia or even Washington/Napolean would have probably had pistols as well. Oddly enough, only Pancho Villa/Crazy Horse were depicted carrying pistols.

In general, the format changes in S3 were an improvement and I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the previous seasons.

Explaining the premise of this show to someone is truly humiliating. I'd rather just not bring it up. For those who don't know, it's a "who would win" contest where they choose warriors from history who never had a chance to fight. Often times these warriors are separated by centuries or even millenia, but they try to make the matchups as fair as possible.

It's a fun show to watch. Certainly the best part of the show is watching the weapon experts at work. The horseback archery from Attila vs Alexander, the blademaster from William Wallace vs Shaka Zulu, and the quickdraw and trick shooting from Jesse James vs Al Capone come to mind as some of my favorite moments.

Unfortunately, it's got a lot of problems. They are very, very loose with historical accuracy, and often they do an awful job of picking weapons - especially with the modern day warriors. They rarely test armor and almost never test shields - only the Spartan and the Viking had a real shield test. The outcome is decided by a simulator which runs on magic, and the decisions are questionable at best.

The choreographed fights are hit or miss. Some are thrilling, like Apache vs Gladiator, but some are downright stupid, like Roman Centurion vs Rajput Warrior, where the Roman throws his shield aside for no reason halfway through. They also rarely, if ever, show actions in the choreographed fights that match up with the tests or results.

This is definitely "turn your brain off", guts, gore, and splodin'-style entertainment. Actually, who am I kidding? You already knew if you were going to watch this show when you read the synopsis. You are either the right audience, or you aren't.

As others have stated there are certain problems with each separate episode. As an example Al Capone vs. Jesse James. There were no handguns used by Al Capone which was inaccurate. The use of the Chicago typewriter had all ammunition used in one continuous burst -- which action could be questioned. The Chicago typewriter could have been fired in shorter bursts to allow more accurate along with more sustained firepower without reloading.

In this episode Al Capone could have carried a Colt .45 1911 or other handgun. There would have been a difference in the amount of handgun firepower between a Colt .45 1911 and a Colt .45 Peacemaker revolver.

Also either side could have been armed with a 10 or 12 gauge shotgun which could have also made a difference in the outcome. In my opinion all avenues were not explored or considered.

In other episodes there seems to be questions in regards to individual combat vs. warriors who are used to fighting in groups. There are many differences in methods used during these confrontations, which should be taken into consideration along with an individual person's ability.

I've watched the first 2 episodes 1. Gladiator vs Apache Warrior and 2. Viking vs Samurai and was very impressed. The show uses a lot of the high tech data devices like Sports Science and goes as in-depth as possible in the shows time slot. It uses multiple factors in deciding who would win the fights. That range from distance to weapons used. The use of modern day experts in the cultures make for great trash talking. Other fights to look forward to include Spartans, ninja's and pirates. If your interested in the history of warriors throughout time and can believe in the science deciding the winner then this show is a must watch.

Deadliest Warrior turns out to be decent schlock entertainment, but like many good contemporary shows, turns out to be fairly informative. The notion that you could actually determine who is the deadliest warrior in history is silly, not because they compare warriors from completely different times who could've never met anyway, but rather because the match-ups are all out of context -- Gladiator vs. Apache? C'mon.

The show features a few regulars and then some guest warriors who specialize not only in knowledge of the particular warriors but who also are masters of the particular fighting styles and weapons of their particular historical warrior as well. The two different modern warrior groups usually trash-talk each other in goofy machismo fashion; I think they're being serious but it's good for a laugh.

Each show demonstrates the period weapons and their capability against fairly realistic human analogs. For instance, they smash in the head of a dummy with a tomahawk, and the dummy is a simulated skull with simulated brain matter surrounded by ballistics gel. When the skull flies apart, so does the brain matter; it's pretty graphic even though it's just a dummy. There are a few extremely impressive demonstrations of skill by the guest warriors, so that's cool to see.

The "computer program" they run at the end to determine who would win the most times out of 1000 appears to be some cheesy spreadsheet. I'm sure there's more to it, but they offer zero in terms of methodology, adding to the goofiness. The final battle simulation at the very end is pretty cool though, and it nicely ties in all of the weapons that were tested in the lab.

In all, I gave this show a 7 because despite several cornball facets to it, it really is entertaining to watch, occasionally funny, pretty interesting and -- the best part -- informative. I watch it with my two middle-school sons and they love it, and the show always evokes some good discussions of martial history between us. Oh, and although I can find no indication of who the narrator is, it sounds exactly like David Wenham from 300.

This show is very intellectual and enjoyable, and yet, like almost any other show on television, but it is not perfect. Perhaps my favorite match-ups are the ancient match-ups because their weaponry is more interesting. One real plus for this show is that they bring in people who know dead-on 100% what they are talking about when it comes to the soldiers or heroes (yes, they pit named military icons against each other to) they are testing. The show revolves around pitting two warriors who have never clashed in history against each other in a simulation program, which I should warn you is not always consistent with the tests done by the doctor, scientist, and weapons experts. And also, I'll even admit, there are some plot-holes between the historical factors of each warrior, but it is filled more so with consistent and accurate information about each trooper. The show even answers questions you may have had about people like the Samurai, Persian Immortal, Ninja, William Wallace, Atilla the Hun, etcetera. A funny thing about this show is that the weapons experts are always joking about the other sides' warrior, and since I don't hate the show, I can see and admit that none of them mean any offense to each other. Also, nearly all of the experts will describe their warrior as doing nothing but fight, this is obviously not something to take literally. There are also tests against armor and on vehicle that I wish they would do, but still, it is a good show with flaws. There is not a single legitimately bad episode in this show. I recommend it for anyone who is up for some informative and yet entertaining material.

This is a pretty entertaining show but a lot of the time it is pretty corny and the results don't add up in slightest. They make silling jokes on it ridiculous match ups and completely unfair testing. Even with all that though it still makes a decent watch if you are a fan of weapons. They test a wide variety of weapons and test their effectivness.

The only good part in the show pretty much is the testing even with how unfair and inaccurate the tests are. and some of the outcomes make absolutely no sense whatsoever. And some of the matches just make no sense at all. They are completely unfair and yet sometimes is ridiculous a oh lets say makes a 17 year old girl beat a 35 year old warrior

When I first saw the preview to this show a while back, I thought to myself, "I blame the whole PIRATE VS NINJA Internet Meme" for creating this bizarre show.

So, I watched the pilot, which was "Apache vs. Gladiator" and overall, I am biting my cheek right now because I recall watching something similar to this on Discovery Channel a few years back called "Animal Face Off" where "battle data" is taken from the contenders and put in a computer simulation. I actually, have an episode of that show titled "Hippo vs. Bull Shark" and the result of that fight still annoys me, but still I can't stop laughing about it. Another show, that similar that show is currently airing is "Jurassic Fight Club."

Anyway, "Deadliest Warrior" has a similar to motif to "Animal Face Off" and "Jurassic Fight Club", but instead of wild animals or dinosaurs, this show uses types of warriors.

I'm not sure if I should classify this as something in the realm of shows like "Human Weapon", "Fight Quest", "Weapon Masters", "Deadliest Art", "XMA: Extreme Martial Arts" or "Fight Science."

Overall, this show is pretty decent for all the corniness the show offers. It will irritate you, but at the same time make you laugh; thus pulling you as the viewer to watch the show for what its worth despite knowing how stupid it will eventually become as time goes on. But you just can't help yourself.

Man, I can just see something like "Deadliest Monster Face Off" in the future and it will feature stuff like "Mummy vs. Zombie vs. Werewolf vs. Vampire" or something bizarre like that.

This is a Spike TV show. Its inspiration comes from drunk arguments or smoke pontifications. What would happen if two different types of historical warriors who never came into contact actually get into a fight? It's a fun idea. The audience is introduce to a minimal history lesson, a few weapons from each fighter, and a faux simulation of the fight. The history lesson is only interesting for the less-known fighters. The weapons testing is the most interesting section. There are a few really obscure weapons. I've never seen the Chinese repeating crossbow. The Rajput weapons are weird. They also get to blow up stuff, slice and dice, and play with guns. The last section is the simulation section. It's the section that one could skip over. It's LARPing.

The third season tries to personalize the warriors by pinpointing historical leaders. It gives some unnecessary personal data and battle strategy. If you're comparing Joan of Arc with William the Conqueror, the personal size difference is of little interest to me. The battle strategy is intriguing in theory but this show is unable to do an in-depth dive into that subject matter. The show is grasping at straws by this point and Vampires vs. Zombies is the definition of jumping the shark. It's a fun little show while it lasted.

I remember watching this in high school and ended up buying all of the seasons because it was a nerd's wet dream. I'd completely forgot I owned it and I decided to rewatch after stumbling across them. After going through the series again, I still enjoyed it but felt the cringe at the forced rivalries and some of the reenactments. The weapons testing was always why I watched and still holds up, but any statistician would disregard the "advantage" without numerous tests on each weapon (admittedly they may do further testing that doesn't make the show). The concept was always going to be impossible to get 100% realistic/accurate. At the end of the day, a tool is only as good as the person using it.

Basic Story Guide:

Everyone has asked the question: If such-and-such fought this guy, who would win? Well, this show puts these fighters to test. Two fighters from both the pre-gunpowder and gunpowder eras, they have their weapons tested, and then in a simulation run over 1000 times, the winner is the one with the highest score.

Verdict:

I kind of enjoyed this series for a while. I really did. I enjoyed the series because it was fun, not because I am a history major, or ancient weapons expert, but because of what I am looking for when watching T.V. which is entertainment. I don't care about the logic behind the stunt, as long as the stunt is good. I'll throw the B.S. flag if I have to, but I'll continue watching the movie. Kind of a round about way to say I just want to be entertained.

But I really hate the announcer who does the whole David Wenham from 300 narration of the weapons. Overly exaggerating the weapons. Like saying "The Such-and-such spear, a three foot instrument of death." Two episodes later, "The some-screwed-up-tribes-name trident, a four foot razor sharp spear for maximum slaughter."

But if that is not bad enough, the guys who wield the weapons for their fighter are just annoying. Pardon my language, but they are constantly pissing and moaning, complaining that their weapon is better. God, it is so annoying. Some muscle bound jock who is either a member of the army, or just some know-it-all, arguing that an ax beats their sword, or that a gun is more effective than the other guys gun.

Either way I used to enjoy it, now it's just gotten annoying. And don't me started on season 3.

5/10

First, let me say that I think revisionist historians and their ilk are some of the worst criminals on the face of the earth. Anyone who contributes to anything related to revising historically known facts are contributors to those who would lie about history. It is bad because it causes all sorts of problems that we won't get into here.

These guys need an archaeological historian in a major way. we stopped watching after the samurai vs spartan thing because there is a reason for the progression from bronze to iron to steel in history. when you find something new that is better, one stops using the older inferior thing............simply, when bronze weapons are used against the finest steel weapons ever produced, the bronze weapons snap like twigs .......we know, we tried it.

The other suspicious thing about that particular travesty was the "Japanese" expert......as far as we could find, he was born in England and lives and works in Canada.........we found no evidence that he has any martial arts training or that he has any education in the history or sciences of ancient weaponry.......oh wait, he did study dancing in Japan.........not my idea of an expert suited to the task ..........we didn't actually care for his "technique" with the katana especially .........it's a sword, not a club or a baseball bat............and the most glaring error in the chosen weaponry had to be......naginata instead of the YARI, an amazing spear used by the samurai right up to the Edo period...........the naginata being more the weapon of priests, women, very under trained troops shanghaied from farms and oh yes, Kabuki dancers.

The naginata was not very popular with the samurai and the YARI would have been a more realistic choice but we can only guess why they didn't want to try a carbon steel straight blade with edges like razor blades, made with the same steel as a katana against an (LOL) animal hide shield with a bronze covering (like a hot knife through butter, perhaps?)

All in all, we can't begin to tell you how many, from a historical standpoint, gross errors and mistakes these guys have made but we can tell you to PLEASE don't use any thing they say in school.......if you do, speaking for those that may grade you, you will fail.

These are just a few of the reasons we no longer watch this foolish cartoon of a show...........we won't even get into how foolish the ninja/viking thing was as well, among other oblique fantasies these people have foisted upon us.

Having heard of this show coming to television, I was initially excited. Using science to prove the lethality of a warrior straight out of the history books sounded like a show I wanted to watch. And so I did. The first episode was mediocre, but I figured, "it's the first of its kind, they're just figuring out the ropes." I was wrong. This show uses an excel spreadsheet (yes, that "sophisticated" program) iteratively to generate a statistical victory 1000 times. The values, which I'm guessing are from 0-10, are entered by the computer programming "prodigy" into various columns defining various traits being evaluated. Everyone seems to get super excited by ridiculous things such as high speed footage more so than forces and accelerations measured by the "sophisticated" accelerometers used, which in my books, are common place, as found in many of today's touchscreen cell phones, cameras, etc. More on the front of sophisticated technology, they uses speed traps to measures velocities of projectiles. Oh, you mean like in Olympic track events like the 100 meter sprint? Lame. More importantly, for a show supposedly based on science, they violate one of the first rules of experimentation; change one variable while keeping all others constant. How can I determine the lethality of two different machine guns when one is used to obliterate a torso, while the other is used in a spread to shoot 10 subjects in a room? Ridiculous. Finally, as a mechanical engineering student myself, I am thoroughly disappointed by the engineer in the cast applying all this so-called sophisticated technology. For someone to have been trained for a number of years to think in a logical manner, the sheer fact he accepted a role on this show is somewhat disheartening. In general, I have nothing good to say about this show, other than it makes science seem like a wrestling match. A true shame. But I suppose I shouldn't expect anything overly intelligent coming out of the Spike TV production studios. I think I'll stick to MXC. At least I know it intends to be ridiculous.

This show gives the viewer the impression that it breaks down warriors from the past in a scientific manner that shows which warrior, if they met face to face, would be superior in combat. They tell us they use "state of the art" programs to create such a scenario based on tests they take from experts and historians.

However, what we get it a lot of poorly choreographed and cheesy fight clips involving two LARPers, a bunch of "experts" that seem to have all sorts of superiority complexes, and a nerd on his Alienware laptop typing "complex code," which probably bears similarity to a pokemon game.

The best part for me was when they actually tested guns on a fake skull with fake brains in it. As expected, the bullet penetrated the skull and left a messy exit wound in the back. Then with these "findings" they declared the weapon "lethal." Wow. I didn't know bullets to the head could be lethal! Thanks "Deadliest Warrior." The worst part is, they will give one "side" an "edge" over another even if both weapons seem proficient at killing another human being based on damage done on their dummies. Never mind the fact that a 50 pound axe takes a lot of grunt force to lift and swing around sluggishly. It deals more damage than a regular 8 pound sword that allows a soldier to be more maneuverable and swing more times. "EDGE: BATTLE AXE!" In the end they "punch the numbers" basically dealing damage to each side to come up with a victor through 1000 or so battles. Oh and you get to see the LARPers face off.

A clue to the direction of this show is the fact that it airs on Spike TV, and not TLC or Discovery. The resident experts in "DW" uses computer simulations which pits warriors from different eras to see who would have the most victories. In doing so it informs, undoubtedly, but more importantly it entertains. The furtherance of this goal is demonstrated in the contrived verbal sparring between rival teams, who predictably heralds the greatness of their respective warriors. This is the worse part of "Deadliest Warrior," a stage where participants play their respective roles. As an avid watcher of mixed martial arts and "sports entertainment" known as pro wrestling, two profession where there's no shortage of real and staged trash talking between competitors, this show is a tedious over saturation.

... And even they aren't that great.

The show itself takes an interesting, if unoriginal idea, of pitting warriors of different eras against each other. A few problems though.

1)Their experts are arrogant, ignorant, annoying and all too often deliver an opinion that is clearly scripted to create suspense and conflict. However, some of the guests to have impressive skills (I speak of course of the ninja guys).

2)The body of the show is filled with so much hyperbole, blatant romanticism, anachronisms, and unbearably 'Hollywood' attitude towards the whole thing that I can't even watch it.

3) Their tests are ludicrously poor.

4) The whole thing about the computer models is almost certainly BS (Sadly I cannot prove that.) On the other hand, the fight at the end can be pretty cool.

While this is certain to attract a certain type of viewer, watch only the first and last 5 minutes if you at all value the integrity of television.

The outcomes of the "simulations" are ridiculous, biased, and just plain and simply stupid. George Washington wasn't even the best American General of all time (not even close), and yet he somehow managed to "win" against Napoleon Bonaparte. Yes, Napoleon. Probably one of the top Generals in the Worlds History, along with Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Alexander,Belisarius, etc.

George Washington is not even in the top 100 generals list. He was a great leader, not a great general, and certainly would not stand a chance against Napoleon.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg, not worth watching, not even for a minute.