Dani Speegle Joins Amazon's American Gladiators Reboot, Premiering April 17

Dani Speegle is the only CrossFit Games athlete in a roster of 16 Gladiators when Prime Video's reboot of American Gladiators premieres April 17, making her the first competitor from the CrossFit Games circuit to hold a Gladiator role in the franchise's history. She competes under the name "Crush."

The full 16-person cast spans professional wrestlers, bodybuilders, and Division I athletes, but Speegle, a seven-time CrossFit Games qualifier and Titan Games Season 2 champion, is the sole representative of the functional-fitness world. That distinction puts CrossFit front and center on a platform reaching more than 240 countries and territories, the kind of mainstream exposure that no Open leaderboard can match.

If you're mapping the show's events to what you know from the gym, the programming is closer to a CrossFit test than the original 1989 series might suggest. Classic events returning for the reboot include Powerball, an explosive multi-directional scramble demanding agility and strength endurance; Hang Tough, which is essentially a grip and gymnastics challenge under pressure; and The Wall, functional climbing under fatigue. New additions called The Ring and Collision round out the event slate. Each episode runs 24 amateur contenders, male and female, against the full Gladiator roster, with a $100,000 prize and the title of American Gladiator Champion on the line at the season's end.

This is also Speegle's second turn on mainstream competition television, which matters for how CrossFitters should read the opportunity. Her Titan Games win in 2019 demonstrated that CrossFit-trained athletes can absorb the volume and skill demands of TV-format competition without dropping off. The Gladiators production filmed during summer 2025 at Aren'Ice in Cergy, France, the first time in the franchise's history that any version of American Gladiators was filmed entirely outside the United States, which adds to the global ambition of the reboot.

WWE's Mike "The Miz" Mizanin hosts alongside sideline reporter Rocsi Diaz. The theme song is "Rise Up," a new track from Grammy-winning artist Jelly Roll. Prime Video is rolling out the 10-episode season across three consecutive Fridays: the first three episodes on April 17, three more on April 24, and the final four on May 1.

The BBC's Gladiators reboot, already commissioned for a fourth series, proved the format still converts casual viewers into committed audiences. Amazon is betting the same dynamic holds in the United States, and casting an athlete who already has a real CrossFit following means the affiliate community becomes an instant marketing engine before a single episode airs. Watch parties, social content, and gym-floor debate about whether Crush would survive a Hang Tough bracket are already a realistic outcome for the week of April 17.