>>6486400It's been confirmed they were a work, Romans weren't retarded and knew that if a guy got over the last thing you want is to risk having him killed by some random shitter in a shoot, gladiators also cost a lot of time and money to train. Gladiators had sponsors and advertised products, they were massively over with the lower classes to the point they had action figures and graffiti, wealthy women regularly paid to fuck them etc. I think occasionally they would bring some slave jobbers for them to squash but big names fighting was just to first blood, i don't know if the finish itself was worked by they were trained how to make a fight look good with minimal risk to their opponent.
