TV

“Violently Stupid and Insane”: The Oral History of ‘Pros vs. Joes’

Fifteen years ago, Spike TV launched the ultimate fantasy: a show in which amateurs could compete against sports legends. The final result was as absurd as the premise. Now, as the creators try to reboot the series, those involved—from the Pros to the Joes—remember what it was like making the original.

TV

“Violently Stupid and Insane”: The Oral History of ‘Pros vs. Joes’

Fifteen years ago, Spike TV launched the ultimate fantasy: a show in which amateurs could compete against sports legends. The final result was as absurd as the premise. Now, as the creators try to reboot the series, those involved—from the Pros to the Joes—remember what it was like making the original.

By John GonzalezJune 17, 2021, 10:30 am UTC • 23 min

Every kid who grows up watching sports dreams about making it big as a pro—hitting a home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in the World Series; sinking the game-winning 3 at the buzzer in the NBA Finals; throwing for a touchdown in the Super Bowl. It’s a near-universal childhood fantasy, though not everyone ages out of it.

When Eliot Shorr-Parks tweeted this last year, he unleashed a swift and unrelenting backlash—thousands of replies eager to let the Philadelphia Eagles reporter know that his self-aggrandizing summation of his physical skills was detached from reality. In fairness, Shorr-Parks isn’t the first grown man to convince himself that he can compete with professional athletes. Not even close. In fact, that very premise gave birth to one of the most batshit reality shows in modern television history.

It has been 15 years since Pros vs. Joes debuted on what was then Spike TV. The concept was simple in theory, if not in execution: Big-name professionals going against no-name amateurs. What emerged from that elevator pitch was a kind of Frankenstein fantasy camp where scores of overconfident bros who never made it were frequently embarrassed by guys and gals who played, and dominated, at the highest levels.

The first trailer for the show couldn’t have been a better snapshot of the mid-2000s, a time best forgotten but defined by talentless armchair quarterbacks in untucked button-down shirts, too-baggy jeans, and square-toe shoes who probably never missed an episode of Entourage. The commercial features some generic hard rock guitar chords, a growly “In a World”–style voice-over, and, best of all, some guy in a basement calling Bo Jackson—a two-sport superstar and one of the great athletes of his or any generation—a “hack.” It’s a masterpiece.

Yet the most eye-popping part of the trailer was the promise to deliver scores of A-list athletes—“Bo Jackson, Bill Romanowski, Dennis Rodman, Jennie Finch, Jerry Rice, Clyde Drexler, and many more.” And indeed, over the course of five seasons from 2006 to 2010, Pros vs. Joes convinced more than 100 marquee names, many of them Hall of Famers and Olympians, to pummel random dudes on basic cable in games that, at times, bore only a fuzzy resemblance to real sports. Those beatdowns were by design, and they weren’t merely figurative. The violence of various interactions between the Pros and Joes was baked into the program, especially when football players, wrestlers, and boxers were involved. The episode titles weren’t subtle about what the show was selling, either: “Can You Take a Hit From Kevin Greene?,” “John Randle Bloodies Some Joes,” and “Kurt Angle Kicks Some Joe Ass.”

From an insurance liability standpoint alone, it is remarkable the show ever got made. The era made it possible: The walk-it-off, rub-some-dirt-on-it ethos was commonplace in sports in the mid-to-late aughts. What we didn’t know—or rather what we ignored—about collisions and concussions was treated as something to profit from and exploit. And not just by Spike TV: For a long while, ESPN’s NFL shows featured a knuckle-dragging highlight segment called “Jacked Up.” But while leagues and the networks that cover them have since realized it’s in their best interests not to promote that kind of unvarnished violence, that doesn’t mean consumers have completely lost their appetite for contact and competition. At the very least, Pros vs. Joes stands as a nostalgia-inspiring relic. 

To hear the people involved—Pros, Joes, creators, producers, and hosts—tell it, Pros vs. Joes was every bit as wild and unregulated as it appeared, complete with grizzly hits, nighttime production shoots that ran long into the next morning, booze-fueled post-show hangouts, and no small amount of shit-talking. Not to mention the time Bo Jackson refused to come out of his trailer until he got paid extra. All of that because of a long-shot, madcap concept that was essentially scribbled down on a napkin over lunch.

Part 1: Securing Pros—and Securing the Bag

Petros Papadakis (host, seasons 1-3, former USC football captain, current radio host and Fox Sports college football analyst): I can’t remember being more flippant in an audition. I was laughing at them when they told me they were going to put Jerry Rice in pads in a football stadium. I was like, “You guys are fucked up.” 

Michael Yudin (cocreator, executive producer): It all started in a very cool way. It was a lunch I had with Doug Herzog, who at the time took over Comedy Central and the entertainment group. Spike had just started. And we just started talking about things—talking about sports and going to fantasy camp. 

Kevin Kay (president, Spike TV): One of the reasons we were able to be so aggressive is because we were Spike. We were the network for men. Our marketing slogan at the time was “Get more action,” so it totally fit the brand. USA wouldn’t have done it. I guarantee that. 

Joe Townley (executive producer): To start, we needed 10 names. That was the tough one. But then once we got Jerry Rice a lot of things started to fall in place. It was always trying to up the ante with the biggest names. Michael Irvin or Dennis Rodman. You can go down that list. 

Michael Irvin (NFL Hall of Famer): I let some guys talk me into it. They said “Michael, this will be fun. Let’s go have some fun.” And when you retire, you still have that itch to compete. So I was like, “Hey, let me go beat up on some regular Joes, man, and pick up a little check.”

Papadakis: Michael Irvin in full pads. I burst out laughing. And they paid these people. They paid the shit out of people. I made some money on it, but I had no idea what was going on. 

Scott Messick (executive producer): The Pros were very difficult to get. We paid them. 

Papadakis: Everyone thought Claude Lemieux was a total weirdo, ’cause he fucking was. They’d fly all these guys around first class. They’re paying them 30 to 40 G’s to be there for a week. And I’m sitting there smoking with Claude Lemieux and he goes, “Tonight, I fly home.” And I go, “Yeah that’s cool, Claude.” And he goes, “They try to fly me first class, but I too smart. I change to coach.” I go “OK, great, Claude.” And he goes “That’s $200 in my pocket. In my pocket.” I was like, “OK, man.” Just stupid shit like that.

Sharon Levy (executive vice president, original series, Spike TV): You have a budget that you try to hold for the season. But you know what? If you’re a three-time Super Bowl ring holder who just retired, it definitely was modulated. But we tried to keep it all in a very fair range. 

Papadakis: I think they paid Tom Chambers $30,000 to come out and miss five shots. That was a joke we had. 

Messick: We paid them commensurate with what … obviously Michael Irvin got more than Brandi Chastain. Herschel Walker got more than Alexi Lalas.

Brandi Chastain (two-time Women’s World Cup champion, two-time Olympic gold medalist): For me, the exciting thing was to be in the conversation and the arena with, you know, an Olympic sprinter in Justin Gatlin. Herschel Walker as not only a collegiate star, but a professional hero for a lot of people who love football. Dominique Wilkins was the basketball player. Just seeing those types of athletes up close, that was fun for me. It was long and sometimes you had to work at weird hours. You had to work until 2 or 3 in the morning because that’s the time they had available and it could be dark, and you’d have the feel of the nighttime, and they had the lights. 

The initial seasons took place at what was then the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, now known as Dignity Health Sports Park. It’s a sprawling, multi-use complex south of Los Angeles that allowed the show to film various sports at night. But because the production crew was figuring out how to make Pros vs. Joes on the fly, filming often bled well into the following morning. Not everyone was thrilled about the marathon shoots. 

Misty May-Treanor (three-time beach volleyball Olympic gold medalist): The call time was like 8 p.m. We’d get home at 4 in the morning. But I would say we were there at least eight hours, if not more. Long nights.  

Papadakis: It was like getting the Spruce Goose off the ground. 

Rebecca Lobo (basketball Hall of Famer and Olympic gold medalist): One of the nights I was out filming, I missed my oldest daughter’s first steps because I was filming Pros vs. Joes with John Rocker.

Papadakis: Bo Jackson caused an insurrection and wouldn’t come out of the locker room unless they all got like $20,000 more. 

Messick: One of the greatest feats in television history was me getting the purple team to come out of their locker room. It was 3 in the morning and we weren’t done yet and they were done. They wanted no part of it.

Townley: That was the first episode. It was our first night of shooting. We really didn’t have a pilot, so we never had any trial run. I think it was Jennie Finch, Bo Jackson, Muggsy Bogues, and we were doing something at like 2 in the morning.

Muggsy Bogues (NBA veteran): It was me, Dan O’Brien, Jennie Finch, Bo Jackson, and … who was the other football guy? Romanowski. We were one of the first groups, so they were still figuring everything out. It was like 3, 4 in the morning to finish up the scene. We were all tired. We wanted to go back to the hotel to get some sleep. But they kept us there. They had to reset and get the cameras set up, and the lights—I remember the lights were a problem. I think that’s what they told us about why it took so long. 

Yudin: We had Bo Jackson and Jennie Finch telling him, “Get out there or I’m going to punch you in the face.” 

Townley: We had to get them back out. They’re not part of the TV world. I think we had to find some extra donuts, if you know what I mean, to get them back out. 

Bogues: Yup. Yup. That happened. They offered us more money. And we took it. It was mainly a discussion about what was about to take place and how long it was going to take. So being the business guys that we are, we said OK—but it’s going to cost you more.  

Townley: We knew we had to do that. We cleaned it up after that, but that was definitely one of those come-to-Jesus moments on, like, Day 2 of the show. 

Part 2: “Someone Is Going to Die”

While they eventually streamlined the production, many of the games that pitted Pros versus Joes were often dreamed up on the fly. Some reflected real sports. Others … not so much. 

Bogues: We had to shoot on a revolving court. The basket, the court was rotating. I had to stay stable to be able to hit a shot. I had a lot of fun doing it. But yeah, it was weird.

Lobo: The whole thing was just weird. [Olympic swimmer] Gary Hall Jr. was having these philosophical debates with John Rocker about immigration and the strains it puts on hospitals. It was weird, surreal moments like that. 

Bill Goldberg (WWE Hall of Famer, former NFL defensive lineman): It was tongue in cheek. The funniest thing that stands out in my mind, more than any other thing in the entire show or experience—not the fact that I hit a golf ball like a foot away from the frickin’ pin—was coming up with a couple of the challenges. Because we came up with a couple of them. 

Jay Glazer (host seasons 4-5, Fox Sports NFL reporter): It was really guerilla broadcasting. We’d come up with stuff. I’d say, “Hey, do you want me to say these rules? I can’t remember these rules.” They’d say, “Just do the best you can. We’ll do it in post.” 

Goldberg: Sitting there coming up with Rocker’s challenge. He’d brush a guy back, and then they’d rush the mound and try to get him off the mound—we came up with that. 

Messick: The John Rocker thing, it was one of my super faves. He was like, “Fuck yeah, I’ll do that. I’m in.” Tom Glavine’s not going to do that, you know what I mean? 

Goldberg: To see it in real time, it was just hilarious. 

Messick: The other one I loved: We set up 20 pieces of glass all with the strike zone painted on it. Back to back to back to back. How many pitches to break through all 20 panes? This is a childhood dream. This goes back to your childhood dream of breaking windows. The grand curiosity of what does a 95 mph fastball do to glass? That was a really fun event. Even for the pros.

Van Earl Wright (Joe, former host Fox Sports and CNN): That was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life. All I did was bounce the baseball about 10 feet in front of the first glass.

Derrin Horton (Joe, KTLA sports anchor): Yeah. I remember that. 

Chastain: The soccer piece was a little bit less soccer, more soccer skills. But still realistic. But the football was, you’re thrown in there trying to tackle a guy. When I saw these guys get in their pads and Herschel Walker in pads, I thought, “This is not going to end well.”

Spoiler: It did not end well. While some of the games played on Pros vs. Joes were strange but harmless, the contact and combat sports were at the very heart of nearly every episode and promotion. And for that, the show needed collisions—usually at the expense of the Joes. 

Papadakis: Herschel Walker was breathing fire, with smoke coming out of his nose, swole as hell, looking like he wanted to kill somebody. And they were like, “Can you stop Herschel Walker from scoring?” And I was like you guys … timeout. You guys are crazy for this. This is a really bad idea. 

Chastain: I was on the field. I was pretty close to the action. You could hear the hits. There was a big “oooh” and a couple “aaahs.” 

Their eyes are really big, like oh my gosh, this is about to happen. That’s what I remember—their eyes really big. Herschel Walker gets speed up and they pitch him the ball, and he’s running, and it’s not easy to stop. 

Papadakis: Herschel Walker. Herschel Walker. That’s like the worst-case scenario of a guy you gotta tackle. I remember telling the first guy, whose eyes looked like saucers: “Look, dude, just don’t put your head down. Whatever you do, don’t put your head down.” Because then you could hurt your neck. And, of course, he put his head down. And the next guy was like a fucking missile. It was so violently stupid and insane. 

Goldberg: I head-slapped a dude and he went to the hospital. I think that was the first move. There was definitely a part of me that wanted to crush anybody who thought they could just walk in and get up off their couch and compete with a professional athlete. So yeah, that was part of the appeal, too. 

Bogues: I remember the Joe had to go across the 25-yard line and make a catch and try to get past Romanowski. Can you imagine trying to get past Romanowski, wearing pads, and he’s coming at you full speed? And Romanowski didn’t go easy on them. On one play, one of the Joes kind of showed Romanowski up a little bit. He didn’t like that. So the next time around, he made the guy pay. Romanowski put a lick on him. That’s one I’ll never forget. 

Levy: Everything we were trying to achieve was real sports. And that went for volleyball, tennis—football is obviously going to be more contact. But basketball as well. If it was rooted in real sports and we thought it was going to be safe, we went for it. 

Yudin: There was always an ambulance and paramedics there. 

Lobo: After we taped something on the football slash soccer field, we were throwing a football around. I threw out my back trying to catch a pass from John Rocker. They had to get a chiropractor for my back.

Irvin: I left there sore. Like, why am I sore? Why am I sore? We were just joking around out here. This got serious. One time I ran a route and felt my hammy tighten up.

Glazer: The first episode we ever did, I went down and told the Joes, I said, “Listen, this is your chance. This is a TV show. This is your chance to be a hometown hero. If you go out there and ball out, you’ll never pay for a drink in your hometown again. If you really want to make this better, get after the pros, talk some crap. It’s an entertainment show. Don’t worry about it. They know it’s a TV show. They’re not going to do anything.”

Well, man, sure as shit, the very first dude starts talking all this shit to Simeon Rice. The first play, Simeon scoops this dude up—boom—slams him on his head, fucking knocks him out. And I was like “Oops. My bad.” 

Jeff Garcia (four-time NFL Pro Bowler): It was for sure real. I’m sure those guys looked forward to the opportunity to hit one of us. We felt the same way. We wanted to bring it to them as well. I was flying around trying to deliver blows. I was trying to take people out—the old defensive mentality, growing up playing free safety in Pop Warner and in high school. Some of that old mentality came out, giving me a chance to deliver the blow instead of receiving it. 

Papadakis: It was really just surviving event to event without someone getting seriously injured. And we would all breathe a collective sigh of relief. “Nobody died doing that. What’s next?”

Glazer: I don’t know what their insurance rider was, but I’m sure it was pretty high. 

Irvin: I was with Randy Couture. When they were getting ready to close the octagon, Randy Couture went to a whole other place. I was like, “Randy, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.” I said, “This ain’t no real competition.” Because where he went in his head, I was worried about that Joe. 

Randy Couture (UFC Hall of Fame fighter): They were all kind of, frankly, shitting their knickers. 

Irvin: I said, “These are people. We’re just playing around, man.” That was the scariest moment. I just told him, “Randy, don’t hurt this man. Don’t get crazy.”

Couture: It definitely got their attention when they unveiled the format and the cage. These guys, the look in their eyes got a little different. It was pretty funny. 

Levy: One of my scariest stories was when Arturo Gatti was on the show. I’m a huge boxing fan. I used to box. I remember calling Kevin [Kay and] saying he doesn’t want to wear his headgear. And he’s like, “Well, he’s a pro, and if he feels unsafe you gotta let him not wear his headgear.” I was like … OK. 

Kay: You’re not going to get in an athlete’s face. Arturo Gatti is a good example. He didn’t want to wear headgear. He wasn’t comfortable. You’re going to say to him, “Please don’t hurt the guy.” But they have to be comfortable and it has to feel real to them. 

Papadakis: I thought I was watching Far and Away with Tom Cruise the way these guys were fighting. Gatti was just fighting a dude off the street. You can’t fight a professional boxer like that. I was like, “Someone is going to die.” 

Levy: This Joe just got lucky. It was like one of those half seconds of luck, and he caught Arturo Gatti with an actual shot to the face. And I’m watching the monitor, and you can see in the close-up Gatti’s eyes—that nanosecond that an athlete takes to make a predatory decision. And his left was back out before the wind knocked his own face. And that Joe took it hard. I thought, this is where I get fired. 

Kay: I thought I was gonna get sued. 

Levy: We’re all dead. No more combat sports. And literally, the kid got up and said, “That’s the greatest thing that’s happened to me in my life.” 

Part 3: After the Party There’s an After-party

During those years, Papadakis and the crew rarely passed up an opportunity to party once taping wrapped. As people got more comfortable with each other on the show, people got more comfortable with each other after the show.

Papadakis: Arturo Gatti must have fought like five fucking guys. Three rounds apiece. Like a fucking animal. Getting punched. Socking people. Getting all crazy. We were in a hotel. I’m going up the escalator at like 4 in the morning after an all-night shoot. Destroyed. Tired. Hateful. And this guy’s coming down in a full suit. Full suit. “I’m going out to hit the town. Let’s hit the strip club.” Arturo Gatti. I was like, “Nah man. Hell no. Fuck no.” I went to bed. ... You got to see that a lot of these guys were just whacked out. It’s fucked up. Because they were. 

Messick: The first [two] seasons, it was at the Home Depot Center. It was epic. We owned that place for eight weeks.

Papadakis: By the second season, with our makeup girl, I opened a mini bar out of one of the suites. I would go spend $400 and fill the whole thing up with little tiny bottles and mixers. Anybody who was cool and knew how to handle themselves, including Bruce Smith in full pads or Rik Smits, could come to the mini bar and have a drink. And then at night when we were done filming we’d go there and drink. We’d watch the sun come up there. 

Irvin: Petros was a crazy dude. 

Goldberg: I remember Petros. I thought, “Who the hell is this guy?”

Papadakis: I started hanging out with the grip department. I hung out in their truck, which was called Club 80, the number of their union. Really, it was just a truck with people smoking weed in it.  

Lobo: He was smoking like a chimney. Whenever we weren’t taping, he was smoking. 

Papadakis: You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Bruce Smith in full pads mixing a vodka cranberry.

Goldberg: I heard afterward that Papadakis played at USC. It was like, “You’re kidding, right?”

Papadakis: Fucking Charles Oakley stole my dressing room. He got his hair cut in my dressing room and all his hair clippings were everywhere. He was unapologetic. 

Goldberg: Petros is a great guy. He has a plethora of knowledge. I just didn’t know who he was or what his function was. He didn’t look like a reporter or a host. I don’t know. I’m not an L.A. guy. 

Papadakis: I was sitting there with Darryl Strawberry one night—Darryl Fucking Strawberry—sitting there smoking. And I remember Darryl Strawberry being like, “How old are you, P?” And I was like, “26.” And he’s like, “Damn, you’ve been living hard, huh?” And I was like, “Fuck, Darryl Strawberry told me I’ve been living hard.” That’s a rough one. That’s a slap in the face.

Part 4: They Coulda Been Somebody

After the third season, Papadakis was replaced as the host by Glazer and Michael Strahan. To control costs during the final two seasons—or maybe just to pay for Glazer and Strahan—they also stopped shooting at night and made more edits in postproduction. What remained uniform over the life of the show, however, was how desperately the Joes wanted to prove themselves—and how they expressed themselves to the Pros. That’s a euphemism for shit-talking. There was a lot of shit-talking. 

Sal Masekela, who at the time was best known as a host for the X Games and appeared as a Joe alongside Van Earl Wright and Derrin Horton, opened up his episode by telling former MLB relief pitcher Rob Dibble that he “sat in the dugout for most of his career,” and added that former NFL wideout Andre Rison was on the show because “this is the only team he can get on.” In another episode, NFL Hall of Famer John Randle responded to some Joe smack talk by … spitting in his hand and then rubbing it all over his own face.

Irvin: The Joes were serious.

Van Earl Wright: They’re always egging you on to talk trash and try to add some spice. That’s just good producing. And it was fun. All the people involved had good senses of humor and didn’t take it seriously.

Messick: Some of the Joes were like, “Fuck you, you pussies.” They were cast to be cocky. 

Couture: [The Joes] talked a lot of crap to all the other competitors. They gave José Canseco all kinds of crap for his book and some of the things he’s more notorious for. They didn’t say a peep to me. It was kind of hilarious. 

May-Treanor: I think it’s the job of the Joes to talk smack, and then they get quiet when they realize what they’re up against.

Irvin: They put pads on and they were really trying to come up and make hits. This was their moment. Can you imagine if they make that play or make that stop? To them, they could have been in the NFL: “I knew I could have been in the NFL. I’ve been saying that all my life.” So yeah, those guys were serious.

Garcia: There was definitely arrogance. There was cockiness taking place. They felt like they were taking on some old-timers. There was a lack of respect, I’ll say, in many ways, as to what they were about to face from a talent level. You know, hey. More power to them if they thought they could step out there and take it to the pros. And I’m sure, in ways, some of those guys did have some success.

Chase Weber (Joe, former track and football player at Colorado State University): I wanted to prove that I could play the game. There’s a lot of variables that have to happen for you to get to the league. One, you have to be exceptional. And two, you have to have a little bit of luck. You have to have the right coaches. You got to be in the right system. It has to really work for you sometimes. There’s a lot of guys who are good enough to go to the league who are just not in the right spot.

Irvin: The Joes, they were guys who played athletically and had played sports. They just didn’t make it to the pros. They were competitive. They were ready. They were hype. And most of them were actually younger. We were retired guys that had been banged up and beat up. And they were going hard, oh my God. It was funny and great to watch.

Weber: The play to end the whole thing was me tackling [Mike] Vick to end the game. They tried to do a pitch and catch on a trick play and I sniffed it out. Everyone was turnt up, man, ‘cause the game was over. We knew we won the money. We split $10,000.

Messick: It was set up so the Joes could be eliminated and the Pro would always look like the winner. This is the bedrock foundation of the format. There were times when the Joes beat the Pros but that was rare. It couldn’t happen very often.

Glazer: Part of the show was, you were waiting for these Pros to teach these Joes a lesson. A lot of these guys talked like Twitter trolls before Twitter was even around. So you could see how much the Pros wanted that opportunity to shut them up.

May-Treanor: You say you’re going to go in and have fun, but at the end of the day you don’t want to get beat. This isn’t happening on our turf.

It’s funny because you want to highlight your sport, but at the same time my job is to beat up on you and show you how difficult my sport really is. You quickly find out if you’re a Joe that it’s not as easy as the professionals who train daily at it make it look. That’s the point of the show.

Goldberg: It’s the ultimate fan experience. I remember when I played for the Falcons and Deion [Sanders] brought James Brown to practice. And his dream was to run the ball in nine-on-seven. Everybody has a dream. I guess we were there to be the face of reality. 

Horton: If you’re a weekend warrior, you want to test yourself. I was trying to win. It was one of those shows where you think, “I can do this. It can’t be that hard.” 

It was hard.

Part 5: Don’t Call It a Comeback

More than a decade after the program went off the air, efforts are underway to relaunch Pros vs Joes. It’s uncertain how a show that overdosed on testosterone and gave concussions as parting gifts might play today. Would any of the former Pros want one last shot at glory if offered the opportunity? And could the show really be made now? 

Papadakis: No, no, no. Even then it was mind-boggling to me.

Lobo: I think a really interesting take now would be if it was Joes versus pro women. Because all guys think if they played high school basketball they’re better than a WNBA player.

Levy: So much has changed in sports since we made the show. When we’re thinking about the next generation of [the show], it’s crazy to think back in the day, there were no female participants in the show. No female Joes. That’s one of the things we’re modernizing and we’re very excited about. 

Messick: I think it could be done again. Culturally the reason it was so successful was it wasn’t third-string guys who made a roster and then went and played in Europe. It was Dominique Wilkins. It was Jerry Rice. It was brand-name guys. And we paid the money for that. What would be more difficult now, agents demand more.

Glazer: They were ahead of their time. It’s better now. Now they’ve got all these guys out there thinking they’re better than the guys who played their sport. All the Twitter tough guys out there—could you imagine?

Goldberg: The group of Joes would be much more qualified these days because the masses seem to be getting into this CrossFit thing and seem much more health oriented.

Chastain: I could see it being done for sure. People love seeing the extreme. Everyone wants to see the extreme. And the thing about sports is, people believe they can do these things until they’re in the middle of it. 

Bogues: I would definitely go back on. 

May-Treanor: I don’t know if my body could handle it. I don’t know if I could beat up on the Joes the way I’d want to beat up on the Joes. If I had a healthy knee, maybe. 

Garcia: I’d like to think that I could still throw it and deliver it. But I know firsthand when my mind tells me to do something, my body is two steps behind now.

Couture: I’d do it again. I’m not in fight shape like I was back then. But I’m still in great shape. Still doing some light sparring and still rolling a little bit. It would be fun to be involved again. 

Lobo: The 30-year-old version of me, sure. But not now. Nothing good would come of that. 

Irvin: No. No. Absolutely not. Those days are gone. Those days are really gone. No way. They couldn’t offer me enough to get me back out there. No way. 

Goldberg: I’m 54 years old, but I’ll be damned if I pass up an opportunity to do something like that again. I’d do that again until the day I die.

John Gonzalez