How About That Thing?

The year is 2004. “So Cold” by Crossfade was all over the place, cell phones had buttons, and the worst thing Donald Trump ever did was host a shitty reality TV gameshow. And somewhere in the interim, Dodgeball was either the funniest movie ever made, or yet another painfully unfunny shit show that made people wonder how Ben Stiller keeps managing to find work.

I confess, I never saw the movie. I thought about it, but literally every friend I had at the time talked me out of it. Whether it was because they saw it, and hated it, or they just saw Ben Stiller and dismissed it as crap on the spot… Well, it depended on the friend. Either way, I trusted their opinion over some rando film critics I’d barely ever heard of, so I never saw it.

The one thing I DID see, though, was Extreme Dodgeball.

Yes, Extreme Dodgeball. I’m beginning to think dodgeball as a whole was a thing in 2004, but I digress.

To be fair, though, I didn’t actually discover this existed until many decades later. It was either 2021, or 2022 for sure, but I distinctly remember finding it on Pluto TV: the streaming service that’ll gladly take up anything the rest of the world doesn’t want, and Tubi doesn’t already have dibs on. I’ve always liked Pluto TV, all be it in that sort of underdog sort of way where you know there are better services out there, but you can appreciate this plucky little app for trying its damnedest. Plus, if it weren’t for Pluto TV, I would’ve never heard of some of my favorite shows, like Black Books, Father Ted, Corner Gas, and today’s subject, Extreme Dodgeball.

Believe it or not, someone actually sat down with a board of directors, and said: “you know what we need in this country? A professional dodgeball league. But not just ANY dodgeball league. An EXTREME DODGEBALL LEAGUE!” And despite the fact extreme ANYTHING basically went the way of the dinosaurs somewhere around the turn of the millennium, they loved it

And where do we plop this new sport of ours? Oh, I don’t know. How about the fucking Gameshow Network? This idea is just sounding more and more brilliant with every passing moment.

Okay, for all my snark, this was clearly not an event to be taken TOO seriously. If not because the sport itself was silly, then because the teams themselves were silly too. We’re talking dodgeball playing sumo wrestlers. Or how about dodgeball playing mimes. That do anything for you? How about dodgeball playing surfer dudes? Or dodgeball playing white collar criminals? Seriously, there were, like, twelve different teams going into this. But only one could come out on top, and win the big cash prize that got bigger and bigger with each season.

The game we play is simple:

• teams consist of five players per team.
• each game consists of a best-of-three style match. Each round was won when all five members of a team were eliminated.
• if you were hit by a ball, you were eliminated.
• If you caught the ball, the guy throwing it at you was eliminated.
• If the ball hit the ground, or the back wall before hitting you, it didn’t count.
• Whenever there’s one member of a team left, an opportunity to get eliminated teammates back on the field would present itself. I remember this changing from season to season.
• Some rounds would include “the big ball.” If you happen to be holding the big ball, and a regular ball hits you, you’re still in the game.

In At least, this was how it worked in the first couple of seasons.

Each event featured these guys on commentary.

This is Zach Selwyn. I have no idea who this guy is, or what he’s done prior to, or since Extreme Dodgeball. Hell, I’m lucky I remember how to spell any part of his name without Wikipedia in front of me. Do with that information what you please.

Then, you have this guy: Bil Dwyer. When you needed a color commentator for a sport that no one could possibly take seriously in the 2000s, Dwyer was your man. Just ask Battlebots over on Comedy Central. Yeah, I don’t know why Comedy Central picked that one up either. But that’s probably an article for another day.

And so, we had ourselves a dodgeball league. And… Not going to lie… It was actually pretty entertaining.

Was it funny? Honestly… Yes and no. You get a chuckle out of the idea of dodgeball playing mimes, or dodgeball playing corporate dudes in the beginning, but as the game progressed, I actually found myself getting WAY more invested in such a silly spectacle than I ever thought possible.

It was also kind of fun to watch this show twenty years later, and see how they got people to interact with the show in a day and age when Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist yet. Back then, if you wanted to vote in a pole, you had to call their toll-free number, or at least go onto The Gameshow Network’s website and vote there. If they had a message board, it’s news to me, but I’m guessing they probably didn’t have an OFFICIAL one at any point.

Overall, I ended up liking this show quite a bit. Right up until the third season.

Somewhere between seasons 2 and 3, a complete overhall took place. To paraphrase Pinhead from Hellraiser: Bloodlines, Extreme Dodgeball became more organized. And less entertaining.

Gone were the silly gimmick teams like the sumo wrestlers and the surfer dudes, and in their place were more generic teams with interchangeable players. Instead of playing till the other team was eliminated, you played till a clock ran out. Entire teams could be eliminated multiple times over in the interim, and had to be put back on the court in order to round out the amount of time left over.

Suffice to say, if this league had any sort of fanbase in the first two seasons, these drastic changes to everything in season 3 killed this league dead. And yeah, you could probably make the argument it was never meant to last forever, but come on, man.

If you should happen to find this show anywhere, I at least recommend season 1 and season 2. Season 3 can go to hell right this instant, though.