[eeman]

The June 2006 Discover Magazine had an interesting article on Rome. The article stated that in the the Coliseum in Rome, they had a special room or chamber where they slit the throat of the losing gladiator to make sure he was dead. This was their quality assurance mechanism to prevent fixing the fights. Also, the article stated gladiators, even the best of them rarely lasted more than a maximum of 10 matches. Think of the NFL football cliché "on any given Sunday" applied to gladiator's career. Here's an excerpt from the article:

At the end of each fatal match, stretcher bearers hustled out on the floor of the arena to collect the fallen gladiator and carry his body to a nearby morgue, or spoliarium. There officials slit the man's throat to ensure that he was truly dead: Roman bettors despised fixed matches..........

As studies of epitaphs show, skilled gladiators rarely survived more than 10 matches, dying on average at the age of 27.

[Popocatapetl]

Again, that would be the "playoffs". However, there were a LOT of venues in the Roman Empire, so I imagine that fatalities out in the "'nabes" would either be local boys who wanted to fight each other; or who wanted a crack at "the big time", against a professional gladiator; or condemned prisoners.

But once you hit the major cities, or Rome itself, things got a lot more complicated. You had animal fights, and human-animal fights, battle re-enactments (including the possibility of naval battles with the coliseum flooded!), fighting executions, races, etc.

I also suspect that though most gladiators didn't last long, the majority were put out with injuries. The fighters themselves wouldn't be too keen about most matches ending in a kill.

[Max in Utah]

There officials slit the man's throat...

I thought they got the old hammer on the noggin treatment. That would have been quicker -- WHACK!