Commodus 64?

Thousands of years before the WWF, the emperor Commodus gathered all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks his guards could locate around Rome and had them dragged over to the Colosseum. There they were all given meat cleavers and commanded to hack each other to death. [this factoid via the Useless Knowledge gadget at Duoclam.com]

It occurred to me when I read this that, given the way TV is going, what with the popularity of "extreme" (read: blood) sports, it's only a matter of maybe another couple of generations (if we all should live so long) before the next big reality TV phenomenon is a literal atrocity a la Commodus.