Exclusive Interview: Deadliest Warrior host Dr. Armand Dorian
| INTERVIEWS - TV |
We chat exclusively to the doctor who deals in murder and mayhem...for educational purposes!

Deadliest Warrior, Spike TV's extravaganza of what-if battles, is triumphantly returning for more match-up mayham and cool weapons tests. I had the opportunity to talk to the show's hosts about some of last season's greatest hits and what we can look forward to in Season 2. Here I got to talk to E.R. doctor and UFC medic Dr. Armand Dorian during a few moments of down time while he was on call.
For people who haven't seen the show, what is your job on it?
Well my job is I'm one of the hosts of the show and my role really is - we have a computer guy, we've got a bio-engineer guy, and my job is to bring it into reality. I'm literally working right now in a trauma room and I see actual trauma on a daily basis and I can actually tell you in regards to the warriors what they're doing and how they actually inflict [damage], incapacitate or actually kill. And that figures into, when you have two great warriors, who would actually win.
You say you're working in the trauma ward now - is it hard to balance your call schedule and the shooting schedule for the show?
[Laughs] Uh yeah, that might be even more difficult than trying to take care of a trauma patient. It is difficult, but anything you want to do, if you really want to do it, you can figure out a way to do it. And for me, it was a pleasure being on the show. I think it lends a little bit of levity in my serious world, and allows me to provide some medical content that people can actually learn from without knowing they're learning from it.
I don't imagine there's much difference between your duties in Season 1 versus what you duties on season 2, since you're identifying the type of damage a weapon does to the human body.
There really wasn't much of a difference but there was a difference with the weapons. So every time something would happen, my role wouldn't change, but the outcome would definitely change and the type of information that I'd have to impart would always be different. Because some of these weapons are causing different types of traumatic events that we haven't discussed before. A lot of people would say, "Obviously an explosion, that's gonna kill" but why is it killing you? Is it killing you because of the fragmentation, or actually from the primary shockwave? And these types of things that nobody figured on would give us the idea.
There were a lot of pretty devastating weapons and demonstatations. Was there anything that you found particularly either surprising or a little haunting maybe?
Uh yeah...I would always say from Season 1 it would be the Claymore, WIlliam Wallace's sword, and how it was able to lop off three heads with one swing. I always thought that was in the movies, I never thought it could be real. Unless it was maybe some large airplane accident or motor vehicle accident for there to be significant velocity and trauma forces, but with a sword for somebody to do that? Impossible. For Season 2 there were a lot of shocking things. From the Xandi warrior have this weapon called the Pinga which is like this flying sword, star-like thing which, I would think it'd be ridcioulous but the amount of trauma that it caused was unreal because it looks foolish as a weapon.
Or the professionalism and ability of some of these modern warriors. I'm really proud of, for example, the LA SWAT. I mean, the SWAT team we had, that I work with on a daily basis - in the ER they bring a lot of their trauma patients to us and we help them out, etcetera - and to see the type of accuracy and precesion they can pull out with their weapons was pretty unreal.
Do you have a favorite matchup from the upcoming season? Was there an episode you enjoyed more than others?
Oh, wow. You know, it's weird because this season, every episode I was kind of getting more and more blown away by the matchups. The one that was very interesting that I thought I was not going to like at all turned out to be one of my favorite epsidoes, which was Vlad the Impaler vs. Sun Tzu. It's just coming out of left field, these two different kind of mythological or historical figures. Can they actually battle? What would it be like? But a lot of us like Dracula and the Vlad thing with the vampires, that whole concept. Then you bring in the honor...the science of warfare with Sun Tzu and how those two matched up was really interesting.
So would you say that's the absolute must-see episode of Season 2?
You know what? I guarentee that episode will leave you a changed person. [Laughs] Because these guys did some things to their enemies that, first of all you wouldn't think was possible. Second of all, if you're going to leave a statement to a neighboring tribe to say, "Look, you're not going to fight us because this is what to do people who try to battle us," that is the episode that you will leave a different person after we see. Basically there's an impalement, which is what Vlad the Impaler would do...the whole impalement process...I mean it's one thing to read about it, it's one thing to maybe even see a picture about it, but to actually see it happen to a lifelike ballestics gel torso is unreal.
Speaking of the ballistics gel, that gets a lot of use on the show. I always wondered what if felt like. It looks like it's gelatinous..
Yeah, it feels just like Jello, but a little bit thicker. Kind of like...imagine if you were to squish your belly - we've all got a little bit of belly fat. You squish your belly and feel that little bit of elasticity in it...if your were to imagine that into Jello...Jello's really pliable, it breaks apart real easy. So it's kind of like that consistency but with a little bit of tissue, a little bit of fiber in it. [Laughs] I don't know if I should be talking about fiber and impalement at this time!
Do you prefer when they have the innards in the ballastics or is that a little too weird?
You know what, I appreciate both forms we use whether it's a ballistics gel form or actually using a carcaus of a pig or a cow. Those are some of the stuff we use when we train med students or residents to go through the process. Pig skin is as close to human as we're gonna get to test on and to practice on. So what that does for me is it's an easy step for me to take or a leap to say, look, [what would happen] to the pig skin would happen to human tissue.

I prefer that, but you know what? There's also a thing of actually having the body shape and actually having the organs in the right place to identify accuracy. Because accuracy and timing become so important because you have two - they're not just two good fighters, these guys are the ultimate warriors - they're the Deadliest Warriors, so seconds are gonna be an issue. So if you kill, and the guy died in thirty-seconds versus you kill and it's an instant kill, the guy who does the instant kill wins.
So do you get recognized now?
Uh...[Laughs]. Yeah, definitely I get recognized for not only Deadliest Warrior but for a few other things. But with regards to Deadliest Warrior, a funny story is the paramedics, I guess they're the number one fans..and when they bring in a patient...the poor patient will be lying on the gurney with the oxygen and etcetera, I don't know what they're here for, but the paramedics will yell across the ER, "Hey, there's the Deadliest Doctor!" [both laugh] If you're a patient, you would not want to hear, "There's the Deadliest Doctor."
Perhaps they could phrase that better.
Exactly.
Deadliest Warrior premieres Tuesday, April 20th, first with 90-minute special "Deadliest Warrior Season 1: Back For Blood" at 8:30pm followed by the Season 2 debut episode "SWAT vs GSG9" at 10pmE/P on Spike TV
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