Mike O’Hearn is better, faster and stronger than you.

Don’t feel bad. O’Hearn is better, faster and stronger than just about everyone. As the captain of the 2008 “American Gladiators” squad, O’Hearn, better known as Titan, gets paid to be better, faster and stronger than pretty much anyone NBC can throw at him.

O’Hearn’s something of a physical renaissance man. He’s a four-time Mr. Natural Universe winner, a four-time California Power Lifting champion, a two-time winner of the Iron Warrior: Decathlon of Strength Strongman competition and a California judo champion. He acts, writes and produces. He played defensive tackle in college. He’s appeared on nearly 500 magazine covers across the world, and he’s the cover model for a series of romance novels. Basically, he can kick your butt every day of the week and look damn good doing it.

So, with a résumé like that, why bother with “American Gladiators”? Aren’t his other accomplishments more impressive than serving as the house muscleman for a television studio? What pleasure does he get from smashing firefighters with giant Q-tips or pulling marines off of a climbing wall a couple of nights a week? The correct answer is obvious: He’s doing it to be on TV, so people like me will know who he is and then write about him to tell people like you who he is. He’s doing it for the fame.

Despite his mile-long résumé, hardly anyone had heard of O’Hearn before he donned his shiny Spandex to take on the role of Titan. Now I could probably pick him out on the street, sans Spandex and giant Q-tip. He has become a recognizable figure in our modern world — sure, he’s not as famous as the president or Mickey Mouse, but he’s certainly better off than he was.

And who can blame him for wanting that recognition? He built his body to the peak of human limits — he set “Gladiator” tryout records in the 40-yard dash, the obstacle-riddled circuit course and the pull-up competition (35 in 30 seconds!). Yet until this year, I bet more people could name the guy who won the first “Survivor” — Richard Hatch — than him. Richard Hatch’s only real skill is that he’s a good liar. O’Hearn earned all those impressive titles. Who can blame him for wanting maybe a little bit of respect from the populace?

Man’s desire for recognition is a basic part of who we are as a species. To the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the so-called “struggle for recognition” is what separates man from animal. Man looks for favor from his fellow man. As Thomas Hobbes wrote in his Leviathan, “Every man looks that his companion should value him at the same rate he sets upon himself.”

I imagine it’s this desire for recognition that motivates most of the contestants on “American Gladiators.” They’re competing for the self-actualization that stems from standing toe-to-toe with the show’s myriad of muscle-bound monstrosities. The money and prizes given to the competition’s ultimate winner are secondary. What a contestant really wants is the glory, the ability to go home and tell his or her friends and co-workers that they got the best of a guy like O’Hearn. The contestants are looking for prestige, the recognition of their accomplishments by the rest of mankind. And if they cannot triumph against the gladiators, then their failure is merely that they have lost on national TV, no big deal.

For gladiators like O’Hearn, however, the struggle for recognition takes a different shape. They don’t receive prestige as a result of their accomplishments on the show — they’re the trained athletes, they’re expected to triumph over all challengers. Instead, their primary benefit (aside from a steady gig) is the third-class fame that arises from being seen on the show. His gig on the first run of the show may not have translated into a world of career opportunities, but I imagine Nitro had an easier time picking up women from 1990 to 1993.

Prestige is the recognition of your accomplishments — fame is the recognition of your face. O’Hearn has fame now, but that fame is the easier, and less fulfilling, path to recognition. As American philosopher Francis Fukuyama wrote in a discussion of Hegel in his book The End of History and the Last Man, “Our pet dog ‘recognizes’ us in some sense when he wags his tail in greeting when we come home.” His pet dog may recognize O’Hearn’s face, but he’s not impressed with O’Hearn’s accomplishments. Neither is the vast majority of the “American Gladiators” audience. In a way, O’Hearn’s acknowledgment from the masses is no greater than Hatch’s.

It’s hard to blame O’Hearn for taking the easy way to recognition, because unfortunately it’s the only road available to him in our modern society. Our TV-centric media world values exposure above accomplishment, which is why more of the people I play trivia with on Tuesday nights can answer a question about the movies of character actor Will Patton than can name the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (For the record, it’s Admiral Mike Mullen.)

We only know about Nobel Prize winners like Al Gore or Olympic athletes like Michael Phelps when the media shoves them down our throats. Why else would Anna Kournikova still be better known than Justine Henin?

It doesn’t matter how much better, faster or stronger he is. O’Hearn only became a Titan once he got himself on TV.

Editorials Editor Eric Betts is a College junior from Eufaula, Ala.