Songfacts®:

• This anthemic, motivational song evokes a battle in the Roman Colosseum; a gladiator pitted in a fight against the gods. It's the kind of rousing song Zayde Wolf became known for. Before releasing his first single in 2015, he worked under his real name, Dustin Burnett, and produced songs for other artists. He had worked with various acts to get them placements through a company called Lyric House, and decided to test his own music by pitching it under the Zayde Wolf pseudonym. When Lyric House asked for more from Zayde Wolf, he came clean, knowing his music held up on its own merits.
• Like many of Wolf's songs, "Gladiator" has earned a lot of placements. Among them:
  
  The 2020 movie The Ride
  Season 1, episode 9 of Love Island (2019)
  Season 8, episode 5 of Teen Mom OG (2018)
  Season 7, episode 1 of Are You the One? (2018)
• This song is very dense, with layers of sounds, but it's built in a way that the tension can release. Wolf explained on the Songfacts Podcast: "Sometimes you go through a song and realize there's just too much there, and you have to go back through and figure out how to make the verses less than the chorus. That's important because that's how you get the impact. It's like watching a movie and it gets really quiet before a jump scene. The contrast is important. I try to make those kinds of jump scenes in the songs so you get that delivery or power."