The day would begin with wild animals placed in the arena together to fight, like a bear against a buffalo or an elephant versus a rhino. And then there were other times when men would cruelly slaughter these animals from the safety of the stands with arrows or spears. The bestiarii would then come out and kill the animals in the arena with an assortment of weapons. Many times the bestiarii would awe the crowd with his smooth moves that taunted and tricked the beasts in which he hunted. .
In between shows, thieves would be thrown in the arena without any protection except for a sword. Skin to skin, these criminals would fight to the death as the crowd roared above. Many times, criminals in route to the Colosseum would take any chance to commit suicide rather than face humiliation and a long agonizing death. Christians were also persecuted in between games when they were thrown in the arena defenseless, to be mauled by wild tigers. Or sometimes they would cut some throats to waste time in between matches. Occasionally, there were specialty acts performed like animals doing amusing stunts before the emperor and the crowd. There were teams of panthers that were obediently drawing chariots, and elephants that would kneel before the emperor or draw Latin phrases in the sand with their trunks. Although these sideshows did draw quite a crowd, the major event of the day was the fighting of the gladiators. .
Roman gladiators were usually slaves, prisoners of war, or condemned men that were captured and then sold to fight in "the games." These gladiators were so highly trained that each match wasn't always certain death. In one show an average of fifteen out of eighteen gladiators would survive to fight again. The more matches that a gladiator had won, the more that the crowds were to idolize him as a celebrity. These matches were called Hoplomachia, meaning a mock fight.