From Kent PE teacher to the 'best Gladiator of all time'

Eight years ago Matt Morsia was a PE teacher at Folkestone Academy and using a side hustle on YouTube to earn some extra cash.

But his life has taken quite the turn since, with the musclebound 38-year-old now a household name.

And he’ll be on our TV screens again this evening as the iconic show Gladiators returns for a second season following a successful reboot last year.

Dad-of-two Matt was among the new recruits for series one and has built up quite the fanbase as the self-assured – and some might say arrogant – Legend.

He won the attention of show producers after gaining prominence with his YouTube channel MattDoesFitness, which now has more than 2.3 million subscribers.

And with his hulking frame and tongue-in-cheek humour a fit with viewers, Matt – who recently built his dream home on the Kent coast – says he feels he was born to be a Gladiator.

At the end of the first season, he said: “After a wild few months I have to be honest and say that Gladiators didn’t quite go to plan. The plan was to be the best Gladiator on the show, but I ended up becoming the best Gladiator of all time. Awkward.

“In all seriousness though, if you’d asked me a few years ago what would be my ultimate life/career goal, I genuinely think being a Gladiator would’ve been top of that list.

“I grew up watching it as a kid and honestly feel like I was born to do it, so the fact that I can now legitimately call myself a Gladiator still feels pretty surreal tbh.

“I went pretty hard with Legend and knew it’d probably be a bit of a Marmite situation, but everyone basically seems to love me so that’s an absolute result.”

In 2011 – at the age of 24 – former Harvey Grammar School pupil Matt had his sights set on competing at the London Olympics.

He was ranked among the top three triple jumpers in the country and represented England internationally, but injury put paid to his hopes of success on the biggest stage.

During training, Matt suffered a stress fracture in his spine and for six months was completely out of action.

When he was finally able to get back in the gym – and with Brazil 2016 a distant four years away – his new obsession became lifting weights.

Ultra-competitive Matt became a powerlifter, winning a silver medal in the European Championships in 2016.

The 6ft 2ins man-mountain had to consume 6,000 calories a day to maintain a bodyweight of 16st 5lbs – and was able to bench press 180kg, deadlift 320kg and squat 265kg.

He was invited to powerlifting events and drew huge crowds to watch him in action.

It was Sarah who suggested Matt start putting workouts on YouTube, and it soon became an obsession.

“Within a few videos I got hooked,” he told KentOnline.

“But I reckon I did it for three years with no income – four or five videos a week, each one after a day at work.”

One day he noticed eating challenges were trending on YouTube, so he made a video in which he ate 10,000 calories worth of pizza, McDonald’s and doughnuts in a day, getting hundreds of thousands of views.

His record is devouring a gut-busting 25,000 calories in 24 hours – a feat watched 5.8 million times.

As well as uploading videos, Matt started writing training programmes for followers.

“That started to generate actual revenue,” he said. “Within a few months it was level with the school salary.

“I knew it was a bit risky but I decided to start dropping my teaching hours.”

Matt was worried that if his hobby became his full-time job then it wouldn’t be as fun, but says quitting the school and focusing only on YouTube was the “best decision I ever made”.

“My content was a million times better, being able to travel and have time away,” he said.

In 2020, Matt told KentOnline he was earning more in a month than he did in a year as a teacher, thanks to revenue from his MattDoesFitness channel and contracts with Gymshark and MyProtein.

He has since built on that success, with 10,000 users on his Morsia fitness app – which costs £14.99 a month. The 38-year-old – who has two sons, Luca and Mauro – has also sold almost a million cans of his own energy drink since launching it last year.

Sarah has also since quit her teaching job at Hythe Bay Primary School to help him with the channel full-time – and gained thousands of followers on her own Instagram account.

The first episode of Gladiators season two airs on BBC One at 5.50pm this evening.