Mates set to battle it out on telly
An unlikely pair of mates from Taranaki have been selected from a nationwide search to emulate the 1990s made-for-TV rivalry of Marc Ellis and Matthew Ridge.
Ellis and Ridge had made their names playing footie for the All Blacks and the New Zealand Kiwis.
The reboot of the rivalry that featured in several famous advertisements and had them fronting TV show Fresh-up In The Deep End, has been reimagined as ‘‘Chad versus Larry’’ and features Chad Smith, a tradie, and Greg ‘‘Larry’’ Taylor, a doctor.
Theirs is a rivalry that started years ago in the school yard and is set to be settled once and for all next week, on live TV. The friendly enmity between Chad and Larry began in third form at Francis Douglas Memorial College in New Plymouth, where they would often challenge each other.
‘‘At school, Larry was swimming champ and I was athletics and we just wanted to continue it from there, we always thought we were better than each other,’’ Smith said.
After the pair finished university, they talked about competing against each other in events such as swimming 50 metres or sprinting 100m, but it never worked out.
That changed after the men returned from trips to Thailand in 2009 and 2010, where they had both competed and won in amateur boxing matches.
‘‘It was completely separate trips but the exact same bar,’’ Taylor, a gold medallist at the World Age-Group Triathlon Championships, said.
One night, after a pub quiz, the pair began arguing about who the better boxer was, but because they had both won their bouts neither was prepared to accept one was superior to the other.
‘‘It was just about who would be a better athlete at different sports and then we decided to have a boxing fight after that,’’ Taylor said.
The 2012 match-up, which attracted around 50 spectators and was adjudicated by a judge with a beer in hand, was filmed by a friend and uploaded to YouTube.
They then decided to take the rivalry further by competing in other challenges such as cliff diving, a running race in flippers and shooting each other with a paintball gun, and eating ridiculously hot curries.
Last year, the pair entered a competition to find two mates who could recreate the rivalry of All Black Marc Ellis and Kiwi league player Matthew Ridge. Their mate Shaun Butler, who they had known since high school and edited their videos, prodded them into entering.
‘‘Me and Larry didn’t really think about it, we didn’t really want to do it but he said ‘this is perfect for you guys’,’’ Smith said.
In January they found out they hed been picked and would be competing on live on TV to find out who was the best.
‘‘Everything has happened very, very fast,’’ Taylor said.
‘‘Cameras down here, we’re going up to Auckland, had to organise work off in like two days.’’
As part of the show in Auck- land, which will be MCed by sports presenter Andrew Saville, the pair will have to ride a mechanical bull, pull a couch loaded with people and eat a hot curry.
The challenges are based on ones they had done before.
‘‘Much to my disgust, I don’t want to do it,’’ Smith laughed.
‘‘Yeah, it’s going to ruin the night,’’ Taylor agreed.
‘‘We keep talking about a big night but after a hot curry there’s not much you can do.’’
When they took on the chal- lenge for their YouTube video, Taylor thought he had finished and won but was beaten when Smith licked his bowl clean.
But Smith said Taylor was likely to be the curry winner on the night, while he expected to dominate the couch pull, possibly leaving the bull ride as the decider.
Training hadn’t really been a focus for the men in the lead-up to the showdown on Tuesday night.
‘‘Basically just one hot curry a week is all I’ve been doing,’’ Taylor said.
‘‘You’ve been doing more than me in that respect, I eat the odd handful of chilli chips,’’ Smith said.
* ‘‘Chad vs Larry’’ will stream live on Duke on Tuesday night, with an event planned at New Plymouth’s Crowded House for the pair’s fans.