Thanks for the advice all!

I went ahead an made a donation to the ASPCA and used the trophies (btw what a great idea you can donate to charities to get to unlock things in this game) to unlock 2 more gladiator slots so i have more guys to experiment with and figure out the game with. I wanted one of each fighting style, so ended up with 2 new fighters:

A theatrics:
str 66, int 79, agil 79, stam 68, size 64, pres 68, chi 69

and a War
str 72, int 61, agil 74, stam 80, size 81, pres 71, chi 66

Again stats probably aren't perfect but I am hoping they will be good enough to at least be competative a bit at the beginning.