It seems Blizzard is not keen on trumpeting World of Warcraft's Gladiator Weapons. It should be remembered that the changes to this feature went undocumented when Patch 2.1 was implemented.

So we really can't blame the players if they're still having confusions up to now. Over at the official WoW community site, one player raised a question concerning the differences between the Gladiator's Spellblade and Mace. Both weapons cost 3,150 Arena Points and have an item level of 123.

But the Mace is clearly superior given its stats (+3 stam, +1 int and +1 resilience). Without prior documents to refer to, the player was led to believe that something iffy is going on or a yet-to-be discovered bug is currently in effect. Blizzard's Batta provided some clarifications as he posted,

I'm unable to locate any evidence suggesting that the Spellblade is not currently functioning as intended, or that the stats on it are incorrect. Keep in mind the dagger is a one-hand item as opposed to the mace. I'm not trying to point out the obvious or anything; but, daggers don't generally pack the same punch as their two-hand counterparts.