“The Contender”
Tonight at 9:30 on NBC/Ch. 4
(two stars)
I love how boxing is always portrayed as some sort of en nobling pursuit when, in reality, it’s just two guys trying to beat the crap out of each other for money.
To me, it always sounded like one of the stupidest things you could do – right up there with being shot out of a cannon or catching bullets in your teeth.
Well, I guess you either buy into the boxing myth or you don’t. And since I don’t, I’m turning thumbs down on “The Contender.”
This new boxing “reality” series lays on the boxing myth so thick it buries the show and everyone in it.
It features 16 young boxers who, in the redundant manner of all such shows, will live together in the same house, where they will form friendships and rivalries.
Then, in each spit-bucket-filled episode, they will participate in some sort of elaborate challenge, such as tonight’s uphill relay race, to determine which two of them will square off in the ring in the show’s concluding segment.
The loser supposedly leaves the show, but that’s not entirely clear. Since the surprise suicide last month of one of the contestants – Najai Turpin of Philadelphia – the show’s producers have hinted that the losing boxers might have an opportunity to return to fight again.
So it’s possible the eliminated fighters won’t stay eliminated. Who knows? The whole thing smacks of a competition in which the rules are being written as the show goes along. But hey, this is boxing, where playing fast and loose with the rules is a way of life.
Whatever the rules are on any given day, the heart of boxing is the fight itself, where men try to inflict enough damage on their opponent’s noggin that his brain bounces off the inside of his skull to the point where he blacks out for the time it takes a referee to count to 10 – the proverbial KO.
In short, boxing is about brutality, although “The Contender” would have you believe it’s all about fine young men and their search for the American dream.
In that way, they’re just like you and me, this show wants you to believe, except their faces happen to be squashed.
“The Contender” is the second of these boxing “reality” shows to come to network TV. The last one, “The Next Great Champ,” failed miserably last fall on Fox, which wound up relegating it to one of its sports channels.
With a limited appeal primarily to male boxing fans, a sports channel would seem to be the most sensible home for “The Contender,” too.
In making the punch-drunk decision to pick up this show, NBC might have been seduced by the show’s triumvirate of producers. But there’s less there than meets the eye.
Sylvester Stallone isn’t a real boxer; he just played one in the movies. Mark Burnett is a producer of semi-fictional “reality” shows; he has no boxing cred. Sugar Ray Leonard is the boxer on the producing card, but he’s more likely just a figurehead.
And like a real prizefight, the pre-fight hype has been so bombastic, I’m already sick of “The Contender,” and it hasn’t even started yet.
