The Contender
 

The new reality show is worth watching if you are on the West Coast.

just saw it..Not to bad I'm definatly going to tune in next week :thumbsup

Yup, pretty good, boxers that can actually box, not like Next Great Champ...

Got it Tivo'ing. Sly was on Stern this morning and Howard was pumping it up pretty good. Did they deal with the suicide issue or is that not until later in the series?

This isn't just a rip off of Fox's show?

Reverse that. Fox does the stealing and rushes an inferior product to the public. Hell it is so bad, even homer made a joke about it in a recent Simpsons.

adrian.................................

De la hoya and his company ripped off this show produced by Burnett, they were sued over it too, not sure what the outcome was. The Fox show did so poorly they had to cancel it halfway through the season...having watched both (well only 1 ep of Contender so far) I can tell you Contender is much better than Next Great Champ.

It wasn't bad. Only thing is I don't think 5 rounds is nairly enough for them to fight.

Next Great Champ was only 3 rounds!

I think 5 rounds is decent, if you saw them both after they were pretty banged up with cuts and bruises.

I won't give it away but I would put $ on the guy who lost any day of the week if they were to go 10 or 12.

The problem is that the show isn't long enough to have them have full/10-12 round fights - kinda ruins it for me alittle.

I'm not a big boxing fan, so even with 5 rounds, it was starting to get a little boring for me. It's geared towards the general population who aren't hardcore boxing fans, and also the time restraints as mentioned, which is keeping it at 5 rounds.

I agree it would have been closer if it was longer. You could see how the winner kept trying to kill the clock.

I know and have seen the kid who lost. He would have won if it went longer. I think it was a big time fluke. He had a big chance to win it all.

That's the problem w/ short fights. Guys who are used to fighting long fights have to approach the fight in a whole new way.

Agree with You there, sad really I thought he had it in the bag after the second round.

There's just something sexy about 2 half naked men beating the piss out of each other...:Graucho

I was sitting here working and hubby had it on in the next room. I couldn't help but look up every few minutes and by the end I was watching it with him :thumbsup

A Drama About Boxing, Not Boxing
 

Okay, I missed all the hype. I got home right before the first fight started.

Right away, they start with cut-away shots of the crowd, and slowing way down on a few exchanges, simply to create drama.

Boxing at it's purest already is drama - you don't have to fabricate the drama.

I'm a boxing fan. If you watched tonight what you saw was a drama about boxing, not boxing.

I'm sure the two boxers fought a real fight, but what they actually showed was maybe half of a fight. If you're going to do over an hour of pre-fight hype, at least show the entire 15 minutes of the actual five round fight for the real boxing fans.

The post-fight banter with Stallone and Sugar Ray was particularly telling. Sugar Ray does the straight man saying you never know who's gonna win (tonight's fight was an upset), and then Executive Producer Stallone (not a real boxer) says that he thinks an underdog is going to win it all.

Hmmm...Stallone=Rocky=Underdog Wins...yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

ADG Webmaster

I don't know what you guys are talking about but I saw that last night and it was Awsome!!! I'm glad they slowed down some of the key punches because
alot of the time it is way to quick to see the impact. That was some of the best boxing I have ever seen and I have seen alot. Those guys were going after echother hard fucking core :thumbsup

I love boxing but the last reality show was so shitty that it lasted like a week on the air... plus Stallone seems a bit washed up to me

I doubt Ill watch it.