The Contender (TV series)

Last updated

The Contender
Created by Mark Burnett
Presented by
Starring
Theme music composer Hans Zimmer
Composers
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons5
No. of episodes47
Production
Executive producers
  • Mark Burnett
  • Eric Van Wagenen
Production location Los Angeles, California
Production companies
Original release
Network
ReleaseMarch 7, 2005 (2005-03-07) 
January 7, 2009 (2009-01-07)
ReleaseAugust 24 (2018-08-24) 
November 9, 2018 (2018-11-09)

The Contender is an American reality television series that initially aired from March 3, 2005, to January 7, 2009, on NBC, ESPN, and Versus and currently airs on Epix. Each season of the series follows a group of boxers as they compete with one another in an elimination-style competition, while their lives and relationships with each other and their families are depicted.

Contents

The series was created and executive produced by Mark Burnett. The first three seasons of the show were hosted by Sugar Ray Leonard, who shared hosting duties in the first season with actor Sylvester Stallone. Leonard departed the series after season three and Tony Danza joined as his replacement.

On January 22, 2018, it was announced that the series was being revived by premium cable network Epix for a fifth season which premiered on August 24, 2018. [1] [2]

Premise

The show takes the format of a gameshow, with the boxers divided into two teams based on their place of residence in the United States: East Coast or West Coast (or simply “East” and “West”). These teams live together in group living quarters, in Pasadena, California in the historic Royal Laundry Building on Raymond Avenue, and compete for the right to choose which of their team members fights that week, and who he fights against. Most of the second half of the hour-long episodes are devoted to that fight: the loser is eliminated.

Production

The series’ tagline is “The Next Great Human Drama”, and its soundtrack was scored by Hans Zimmer. Before the show premiered, rival US television Fox network rushed to air a competing show The Next Great Champ, hosted by Oscar De La Hoya. The show performed very poorly, with the final episodes being relegated to cable FSN. In an effort to distance itself from the Fox disaster, NBC opted to hold airing its show until spring 2005.

On May 16, 2005, the series was cancelled. The first season cost NBC $2,000,000 per episode. Reruns were seen on CNBC. On August 11, 2005, ESPN announced that it was picking up the rights to a second season of the show, [3] which began airing on the network in July 2006, although special editions under the Contender title are currently airing as of March, 2006. ESPN also announced that it has options to renew the series for two additional seasons. However, on April 10, 2008, ESPN announced that it was canceling the series. Executive producer Jeff Wald maintained that the show would continue on another network. [4] It was later announced the show would move to Versus.

Najai Turpin suicide

On February 14, 2005, one of the 16 contenders, Najai Turpin, [5] despondent over personal matters, committed suicide, shooting himself while sitting with his girlfriend in a parked car outside the West Philadelphia gym where he trained. In his memory, the producers set up a trust fund for his daughter Anyae. The show still aired in its entirety, but with a special tribute to Turpin.

Seasons

SeasonNetworkAirdatePresenterTrainersWinnerRunner Up
1 NBC March 7 – May 24, 2005 Sylvester Stallone
Sugar Ray Leonard
Tommy Gallagher
Jeremy Williams
Dub Huntley
Sergio Mora
“The Latin Snake”
Peter Manfredo Jr.
“The Pride of Providence”
2 ESPN July 18 – September 26, 2006Sugar Ray LeonardTommy Gallagher
Jeremy Williams
Grady Brewer
“Bad Boy”
Steve Forbes
"2 Pound”
3 September 4 – November 6, 2007 Buddy McGirt
Pepe Correa
Sakio Bika
“The Scorpion”
Jaidon Codrington
“The Don”
4 Versus December 3, 2008 – January 7, 2009 Tony Danza Tommy Brooks
John Bray
Troy Ross
“The Boss”
Ehinomen Ehikhamenor
“Hino”
5 Epix August 24 – November 9, 2018 Andre Ward Freddie Roach
Naazim Richardson
Brandon Adams Shane Mosley, Jr

Broadcast

The show ran for fifteen weeks through 2005 on NBC in the United States of America. The show ran in the UK on ITV2 and was repeated later in the week on ITV, and now airs on ITV4. It also aired on AXN in India, and on the Spanish language network Telemundo. The second season, featuring welterweight contenders, premiered in the U.S. on Tuesday, July 18, 2006, at 10 pm ET/PT, on ESPN. The third season, featuring super middleweight contenders, premiered in the U.S. on Tuesday, September 4, 2007, at 10 pm ET/PT, on ESPN. The fourth season, featuring cruiserweight contenders, premiered in the U.S. on Wednesday, December 3, 2008, at 10 pm ET/PT, on Versus. A fifth season produced by Mark Burnett and hosted by Andre Ward aired on Epix in 2018. [6]

International versions

CountryTitleBroadcasterPresentersOriginal runTrainers
Asia The Contender Asia AXN Stephan Fox & Jaymee Ong January 16, 2008 – April 23, 2008
Flag of Australia (converted).svg  Australia The Contender Australia Fox8 Charlotte Dawson & Daniel Amalm 3 November 2009Billy Hussien (Blue Team) & Paul Briggs (Gold Team)
Flag of Ukraine.svg  Ukraine Ти чемпіон
Ty chempion
TRK Ukrayina Kostya Tszyu, Denis Nikiforov & Alina ShaternikovaOctober 17, 2010 – December 12, 2010

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>The Apprentice</i> TV series franchise

The Apprentice is a reality talent game show franchise originally aired in 2004 in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Burnett</span> British television and film producer and author

James Mark Burnett is a British television producer and author who is the former Chairman of MGM Worldwide Television Group. He created The Apprentice, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? and Shark Tank, and produced the reality shows Survivor, The Voice, Beat Shazam, and Generation Gap.

E! Entertainment Television is an American basic cable television network. It is owned by the NBCUniversal Media Group division of Comcast's NBCUniversal. The channel focuses primarily on pop culture, celebrity based reality shows and movies.

The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports is an American radio-turned-television program by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) that ran from 1942 to 1960. The program included broadcasts of a variety of sports, although it is primarily remembered for its focus on boxing matches.

The 2004–05 network television schedule for the six major English-language commercial broadcast networks in the United States covers the prime time hours from September 2004 to August 2005. The schedule is followed by a list per network of returning series, new series, and series canceled after the 2003–04 television season.

The cable television network ESPN has occasionally broadcast boxing events over the majority of its history, as part of several arrangements, including contracts with specific promotions and consortiums such as Golden Boy Promotions, Premier Boxing Champions, and Top Rank, as well as Friday Night Fights—a semi-regular series that was broadcast by ESPN and ESPN2 from 1998 through 2015.

Najai "Nitro" Turpin was a professional boxer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

The 2005–06 network television schedule for the six major English language commercial broadcast networks in the United States covers the primetime hours from September 2005 through August 2006. The schedule is followed by a list per network of returning series, new series, and series canceled after the 2004–05 season.

<i>Boxing After Dark</i> HBO sports program (1996-2018)

Boxing After Dark is an HBO boxing program, premiered on February 3, 1996, that usually showed fights between well-known contenders, but usually not "championship" or "title" fights. Unlike its sister program, HBO World Championship Boxing, BAD featured fighters who were usually moving up from ESPN's Friday Night Fights or another basic cable boxing program. This was where fighters were given their start to become famous depending on how well they fare on BAD they might have a title fight on World Championship Boxing or could fall back

The 1955–56 network television schedule for the four major English language commercial broadcast networks in the United States. The schedule covers primetime hours from September 1955 through March 1956. The schedule is followed by a list per network of returning series, new series, and series cancelled after the 1954–55 season.

The Contender 2 is a reality television show based on the sport of boxing, but with an element of the (welterweight) competitor's lives and relationships with each other within the show's living quarters, based in Pasadena, California. Filmed in January and February 2006, the show began airing on July 18, 2006. The winner of The Contender Season 2 was decided in a bout at the Staples Center, Los Angeles, broadcast live on September 26, 2006, winning a purse of US$500,000. The Contender 2 was shown on ESPN in the US, in the UK on ITV4, in Canada on TSN, in Australia on FOX8, in New Zealand on TV2, and on AXN in South and Southeast Asia.

<i>The Apprentice</i> (American TV series) American television game show

The Apprentice is an American reality television program that judged the business skills of a group of contestants. It ran in various formats across fifteen seasons on NBC from 2004 to 2017. The Apprentice was created by British television producer Mark Burnett, and co-produced with Donald Trump, who was the show's host for the first fourteen seasons. Billed as "The Ultimate Job Interview," seven of the show's seasons feature aspiring, but otherwise unknown, businesspeople who would vie for the show's prize, a one-year $250,000 starting contract to promote one of Donald Trump's properties. The show features 14 to 18 such business people who compete over the course of the season, with usually one contestant eliminated per episode. Contestants are split into two "corporations" (teams), with one member from each volunteering as a project manager on each new task. The corporations complete business-related tasks such as selling products, raising money for charity, or creating an advertising campaign, with one corporation selected as the winner based on objective measures and subjective opinions of the host and the host's advisors who monitor the teams' performance on tasks. The losing corporation attends a boardroom meeting with the show's host and their advisors to break down why they lost and determine who contributed the least to the team. Episodes ended with the host eliminating one contestant from the competition, with the words "You're fired!"

The 2007–08 network television schedule for the six major English language commercial broadcast networks in the United States covers the prime time hours from September 2007 through August 2008. The schedule is followed by a list per network of returning series, new series, and series canceled after the 2006–07 season. The schedule was affected by the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike. After that, the next disruption to the networks' primetime schedules would not occur until the 2020–21 season, whose network schedules were affected by the suspension of film and television productions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

CBS has occasionally broadcast boxing events; its first broadcast occurred in 1948. The network's most recent broadcasts of the sport have fallen under Al Haymon's Premier Boxing Champions banner, and its most recent primetime broadcasts have been produced by sister pay television channel Showtime.

Boxing on NBC is the de facto title for NBC Sports' boxing television coverage.

NBCSN was an American sports television channel owned by the NBC Sports Group division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It originally launched on July 1, 1995, as the Outdoor Life Network (OLN), which was dedicated to programming primarily involving fishing, hunting, outdoor adventure programs, and outdoor sports. By the turn of the 21st century, OLN became better known for its extensive coverage of the Tour de France but eventually began covering more "mainstream" sporting events, resulting in its relaunch as Versus in September 2006.

<i>Betty Whites Off Their Rockers</i> American comedy television series

Betty White's Off Their Rockers is an American comedy television series launched in 2012, that broadcast on NBC for its first two seasons and Lifetime for its third. The series is hosted by Betty White, and is based on the Belgian television format Benidorm Bastards.

Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) is an ongoing series of televised boxing events and promotion connected to manager Al Haymon.

The 2021–22 afternoon network television schedule for the four major English-language commercial broadcast networks in the United States covers the weekday and weekend afternoon hours from September 2021 to August 2022. The schedule is followed by a list per network of returning and cancelled shows from the 2020–21 season.

References

  1. Evans, Greg (January 22, 2018). "Epix Plans New Version Of Mark Burnett's Boxing Competition 'The Contender'". Deadline. Retrieved January 26, 2018.
  2. Pedersen, Erik (June 27, 2018). "'The Contender': Mark Burnett's Boxing Competition Revival Gets Premiere Date On Epix". Deadline. Retrieved June 27, 2018.
  3. "'The Contender' to begin second season on ESPN". ESPN. August 12, 2005. Retrieved November 17, 2016.
  4. "The Contender: Boxing Series Cancelled for a Second Time – Will It Return for Round Three? | TV Series Finale".
  5. "Reality TV Boxer Commits Suicide". CBS News . February 15, 2005. Retrieved August 21, 2018.
  6. "'The Contender': Mark Burnett's Boxing Reality Series Revival for Epix Sets Host & Trainers". April 10, 2018.