The Contender

With the reality TV series returning for a fifth season this week, Chris Walker looks back at the show's inception.
 

THE reality TV craze that accelerated in the early part of the millennium soon extended its firm grip to boxing. Waves of sob-storytelling vocalists had already sung their way into the hearts of western audiences, and NBC hoped that they could unveil a fighting version that the public would fall in love with; and so The Contender was conceived in 2004.

The rules were straightforward: 16 fighters, all middleweights from a variety of backgrounds, were to compete each week until only two remained. That pair then headed to Las Vegas for an eight-round final, and the victor was intended to be a boxing darling, emerging with the adulation that is usually reserved for a Ray Mancini or Oscar De La Hoya. The Contender champion was meant to be boxing’s Truman Burbank, a regular guy that the world would go soppy for, but the actual boxing only made up a small portion of the show.

Pointless tasks, littered with product placement, were a staple of each episode, as was footage from the house in which the contestants coexisted before eventually doing battle. Fight coverage was manipulated to project the illusion that even the most one-sided fights were instead punch-for-punch classics settled by the narrowest of margins. Ishe Smith won almost every round against bitter rival Ahmad Kaddour, but highlights from their fight had viewers guessing who had won. Boxing, perhaps the realest sport of them all, was having its authenticity vacuumed away.

“All the fights should’ve been shown the way they happened,” insists Smith when talking to BN. He exited the show following a controversial loss to eventual victor, Sergio Mora. Entrants to the show were contracted to fights following the tournament’s closure, but Smith, dismayed at his treatment during filming, implored the California State Athletic Commission to free him from the contract he had signed.