Wednesday, April 06, 2005

At the risk of being ridiculed, I have to give a shout-out to The Contender. Yeah, the challenges are overly-complicated and stupid, and there has never been a more manipulative show in terms of getting viewers to sympathize with the fighters... all that matters is that the fights are bad-ass, and last week's was the most hardcore of them all. The fights last 5 rounds... for the first 5 episodes, they all went the full 5 and have been unanimous decisions. Then this week, the fight was a pummeling that had to be stopped by the ref. You don't need to know the backstory of the West Coast fighter betraying his teammates by calling out a different opponent than he'd agreed to, or that his opponent is a reformed-alcoholic-and-felon-turned-Jesus-freak. All you need to know is that one guy simply kicked the other guy's ass. Most of the fight is posted here, but if you can catch the rerun somewhere, I highly suggest it.

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