Season 2
The Contender is an American reality television series created by Mark Burnett about the lives, fears and hopes of 16 professional boxers as they compete for the chance to change their lives and the lives of the people they love forever.
The series originally premiered in the USA on NBC on 7 March 2005. It was cancelled after the first season by NBC, but acquired by ESPN for another two seasons. It was cancelled by ESPN after Season 3, whereafter it moved to the Versus channel for Season 4.
The Contender premiered in South Africa on DStv's actionX (now M-Net Action) channel on Tuesday 1 August 2006, at 19h00. It premiered on SABC2 on Friday 23 March 2007, at 21h00.
See "Seasons" below for seasonal broadcast dates and times by channel.
Season 2
Boxing legend and five-time world champion Sugar Ray Leonard is the host and mentor this season, guiding the 16 new boxers through the most intense training of their careers and the most challenging experience of their lives.
Each episode culminates in a five-round professional bout where the winner moves one step closer to the $500,000 grand cash prize (down from $1-million in the first season), and a shot at the title of Contender Champion.
The season concludes with a live finale from Staples Centre in Los Angeles.
Sylvester Stallone does not appear in Season 2, as he was shooting Rocky VI at the time. He nonetheless remained executive producer.
Season Two will be contested at welterweight (Season One was fought at middleweight).
There is more of an emphasis on the boxing aspect of the show as opposed to the reality aspect this season, largely because for Season 2 the show moved from NBC to sports channel ESPN.
The heavier boxing focus also extends to editing of the boxing matches themselves, where, in an apparent attempt to ensure that the match's focus remains more on what's going on in the ring and less on the crowd reactions of those around it, The Contender 2 no longer allows a boxer's young children to attend the fight.
Also gone from the second season are the show's challenges. Instead of allowing the winners of the weekly challenges - which were dropped in a creative decision - to determine which boxers will compete in each episode's concluding fight, the team of each early round fight's winning boxer will get to determine which boxers will face off in the next fight.
To assist Sugar Ray, trainers Tommy Gallagher and Jeremy Williams are also back on board this season.
The Contender is a joint production between Mark Burnett Productions,
DreamWorks Television and Rogue Marble.
Sylvester Stallone, Mark Burnett and Jeffrey Katzenberg are the executive producers. Bruce Beresford-Redman, Lisa Hennessy, Conrad Riggs, Jeff Wald, Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey are co-executive producers.
Seasons
Season 1 (15 episodes)
Channel: actionX | Premiere: 1 Aug 2006 | Finale: 7 Nov 2006 | Tuesdays, 19h00
Channel: SABC2 | Premiere: 23 Mar 2007 | Finale: 29 Jun 2007 | Fridays, 21h00
Season 2 (14 episodes)
Channel: actionX | Premiere: 28 May 2007 | Finale: 27 Aug 2007 | Mondays, 20h00
Channel: SABC2 | Premiere: 15 Feb 2008 | Finale: 2 May 2008 | Fridays, 21h00
Season 3 (8 episodes)
Channel: M-Net Action | Premiere: 4 Aug 2008 | Finale: 6 Oct 2008 | Mondays, 19h00
Season 4 (12 episodes)
Channel: M-Net Action | Premiere: 17 Dec 2009 | Finale: 4 Mar 2010 | Thursdays, 18h00
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