You have to wonder what Americans like so much about boxing.
Two guys (or girls) wear embarrassingly shiny swimming trunks and shuffle around a square stage misleadingly called a "ring," pummeling each other until one finally cries uncle. Somehow, that just doesn't sound like quality entertainment, yet Americans have positively delighted in everything boxing from the Rumble in the Jungle to "Million Dollar Baby."
So what happens when some brilliant NBC exec decides to combine this great American bloodlust with our other national pastime, reality TV? Much to the network's chagrin, the result was about as pretty as Evander Holyfield's ear after Tyson was through snacking on it.
The latest NBC reality effort, "The Contender," premiered three weeks ago with ratings so dismal that the crumbling broadcasting heavyweight has been pulling strings left and right to delay the inevitable knockout punch. In past weeks, "The Contender," has been aired in three different time slots on three different days, but each time, the NBC featherweight couldn't stand up to the competition offered by other networks.
But how can that be? Boxing is usually even more popular in entertainment media than it is in the sports arena. In fact, next to puppies, little kids, and Tom Hanks, boxing is probably the most bankable subject to ever grace the silver - or small - screen.
There is something innately dramatic about two underdogs struggling to survive in a winner-take-all environment that thrives on pure physical strength, perfect mental agility, and tremendous heart. Every boxer is automatically a hero, and it is very easy for audiences to fall for the honest brutality of the sport.
In this respect at least, "The Contender" does no wrong. Each week features plenty of training room shots that show hardened men with bulging muscles pouring their sweat and blood into a seemingly impossible dream: to fight at Caesar's Palace for a $1 million purse and the chance to earn a better life for themselves and their families.
Celebrity hosts Sylvester Stallone (a.k.a. Rocky Balboa) and six-time world champion fighter, Sugar Ray Leonard, bring an irresistible sense of boxing nostalgia to the program. A dramatic musical score provides a movie-like backdrop to the show that makes every fight seem like an epic Ali-Frazier battle. Scenes of the boxers interacting with their small children will surely bring tears to viewers' eyes when they see these tough heroes melt into gentle giants at the hands of a four-year-old.
All of these elements comprise the major problem with "The Contender." If you've decided to do a boxing show, you can't just throw a bunch of clich?©s at the screen, then sit back and watch the program magically morph into "Raging Bull" all by itself.
America might fall for the same guts-and-glory gag time and time again, but there has to be at least some variation on the theme to sustain interest. Here is where "The Contender" runs into trouble: it has all the key boxing elements that audiences already hold near and dear to their hearts but absolutely nothing else.
You can only show a beleaguered boxer trudging home to his adoring wife so many times before every female in the audience starts to feel mildly offended. Forget Hilary Swank; as far as "The Contender" is concerned, a woman's place is at home, sitting around cranking out babies and waiting for her prizefighter husband to bring home the glory. Sure, Adrian turned to putty in Rocky's hands and George Foreman's wife let him name all five of their sons George (and one of their five daughters Georgette), but audiences didn't have to watch them do it on a weekly basis.
And after awhile, that rousing musical score and those cutaway private interviews about "glory" and "honor" and "dreams" start to grate on the nerves. Drama is one thing, but it is quite another to treat every second of every episode like it was Brando's epiphany speech in "On the Waterfront."
And what is glory anyway? These meathead boxers can't even figure out how to put together a twelve-piece puzzle during one task, but dangle a million-dollar prize in front of them and suddenly they start spouting philosophical gibberish that puts Ali's pre-fight poems to shame.
From a reality competition show standpoint, "The Contender" is even less original. Two teams duke it out over utterly meaningless tasks to avoid elimination and hopefully stay alive long enough to win an exorbitantly fantastic monetary prize at the end. From NBC's own "The Apprentice" to "Survivor" to "Fear Factor," this format has been done literally to death. Sure, those "Contender" boxers can haul logs up a mountainside, but their endurance is nothing compared to the TV audiences who have to sit through the hundredth reincarnation of "The Amazing Race."
So NBC can make all the schedule maneuvers it wants to this week, but "The Contender" will only be able to bob and weave for so long before someone lands a nasty left hook. Then, even hero-worshipping viewers will tire of this clich?© spectacle, and then - ding! - round over and NBC can go back to the drawing board.
