Burnett, The Contender??

Ok, I’ve never blogged about TV before, even though it is one of my favorite past times….however this evening I feel like I had to call out my man Mark Burnett. I just watched the (most likely series) finale of “The Contender” on NBC. I was one of the few people who watched this show every week, even when it was put in an extremely competitive Sunday night time slot. It all came down to this final fight, which would be live from Cesar’s Palace. I’m not a big boxing fan, and I knew that the fights wouldn’t be nearly as exciting live as they are after being edited to include punching sound effects and cool slow jabs. But what I didn’t expect was a very poorly produced and directed finale. Somehow they managed to get a few celebrities to attend the fight, Justin Timberlake, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Hulk Hogan were all there watching the match (didn’t the get the memo that this show was cancelled last week???). Here is what else I didn’t expect coming into tonight’s show: a pre-taped boxing match from a few hours earlier determining the 3rd place finisher of the show. I didn’t expect Sly Stallone to start saying during the SECOND ROUND of the title match “I wonder what would happen during in a rematch?”…how about we find out what happens during this fight, then Mark Burnett can pay you to try and peddle this thing back on the air next season.

I didn’t expect the fan fights, which were so highly promoted online as fights that you could vote for and pick the contestants to be only shown in the last 2 minutes of the show. You can watch them online over on contender.yahoo.com….oh yeah, you can also be notified in case of further fights and rematches.

I’ve got a regular entry coming tomorrow night….but I thought it would be interesting to do a semi-review of this television event.