Can Stallone Save The Contender?
by Mary Murphy From TVGuide.com
With
less than championship ratings, NBC's The Contender is
definitely on the ropes. Unwilling to admit defeat, cohosts
Sylvester Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard rushed
this week to create a one-hour special that will air
just before Sunday night's regularly scheduled episode.
On Thursday afternoon, these two tough superstars,
both significantly dressed in black, met TVGuide.com
for an exclusive interview at a Los Angeles boxing club.
TVGuide.com: Despite your
star power and a tremendous amount of on-air promotion, The
Contender has not lived up to expectations in the ratings.
Why?
Sylvester Stallone: Other networks were dropping nuclear
weapons on us. They were trying to see if we had the legs to
survive.
Sugar Ray Leonard: Based upon what we have been up against,
with the other networks doing everything they can to break us
down, we stayed strong.
Stallone: [Fox's] The Next Great Champ
put a negative spin on boxing, which is a subject that was dubious
to start off with. No one really knew or cared about boxing
anymore, so we were really starting off from ground zero. But
it is building momentum, not just here but in England,
where we moved into first place in our time slot. And
we are going to be opening in Germany, Australia,
Italy and Spain. So the idea of this American
dream still translates. The Rocky philosophy still
resonates. So I think it's really going to catch on. I really
do.
TVG: Is that why you're
doing the extra hour? What are you doing in it?
Stallone: We decided to do this three days ago. [NBC-Universal
president] Jeff Zucker is taking Dateline
off the air this Sunday [to make room for our] hour
special. So from 7 pm to 9 pm/ET will be The Contender.
It will be me interviewing the wives, showing a different aspect,
and then Sugar Ray and I will be recapping the four wonderful
battles in the ring. We will sit there with the four winners
and analyze what they did. You are going to meet them up close
and personal.
Leonard: We are going to recap the first four episodes
to let people catch up. There are some very dramatic moments,
[like] the big shock in the first episode, when Alfonso Gomez
decided to fight the most celebrated boxer of the competition,
and it blew everybody away. And then in the third episode the
fight with [Ishe Smith and] Ahmed Kadour [who
lost]. They hated Ahmed. He walked around like he was
God's gift to the earth and to women. And last week [featured]
the heartbreaking fight with Najai Turpin [who later
committed suicide].
TVG: This show has been
an uphill battle all the way. Why continue to fight so hard?
Stallone: We really love this show. And strangers were
coming up to us in the street and recapping it. Then the studio
executives caught all the chat on the Internet and
it was so positive, they thought they were really getting something
at the grass-roots level. The odd thing is, this is how
the first Rocky started off. [Producers] Irwin Winkler
and Robert Chartoff took this canister of film to people's
homes and created a buzz — because nobody wanted to see
an unknown in a boxing film that was done for under $1
million. We couldn't even get distribution. It was hard. So
we did the same with The Contender. We said, "Let's
flog it. Let's work it."
TVG: So The Contender
will not be pulled from the network's schedule?
Stallone: NBC is not giving up. We are going to
the end with a fight at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
I am even thinking about ways to do a second season, which would
be dramatically different from the first.
- Craig
