The Contender was a pretty good show if you reduce your expectations of it. Hype surrounding anything that has Mark Burnett's name attached to it is completely overdone. Reference Martha's Apprentice.

That being said, I was looking forward to rematch night. Things didn't begin well then the UVA-FSU football game delayed the action by over an hour. I can certainly understand the network decision to stick with the #4 college football team being upset, but it was poor scheduling not to foresee at least a little delay.

When things got started Luciano Perez came into the ring to get pummeled by Alfonso Gomez. The fight was stopped and it was probably for the best. It absorbed some of the time lost by the delay and Perez wasn't going to win on the scorecards anyway.

Anthony Bonsante took on Jesse Brinkley in a much anticipated rematch of former friends who now hate each other. Jesse scored a big knockout punch on Anthony to reach the semifinal round despite being outscored badly up to that point. The rematch was more of the same, but when the score cards came in even the cameraman was confused. He was ready to focus on Bonsante who clearly should have won, but quickly jerked over to a stunned Brinkley. Well, Burnett loves controversy and if he can create buzz by telling the judges to screw a no name boxer out of a win he will do it.

In the main event, Mora earned a similarly unpopular decision over Manfredo Jr. but in this case I agree with it. Peter head butted him to re-open a bad cut over Sergio's eye early on. Despite bleeding profusely, the "champ" was able to get inside and hurt Peter on more than one occasion. Peter the jarhead thinks he out boxed Sergio which was clearly not the case and he along with the referee insist the cut was from a punch. Yeah, whatever. Go back to Providence and swallow your pride. Cali is for winners and bring on Contender 2.

On a side note, Rocky 6 (official title: Rocky Balboa) is set to begin production. Roy Jones Jr. is in talks to play the opponent. Adrian has died, and only Pauly will be back is what I hear although you would think his son might have had a role, whether or not it actually is his real son reprising his spot in Rocky 5. Anyway, the plot seems to clone the George Foreman style comeback for one last shot at a heavyweight title. When Stallone talked during rematch night he mentioned something about a charity event gone awry, so perhaps Balboa will be training for an appearance only to discover that he feels good enough to take on the champ.

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that's my take