Contenda

Flipping through the stations after a very long day, I land on ESPN, just as the boxing show Contender is beginning, coincidentally just like I did last week. I'm a mid-level boxing fan (can be quite brutal) nonetheless I figured I check it out, especially since I kind of watched the last season. Anyway I found that I while watching the show, I really wasn't the show. For those who have never watched the show, the fighters are paired off into two teams and one member for each time square off, the winner remaining to fight another, the loser going home.

I found myself unable to watch the final fight. I kind of cringed each time it appeared one fighter was getting the upper hand on the other. Watching, I realized I wasn't pulling for either fighter. Every professional bout I have ever watched, I have always pulled for one. Here however, I couldn't pick one.

With professional fights, both the winner and the loser takes a check home. Regardless. Here, the loser not only takes his bumps and bruises in the ring, but he also loses on his big chance to fulfill his ambitions as a boxer. He loses, he loses it all. That chance for the big fight, for that big payday. The show focuses on the fighters backgrounds before the end of the show fight, shedding light on why they are fighting, who they are fighting for etc. A lot of those cats come from tough beginnings or have put in a lot of work just to make it to where they are in the fight game.

So, how do you choose who to root for when you realize that the loser, in fact, is the loser? There will be no second chance for the loser. This is that man's big chance. This is his moment. He either delivers or he goes back home, with nothing but what ifs. No check to heal the bruises or pain. If anything, he goes home with more pain than when he began the show. Given that reality, how can one root for or against either man? Darn reality shows.

Figured out who or what Blackwater is yet?

Lauryn Hill, though she has been acting a mighty strange of late is still a talented artist. Hence..... Yo, it was raining hard and I had the lights off.