The Next Great Ham'N'Egger?
Okay, full disclosure: I DESPISE "reality" television. Not Cops or America's Most Wanted, but rather the trumped-up, fake "reality" of shows like Survivor, Big Brother, Temptation Island, The Real World, etcetera. Reality television has been the death of innovation on episodic television.
That said, I did enjoy one season of one reality show. Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that it was the first season of the WWE reality show Tough Enough, which was a show in which 12 amateurs trained and tried out for two slots in the WWE. I just finished watching the first episode of the new Fox reality show The Next Great Champ, which is very similar to Tough Enough. Basically, 12 boxers will spend three or four months training with professional trainers for a shot at $750K, a contract with Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Productions, and a guaranteed shot at a WBO regional title.
The show opens with a cliche-heavy intro to a few of the boxers. There's an Ex-Con, a Prison Guard, and a Golden Gloves Champ among the group, but no mention of whether these guys are pros or amateurs.(An ad in USA Today yesterday featuring the records of them is no help, as it simply lists numbers.) The 12 have brought a significant other with them, to act as a second, but obviously also to help the drama. And, because this is a reality show, there is drama. David Pareja, the apparent favorite here, is a white boy from Chicago with a racial chip on his shoulder. He makes a comment about how easy it is for "blacks and Mexicans" to become boxers, because they come from the streets, as opposed to "white kids who are brought up with a book in their hand, in school." Nice attitude, Sparky. That's going to make you real popular. David is obviously our Chris Nowinski/Richard Hatch/dickish heel character, and you wonder if Fox encouraged this.
We then see a montage of training, as the boxers train with Tommy Brooks and Lou Duva. Brooks and Duva are seen sparing no one, particularly questioning the heart of one boxer, Arsenio "R.C." Reyes.
The boxers are ranked 1-12. Each week, the boxers will go through a physical competition of some kind, to shake up their rankings and win some money. At the end of the show, the bottom-ranked boxer has to choose one of the top three guys to have a 4-round eliminator with. Whoever loses goes home, but if the 1-3 guy wins, they also get $25K.
The first contest is inverted situps. The boxers have to do the situps and punch three buttons to light lights. The person who does the most in 90 seconds is the winner, and gets $10K and the number 1 ranking. A boxer named Paul does the most, but does so by cheating, so he ends up last. David and Mike Vallejo tie, so they have a playoff, which David wins. We then see the standard confessional sequences of reality shows, where we see that David's second, his wife P.J., is naive and a bit greedy.
We then see Oscar, Lou, and Tommy as they rank the boxers. When we come back from break, the rankings are revealed. David is number one, followed by Otis Griffin(referred to as the dark horse by Lou and Tommy) and then Mike Vallejo. Paul the cheater and R.C. are the last two names on the list, and after Tommy bitches out Paul for being a cheater, he says that R.C. is #12. He has to choose his opponent.
After commercial, we get more confessional, as R.C. and his brother discuss who to choose. David gets to put his foot in his mouth some more with some more racial nonsense; Otis Griffin is cocky but not as bad as David, and Mike Vallejo, who has known R.C. for years, expects he won't be the one to fight R.C.
Sure enough, R.C. picks David, and we get the fight. And here's where we come into my main problem with this show. Because it's a reality show, we don't get to see the whole match between R.C. and David, and the camera angles chosen don't particularly help you to get a definitive idea of who's winning.
Round one: R.C comes out swinging and overwhelms David. We see maybe 40 seconds of the round, which goes to R.C.
Round two: More of the same. David seems overwhelmed by R.C., who is just swinging away as wild as can be.
Round three: David turns the tide, and starts working R.C.'s body, slowing him down. Clearly David's round. Between rounds, R.C's corner tells him he needs a K.O. David's corner tells him to keep up the pressure.
Round four: David keeps up the pressure, and holds off R.C. to win the fight and eliminate R.C.
The show ends with the standard reality show elimination, as R.C. hangs his gloves up on a hook in the gym. His post-show comments are basically "I didn't do enough."
Overall, it's not a bad show. It's obvious they're pitching this to the non-boxing fan. Not enough is shown of the training, and from the previews of next week's show, it seems like there's going to be more offtime drama and less training. In addition, 2 minutes worth of a 12-minute fight is not enough to really tell if someone's a good fighter or not, at least for my money anyway. Fox has my interest, let's see if they can keep it. (And my choice for the winner is Otis Griffin. Someone needs to knock David's block off.)
That said, I did enjoy one season of one reality show. Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that it was the first season of the WWE reality show Tough Enough, which was a show in which 12 amateurs trained and tried out for two slots in the WWE. I just finished watching the first episode of the new Fox reality show The Next Great Champ, which is very similar to Tough Enough. Basically, 12 boxers will spend three or four months training with professional trainers for a shot at $750K, a contract with Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Productions, and a guaranteed shot at a WBO regional title.
The show opens with a cliche-heavy intro to a few of the boxers. There's an Ex-Con, a Prison Guard, and a Golden Gloves Champ among the group, but no mention of whether these guys are pros or amateurs.(An ad in USA Today yesterday featuring the records of them is no help, as it simply lists numbers.) The 12 have brought a significant other with them, to act as a second, but obviously also to help the drama. And, because this is a reality show, there is drama. David Pareja, the apparent favorite here, is a white boy from Chicago with a racial chip on his shoulder. He makes a comment about how easy it is for "blacks and Mexicans" to become boxers, because they come from the streets, as opposed to "white kids who are brought up with a book in their hand, in school." Nice attitude, Sparky. That's going to make you real popular. David is obviously our Chris Nowinski/Richard Hatch/dickish heel character, and you wonder if Fox encouraged this.
We then see a montage of training, as the boxers train with Tommy Brooks and Lou Duva. Brooks and Duva are seen sparing no one, particularly questioning the heart of one boxer, Arsenio "R.C." Reyes.
The boxers are ranked 1-12. Each week, the boxers will go through a physical competition of some kind, to shake up their rankings and win some money. At the end of the show, the bottom-ranked boxer has to choose one of the top three guys to have a 4-round eliminator with. Whoever loses goes home, but if the 1-3 guy wins, they also get $25K.
The first contest is inverted situps. The boxers have to do the situps and punch three buttons to light lights. The person who does the most in 90 seconds is the winner, and gets $10K and the number 1 ranking. A boxer named Paul does the most, but does so by cheating, so he ends up last. David and Mike Vallejo tie, so they have a playoff, which David wins. We then see the standard confessional sequences of reality shows, where we see that David's second, his wife P.J., is naive and a bit greedy.
We then see Oscar, Lou, and Tommy as they rank the boxers. When we come back from break, the rankings are revealed. David is number one, followed by Otis Griffin(referred to as the dark horse by Lou and Tommy) and then Mike Vallejo. Paul the cheater and R.C. are the last two names on the list, and after Tommy bitches out Paul for being a cheater, he says that R.C. is #12. He has to choose his opponent.
After commercial, we get more confessional, as R.C. and his brother discuss who to choose. David gets to put his foot in his mouth some more with some more racial nonsense; Otis Griffin is cocky but not as bad as David, and Mike Vallejo, who has known R.C. for years, expects he won't be the one to fight R.C.
Sure enough, R.C. picks David, and we get the fight. And here's where we come into my main problem with this show. Because it's a reality show, we don't get to see the whole match between R.C. and David, and the camera angles chosen don't particularly help you to get a definitive idea of who's winning.
Round one: R.C comes out swinging and overwhelms David. We see maybe 40 seconds of the round, which goes to R.C.
Round two: More of the same. David seems overwhelmed by R.C., who is just swinging away as wild as can be.
Round three: David turns the tide, and starts working R.C.'s body, slowing him down. Clearly David's round. Between rounds, R.C's corner tells him he needs a K.O. David's corner tells him to keep up the pressure.
Round four: David keeps up the pressure, and holds off R.C. to win the fight and eliminate R.C.
The show ends with the standard reality show elimination, as R.C. hangs his gloves up on a hook in the gym. His post-show comments are basically "I didn't do enough."
Overall, it's not a bad show. It's obvious they're pitching this to the non-boxing fan. Not enough is shown of the training, and from the previews of next week's show, it seems like there's going to be more offtime drama and less training. In addition, 2 minutes worth of a 12-minute fight is not enough to really tell if someone's a good fighter or not, at least for my money anyway. Fox has my interest, let's see if they can keep it. (And my choice for the winner is Otis Griffin. Someone needs to knock David's block off.)
posted by Jon M. at
2:29 PM
4 Comments:
That actually does sound like a reasonably interesting show, even with the reality show cliche nonsense- and they've got some pretty impressive actual boxing names associated with it. I have trouble seeing 80something Lou Duva wasting his time with something he didn't think had some value.
The guy doing the racial stuff is out of line of course (and as you say, probably playing a character), but there's a kernal of sense in his stupid: there's a case to be made, which has been made by responsible people, that Mexican fighters at least have an easier road towards prominance due to the greater role of the sport in their sporting culture. It's easier to find sparring partners, it's easier to get publicity (witness the promotional effects of Telefutura and Boxeo de Ora), and it's easier to draw money and become a commodity by making ethno-racial marketing appeals (an idea that's found at every level in boxing- there's a reason Trinidad always fights in New York, Puerto Rican expatriate capital, for instance). There's nothing intrinsic to a race or an ethnicity in any of that of course, but the culture associated with ethnicity and race is a supportive factor for a lot of fighters.
I forgot the comedian (they were of Latino decent) that made the joke about the lower you are on the racial scale, the better boxer you are.
With the final punch-line of: "Somewhere out there, there's an Eskimo waiting to beat the fuck out of an American Indian."
Sounds like Leguziamo.
Brendan, you might actually be interested in watching the show. Despite the reality crap, it is watchable.
I ONLY GOT TO SEE THE FIRST FOUR WEEKS ON FOX, AND WASN'T AWARE IT WAS ON FOX NET UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE. I HOPE FOX RUNS IT AGAN SOMETIME THIS SUMMER!!!!!
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