Contender Rematch, Commander in Chief

I finally caught the rematch fights from The Contender on ESPN. There were three fights on the card, but the broadcast I saw only aired two of them because it was delayed due to baseball related stuff. There was a rematch of the championship fight between "The Man They Call the Latin Snake" Sergio Mora and Peter Manfredo, Jr. The other fight was Jesse Brinkley vs Anthony Bonsante.

I was looking forward to the Bonstante fight because he was my favorite fighter from the first season and in his first match with Brinkley he dominated the fight until the last minute of the last round when Brinkley caught Bonsante with a tight uppercut that knocked him out. This rematch didn't have the aggressiveness of the first fight, but it seemed like Bonsante was winning. He landed far more punches and was more active that Brinkley. The announcers said Bonsante won. And then the judges gave Brinkley the fight in a unanimous decision. I was shocked, the announcers were shocked, the live crowd booed, and Bonsante just walked out of the ring with speaking to anyone.

I fast forwarded through a bunch of the Mora/Manfredo fight. Mora won, another shocked audience as Mora likely lost most of the rounds.

What I noticed is that I found the fights to be less interesting when we don't have the show. We get less of the behind the scenes training and talking and we lose the personality of the fighters. So I couldn't really get into the fights because I lost the reason to really care. Except for the Bonsante fight because I still had the interest in who the fighters were and how they did.

The second season will begin in April, but ESPN will air two more fights before then. I imagine they'll just get some of the other fighters, but we'll see who and when.


I also finally watched the pilot episode of Commander in Chief, the new ABC show where Geena Davis becomes the first female (and Independent) president when the sitting president dies in office. Not bad. The episode went fairly fast and it was interesting to see Davis in that role and how even the old president wanted her to resign before he died because he only selected her to get some votes and never wanted her to really get to be president. But she didn't resign. I want to see how this plays out. Supposedly the show has been getting good ratings. I have episodes three and four recorded. Missed ep 2. Since I may be dropping The Amazing Race this season, I'll be able to get the first run episodes as they air rather than hoping ABC does a rebroadcast later in the week.