The Contender season 2

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The Contender 2 is a reality television show based on the sport of boxing, but with an element of the (welterweight) competitor's lives and relationships with each other within the show's living quarters, based in Pasadena, California. Filmed in January and February 2006,^[1] the show began airing on July 18, 2006. The winner of The Contender Season 2 was decided in a bout at the Staples Center, Los Angeles, broadcast live on September 26, 2006, winning a purse of US$500,000. The Contender 2 was shown on ESPN in the US, in the UK on ITV4, in Canada on TSN, in Australia on FOX8, in New Zealand on TV2, and on AXN in South and Southeast Asia.

The show took the format of a gameshow, with the boxers divided into two teams (blue and gold) in a "playground pick" on the first episode. These teams competed for the right to choose which of their team members fights that week, and who he fights against. The second half of the hour long episodes are mostly taken up with that fight: the loser is eliminated.

The program was hosted by Sugar Ray Leonard, former champion boxer. Sylvester Stallone, who famously portrayed the boxer Rocky Balboa in the Rocky series of films, is the show's executive producer. It was also produced by Mark Burnett. Unlike in season 1, Stallone does not appear on camera; at the time the series was taped, he was making Rocky Balboa, the sixth installment in the Rocky movie series. The movie premiered in December 2006.