Contender Alumni Box On VS

In preparation for the 4th season of the boxing reality show "The Contender" airing on their channel beginning in Dec., VS ran a Fight Night on Thursday November 13th which featured five alumni of "The Contender" series.

The show took place in Providence Rhode Island and the main event featured Contender Season #1 runner up. "The Pride Of Providence" Peter Manfredo Jr. facing the season three winner Sakio "The Scorpion" Bika. Both men had lost to the undefeated Welsh icon Joe Calzaghe, but while the native of Cameroon, who lives in Australia gave Super Joe a run for his money, the boy from Providence had frozen in the face of greatness and been stopped early. Needless to say, the crowd was entirely for Manfredo, but Bika often fights in the other fella's home town, so the jeers rolled off his back like .......... sand off a scorpion. The Camaroon/Australian Warrior set the pace in the first round snapping his Italian/American opponent's head back with both overhand and straight rights. In the second round the combatants tangled feet, bumped heads and may have both landed light punches as they both fell down .................... but the ref scored this mess as a knock down for Manfredo. The Scorpian was enraged, but the round ended before he could extract retributions. Bika emerged from his corner ready to sting his irritating antagonist. He trapped Manfredo along the ropes and unloaded a barrage of leather which the Italian lad could find no way to answer. The partisan audience was unhappy when the ref stepped in, but Manfredo didn't complain and Sakio "The Scorpian" Bika had scored a 3rd round TKO win

The Co-Main Event of the evening turned out to be a prime example of why experienced veteran, old friend fighters who have trained together usually put on a boring performance. Contender Season #2 winner Grady "Bad Boy" Brewer was facing his old training partner and room mate from The contender show, well traveled and well known Corneluius "K9" Bundrage. K9 had been more active and is a much more powerful puncher than Brewer, so a Bundrage stoppage was expected. But ................ Corneluius just couldn't put a solid right hand on Brewer and Brewer was incapable of hurting him. The 35 year old Bundrage was stiff and slow while the 37 year old Brewer was powerless. Brewer did score a knock down in the third, but he actually had only pushed Bundrage, proving only that the referee was as incompetent as the fighters. From there the match deteriorated in to an array of clutching, posing, holding and hitting, pushing, hitting behind the head and hitting on the break. The ref got his camera time by deducting arbitrary points and in general a perfect picture of a sloppy club fight was presented. In the end Bundrage had better punch stats, but Brewer got the split decision ............. and nobody cared.

On the undercard season three runner up Jaidon Codrington was obviously still trying to shake off the effects of the beating administered to him by Sakio Bika in the finals of their season. He was in an obvious confidence builder against losing club fighter Will Gill. Somehow Jaidon still managed to look awful. He had no balance what so ever and even had a point deducted for repeatedly holding himself up with the ropes. In the 5th round Codrington finally dropped Gill ............. but with a low blow, thereby giving the club fighter a bunch of recovery time. For his part Will kept trying to the limitations of his limited skill set and made Codrington really work. Finally, with only 9 seconds left in the fight Codrington finished off Gill and got his TKO win .......... but a fighter who arrived in the ring with an 8 wins and 20 loses record had just stretched Codrington to the limit.

Except for Sakio Bika, this show didn't do anything to erase The Contender show fighter's reputations as "Just Reality Show Fighters", but expect "The Scorpion" to be a big factor in the race for an undisputed 168 LB champion now that Joe Calzaghe is gone.

Good Night - Good Fight,
Frank "The Snake"