Najai Turpin
Is there a link between reality shows and suicide?
An investigation by TheWrap, an entertainment website, found that 11 people have killed themselves "in tragedies that appear to be linked to their experience on television shows."
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The Contender courtesy ESPN
ESPN on Sept. 4 will reenter the ring with a third round of The Contender, the first to feature full and uncut fights on ESPN2. Sugar Ray Leonard will again host, says the Reporter.... CBS has given a greenlight to the pilots Worst Week (a half-hour comedy based on the U.K.'s The Worst Week of My Life, and to be penned/exec-produced by Scrubs' Matt Tarses), as well as a medical drama from Kasi Lemmons (Talk to Me) and Mark Gordon (Grey's Anatomy).... Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) and scribe Sheldon Turner are developing for FX a dark drama about two cops undercover with the Russian Mafia, says Variety. The series is being eyed as a successor to The Shield.
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Question: I've seen some beloved shows of mine — Angel (still sobbing and boycotting WB) and Dead Like Me (still P.O.'d, considering Showtime's recent clichéd and unoriginal attempts at drama) — canceled over the last few years. That's why I was so pleasantly surprised to see The Contender resurrected to air on ESPN next year. Do you think The Contender will be more successful next year considering it will be on a sports network with lower ratings expectations and with much better opportunities to promote the show (e.g., SportsCenter coverage)? Also, isn't it redeeming that in this money-obsessed, ratings-grabbing age of TV a show's producers believed in the show's concept? Sylvester Stallone vowed to fight for the show. I think it's great that he succeeded.
Answer: I'm not sure I'd classify the resurrection of a reality dud on cable as a triumph, especially since it wasn't so much the quality of the show as the size of the producers' egos (Stallone, Mark Burnett, et al.) that accounts
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With less than championship ratings, NBC's The Contender is definitely on the ropes. Unwilling to admit defeat, cohosts Sylvester Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard rushed this week to create a one-hour special that will air just before Sunday night's regularly scheduled episode. On Thursday afternoon, these two tough superstars, both significantly dressed in black, met TVGuide.com for an exclusive interview at a Los Angeles boxing club.
TVGuide.com: Despite your star power and a tremendous amount of on-air promotion, The Contender has not lived up to expectations in the ratings. Why?Sylvester Stallone: Other networks were dropping nuclear weapons on us. They were trying to see if we had the legs to survive.Sugar Ray Leonard: Based upon what we have been up against, with the other networks doing everything they can to break us down, we stayed strong.Stallone: [Fox's] The Next Great Champ put a negative spin on boxin
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The men behind The Contender are speaking out about Najai "Nitro" Turpin, the 23-year-old Philadelphian contestant who committed suicide on Feb. 14. Although NBC's boxing reality series will premiere March 7 as scheduled, the show goes on with a heavy heart.
"It's obviously been an awful week that went from disbelief to numbness, and now to the realization that Najai is actually gone," says executive producer
Mark Burnett. "I totally enjoyed my time with him. It's cast a huge cloud over our company. All the girls referred to him as a teddy bear.
"I'm not sleeping that much thinking about it because I'm sad for him and his family," Burnett goes on to add. "I've been through this because of my background in Special Forces, seeing close friends killed. Najai wouldn't sleep in the bed on The Contender because he was so used to sleeping under the bed or in the closet for fear of various things [lik
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Let's get ready to rumble! This month, 12 Oscar de la Hoya wannabes start sluggin' it out over the title of The Next Great Champ (Sept. 10 on Fox). Here, TV Guide Online tests the 31-year-old Mexican-American pugilist's reflexes with a combination of sharp questions. Will we K.O. Oscar? Read on to find out...
TV Guide Online: How would you fare in a bout with Sugar Ray Leonard, who's doing that other boxing show, NBC's The Contender?Oscar de la Hoya: It would be evenly matched. We both possess intelligence and speed. We're both very thoughtful fighters in the ring. We don't just go in there to brawl, we think a lot. Fighters like Sugar Ray and myself see it as an art form to think on your feet while throwing combinations and, at the same time, not get hit.
TVGO: How do you answer NBC's charge that Fox ripped off their idea?De la Hoya: I don't really know too much about how television networks come up with their ideas. All
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Let's get ready to rumble! This month, 12 Oscar de la Hoya wannabes start sluggin' it out over the title of The Next Great Champ (Sept. 7 on Fox). Here, TV Guide Online tests the 31-year-old Mexican-American pugilist's reflexes with a combination of sharp questions. Will we K.O. Oscar? Read on to find out...
TV Guide Online: How would you fare in a bout with Sugar Ray Leonard, who's doing that other boxing show, NBC's The Contender?Oscar de la Hoya: It would be evenly matched. We both possess intelligence and speed. We're both very thoughtful fighters in the ring. We don't just go in there to brawl, we think a lot. Fighters like Sugar Ray and myself see it as an art form to think on your feet while throwing combinations and, at the same time, not get hit.
TVGO: How do you answer NBC's charge that Fox ripped off their idea?De la Hoya: I don't really know too much about how television networks come up with their ideas. All I
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Mark Burnett and Sylvester Stallone are recruiting yet another champ for their upcoming NBC boxing reality series, The Contender. "We're talking to Bill Conti, who wrote [the theme from Rocky], about writing our theme song," reveals Burnett, who calls "Gonna Fly Now" the "most inspiring theme I can imagine. Whenever you really, really feel like s--t and can't keep going, [that song] is a good motivator."
The reality guru, however, decided against using the song in The Contender because he believes it's "too identifiable with Rocky. This is about real life and 16 young men getting a chance."
That said, Burnett — who recently signed boxing greats Sugar Ray Leonard and George Foreman to climb into the ring and mentor the aspiring pugilists — is eyeing another signature Rocky tune for The Contender. "At some po
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Thanks to reality TV, stars can offer wannabes an entree into almost any glamorous career field. Supermodel Tyra Banks has America's Next Top Model. Music exec Simon Cowell has American Idol. Business tycoon Donald Trump has The Apprentice. Now, Sylvester Stallone — whose Rocky movies made him an icon — has The Contender.
That's right, Sly's seeking America's next boxing champ. He'll host The Contender — debuting on NBC in early 2005 — and also coproduce the show behind the scenes with Survivor creator Mark Burnett and Dreamworks exec Jeffrey Ka
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