"While initial projections had the second season of ""The Contender"" making its ESPN debut in April it now looks like it will not air until the summer, Fightnews has learned. ""I think that it's going to actually go to summer because of the schedule,"" said executive producer Lisa Hennessy last week. ""So I think that we're going to launch in July. (The finale) will be in October, the first week of October. We're just locking in the air dates this week."" The initial run of try-outs has already been completed with the finals to take place next month. ""We will be doing finals in December and at that point we will decide who our cast is and what the weight class will be."" A weight class has yet to be decided but will likely be announced in January prior to the show being taped.

One aspect that has been decided on for the second season will be the absence of the ""challenges."" In the first season all of the boxers participated in physical, grueling and often painful challenges in order to determine who would fight one another. It was often a nonsensical and dangerous procedure taking place 24 hours before fight time. Thankfully that has been nixed for the second season. ""I think the biggest difference will be that there are no challenges,"" said Hennessy. ""But I really truly think that the show is going to be the creative vision that we have going in. I think it's going to be better. It's the same team of producers coming back. Our goal is just to keep the magic of season one and make it a little bit more sporting oriented on ESPN, changing a little bit with the network change.""

One way to make the show more sport-oriented would be to show each episodes entire concluding fight, not just highlights of each round (as was done in season one). This option, however, has yet to be decided on definitively. ""We'll determine that when we start broadcasting. The goal is to keep the show very much the same as last year but obviously try to make it better. It'll still be 5-round fights sanctioned by the California State Athletic Commission. In terms of what ends up on screen we'll determine that when we start posting it which will be in February or March.""

The gist of the show however will remain intact. This includes the cast. ""Definitely Sugar Ray Leonard will be back, Tommy Gallagher, Jeremy (Williams) and we'll probably have cameos from some of the boxers from last season."" Slyvester Stallone, currently busy filming his sixth ""Rocky"" film, is also back on board. Overall the whole cast and crew seem to be excited and are looking forward to working on their new network. ""ESPN has been fantastic, absolutely fantastic to work with,"" said Hennessy.

""They're very excited about Contender moving over to their network and it's been an absolute pleasure to work with them."" And while no formal decision has been made for a third, fourth or fifth season, Hennessy is optimistic. ""We're in discussions for many seasons to come and hopefully we'll be doing this for the next ten years. Honestly we're just really excited to be back, gearing up for season two and giving sixteen new boxers a chance at celebrity status and a lot of exposure. So we're really excited about that.""

Source: /www.fightnews.com/"">FightNews"