The Contender to return this Fall According to Dan Rafael of espn.com, The Contender reality series will return this Fall on Epix. The show ran from 2005-2008 on NBC, ESPN and Versus. The new season of the series will have a similar format to the previous seasons. Sixteen fighters will participate in an elimination competition. The fighters will be divided into two teams to train, “each overseen by a renowned boxing coach who will act as mentor,” according to the announcement. The trainers and fighters have not yet been announced, but Jeff Wald, the co-creator of the series and a co-executive producer, told ESPN that the middleweight division will be featured. He said the season will be filmed in the Los Angeles area and that production will begin in April. During the season, the boxers will live together, train together and fight each other, with boxers being eliminated along the way until the last two meet for “The Contender” title and an undisclosed six-figure purse. Unlike in past seasons, where each episode culminated with a heavily edited version of that week’s elimination fight, Wald told ESPN that the new season will show each scheduled five- round fight in its entirety without the editing many boxing fans were so critical of. “Boxing belongs on premium pay television, and there is no better home for ‘The Contender’ than Epix,” said producer Mark Burnett. “We will tell stories of the fighters, the families and their difficult journeys in the emotionally compelling Contender style, so that viewers get to vicariously ‘walk a mile’ in the boxers’ shoes.” “‘The Contender’ has launched the careers of many fighters, with some contenders taking world titles — but this new iteration of the series will also showcase the heart, spirit and dramatic personal stories of these fighters as they fight in and out of the ring to realize their dreams,” Epix president Michael Wright said. “This is not only real boxing, but real, raw human storytelling from the best unscripted television production team in the world.”.