Review: Contender Episode 8

The eighth installment of NBC's "The Contender" marks the end of the first round with half of the original 16 participants now eliminated. Week eight featured Jimmy Lange against Joey Gilbert. For some reason, this bout was seen as a mismatch with talk of Gilbert being a 20-1 underdog. Nonsense. While Gilbert had only eight pro fights going into the series, he's strong and a very good athlete. In fact, if his hamstring had not been bothering him, Gilbert very well may have knocked Lange out instead of outpointing him. The other interesting development in week eight was Juan De La Rosa electing to drop out due to a cut above his left eye and a sore right hand suffered in his week seven win. Once again, the remaining participants get to vote on who to bring back to replace De Le Rosa and - in something of a surprise - it looks like they're going to choose ... loudmouth Ahmed Kaddour. As that is clearly the fighter that NBC would choose for ratings purposes - but not the one that would seem to be the weakest opponent for the seven remaining fighters - it would be interesting to know if the vote was somehow rigged ...