Word: turpin
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Last Sunday night, NBC’s hit reality show “The Contender” aired the boxer Najai “Nitro” Turpin’s final fight. Turpin, a contestant on the show competing for the one million dollar prize, killed himself on February 14. Friends, family, and the producers of the show were shocked by Turpin’s suicide, unable to understand why he did it. The death of Turpin is a tragedy, but what is equally as sad is the reaction by some to Turpin’s passing...
Whatever the reason, Turpin's suicide morbidly underscored the way NBC had been promoting The Contender (previews March 7, 9:30 p.m. E.T., and March 10, 10 p.m. E.T.; regular time, Sundays, 8 p.m. E.T.): as a reality series with high emotional stakes. Executive producer Mark Burnett (Survivor, The Apprentice) says Stallone, whose co-host is boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard, advised him to watch Rocky again before making the show. "It's not Rocky's story," Burnett says. "It's [Rocky's girlfriend] Adrian's story...
...Burnett focused on the boxers' personal lives, moving wives, parents and kids to Los Angeles to live with them. Turpin doesn't figure heavily in the debut, but there's a brief scene in which he cuddles Anje. "He lived a guarded life," says Stallone, "but when he was with his daughter and girlfriend, he became incredibly childlike." Says Burnett: "He wouldn't sleep in the bed we provided. He'd sleep under the bed, or in the closet, because he was so used to doing that in case there was shooting outside." The 16 middleweights are divided into...
...scene, though moving, makes Turpin's death all the more disquieting because it reminds us that the show is dangling a million dollars in front of young men often from troubled, even desperate, backgrounds. Of course, sports do that too. Call it exploitation or opportunity: they depend on young men--often minorities--who come from little or nothing and are willing to literally fight for a better life...
...Najai Turpin lost that larger fight, though producers will not reveal how he did in the ring. Burnett is not going to edit Turpin's scenes--it would be disrespectful, he says--but the producers are creating a trust fund for Turpin's family. Starting next month, millions of people will watch The Contender and feel they know Turpin. Yet his life ended in an act that not even those closest to him can explain. It turns out that in reality--actual reality--people don't reveal all in a soliloquy. And Rocky does not get a sequel. --With reporting...