Brandon Adams was a Worthy ‘Contender’: Now Comes the Hard Part

Brandon Adams had a lot of options going forward after winning season five of “The Contender” reality show. Last week he was weighing offers from Gennady Golovkin and Jermall Charlo. “Pick your poison,” said the wags.

Adams chose Charlo. Although it isn’t official, they will reportedly meet on June 15 on SHOWTIME. (That would mean butting heads with Tyson Fury vs. Tom Schwarz that same night on ESPN+).

“The Contender,” which ran from 2005 through 2009 and was resurrected last year, is the brainchild of Mark Burnett, the man behind “Survivor” and “The Apprentice” (the latter starring a future U.S. President, as if you didn’t already know), two of the most popular shows in the history of American television.

Burnett had less success with ‘The Contender” which follows the lives of boxers competing in a 16-man, single-elimination tournament. During the first run of the series, the show bounced around between three networks, never finding a permanent home. The 2018 revival aired on Epix, one of the newer premium cable and satellite networks.

To land a spot on “The Contender,” one has to be an accomplished boxer, but of greater consideration is a good back story. The cast of the 2018 season included these contestants:

Marcos Hernandez – Having been bullied from a young age, Marcos is fighting for his young autistic son.

John Thompson – A performing artist, he was 6 years old when his mother died of AIDS.

Eric Walker – Incarcerated in Louisiana at age 15, he spent 14 years behind bars.

Gerald Sherrell – A zoo security guard by day and a young father by night, Sherrell looks to bring boxing glory back to his hometown of Pittsburgh.

John Jackson – The son of Julian Jackson, he “comes from wealth but cares for the underprivileged.”

Brandon “The Cannon” Adams, the father of two from a poverty-stricken Los Angeles neighborhood, fit right in. And it helped his cause that his career had stalled, as was true of so many Contenders before him. This show was all about second chances.

On May 22, 2015, then 25-year-old Brandon Adams, sporting a 17-1 record, stepped into the ring against the aforementioned John Thompson in Corona, Calif. Although both he and Thompson were relatively obscure, their match attracted considerable buzz as the winner would be crowned the champion of the ESPN Boxcino 154-pound tournament and this was the final episode of ESPN’s “Friday Night Fights” which was folding its tent after a 17-year run.

Adams was favored, but he left his fight in the gym. Thompson was all over him from the opening bell and stopped him in the second round. Adams was so soured by the experience that he stepped away from boxing. Complicated by managerial problems, he was gone for three full years before resurfacing as a Contender.

Adams had a tough road to the finals. In his first match he stopped Philadelphia veteran Tyrone Brunson in the fourth round. Then he outpointed tournament favorite Ievgen Khytrov, a former Olympian, and Eric Walker, who had eliminated Adams’ nemesis John Thompson. These three bouts, all slated for five rounds, were held behind closed doors in a Los Angeles studio that had been carved out of a furniture manufacturing plant.

In the finals, staged at the Inglewood Forum, Adams was matched against Shane Mosely Jr. in a 10-rounder. The prize for the winner was $250,000 and a #10 rating by the World Boxing Association.

The hook for Mosley, said the pre-event press release, was that he was “trying to step out of his father’s shadow and carve out his own legacy.” But the younger Mosely was a pale imitation of his old man and Adams outpointed him by a lopsided margin.

“The Contender” proved to be a great career-booster for previous winners, a steppingstone to good paydays.

Of the first four winners – super welterweight Sergio Mora, super welterweight Grady Brewer, super middleweight Sakia Bika, and cruiserweight Troy Ross – only Brewer failed to land a world title shot. Mora and Bika went on to become world title-holders although their tenures were brief. (Sakia Bika, now 40, will be in action on the 13^th of this month on a card in Minneapolis featuring Sergiy Derevyanchenko and local fan favorite Caleb Truax in separate bouts.)

However, achieving the status of a title-holder nowadays isn’t what it used to be. Although two future world champions emerged from the reality series, one can fairly say that overall the post-“Contender” careers of the winners were spotty, none more so than Grady Brewer who retired with a record of 32-20.

Brandon Adams hopes to emulate Sergio Mora who sprung a huge upset when he dethroned WBC 154-pound world champion Vernon Forrest in their first meeting in June of 2008. Adams (21-2, 13 KOs) will be a Mora-sized underdog when he takes on former IBF 154-pound champion Jarmall Charlo, notwithstanding the fact that the undefeated Charlo (28-0, 21 KOs) didn’t look sharp in his last outing against late sub Matt Korobov.

Brandon Adams made the most of his second chance. Now the road gets tougher for the erstwhile Contender.

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