For charity, comedian Ricky Gervais and celebrity and husband of Anthea Turner, Grant Bovey train as boxers for a month before taking each other on in a boxing match of 6 rounds. The winner gets £5,000 to go to a charity of their choice.
This may be the last one of these we see in the UK now that the British Board of Boxing has come out against it saying that it cheapens the sport, however it won't be a great loss. The show is split into two 30min parts. The first part focuses on the training sessions. This is easily the most interesting part as both men are with top flight trainers and fighters (Lennox Lewis' trainer for one!). It manages to funny but also be interesting to see the extent of the training - and only for one bout.
The fight itself is poor, lets be honest. Aside from the fact that it is celebs going at it, it has no value. Gervais ducks his head when he punches and just goes into Bovey like a foetus doing little punches, while Bovey also looks tired quickly and resort to pushing etc to get him off. I won't spoil the end by saying who wins but I did think that the loser was unlucky but the judges did have a very hard time scoring considering how close quarters it all was and the fact that the punches were rarely cleanly landed.
Gervais made the first part interesting by being very funny - parts of it were like Brent does Boxing! Bovey is less interesting but his ordeal is worth watching. Bob Mortimer is a good compere although he does take it all a bit serious. I suppose the reason for that may be that he knows how hard it is. Vaughn is a good commentator and has his tongue firmly in his cheek throughout. The crowd play their part but they struggle to sustain the excitement with such few clean blows - a series of two pushes got the biggest cheer.
Overall this is worth a watch once because it is funny and it is a chance to see celebs beating each other up. However the second half hour is poor and will disappoint anyone looking to see a good fight with clean punches - this resembles more of a late night drunken brawl than what you think of when you think of `boxing'.
This may be the last one of these we see in the UK now that the British Board of Boxing has come out against it saying that it cheapens the sport, however it won't be a great loss. The show is split into two 30min parts. The first part focuses on the training sessions. This is easily the most interesting part as both men are with top flight trainers and fighters (Lennox Lewis' trainer for one!). It manages to funny but also be interesting to see the extent of the training - and only for one bout.
The fight itself is poor, lets be honest. Aside from the fact that it is celebs going at it, it has no value. Gervais ducks his head when he punches and just goes into Bovey like a foetus doing little punches, while Bovey also looks tired quickly and resort to pushing etc to get him off. I won't spoil the end by saying who wins but I did think that the loser was unlucky but the judges did have a very hard time scoring considering how close quarters it all was and the fact that the punches were rarely cleanly landed.
Gervais made the first part interesting by being very funny - parts of it were like Brent does Boxing! Bovey is less interesting but his ordeal is worth watching. Bob Mortimer is a good compere although he does take it all a bit serious. I suppose the reason for that may be that he knows how hard it is. Vaughn is a good commentator and has his tongue firmly in his cheek throughout. The crowd play their part but they struggle to sustain the excitement with such few clean blows - a series of two pushes got the biggest cheer.
Overall this is worth a watch once because it is funny and it is a chance to see celebs beating each other up. However the second half hour is poor and will disappoint anyone looking to see a good fight with clean punches - this resembles more of a late night drunken brawl than what you think of when you think of `boxing'.
