My opinion.........this season sucks. I feel like I am just watching friday night at the fights. There is very little leading up to the fights. The only resemblence this has to the Contender is teh theme song, USA fighters and Sugar Ray. Also, the promotion sucks. I finally found out the show was on and missed the first three fights. Lucky me I caught the USA fighter who wasn't on either of the first two seasons.
Basically ESPN has stripped away everything that made the first two seasons enjoyable. Season two was worse than season one, but season three is just plain bad. I turned it off after 45 minutes.