"The Contender" debuted on NBC on March 7, 2005. This article is part of a monthly series throughout 2025 – the 20th anniversary year – catching up with alumni of the show.

Previous profiles in this series: Sergio Mora, Tarick Salmaci, producer Adam Briles.

“I woke up. I’m blessed.”

That’s how Peter Manfredo Jnr responds to “How are you?” – the simple rhetorical question that starts the interview. And his five-word response fully encapsulates his attitude in life now, as a 44-year-old ex-boxer. He exudes appreciation for what he has and for every day that begins with him opening his eyes.

And he starts each day by passing that appreciation along, in the form of a texted GIF to damned near everyone in his contact list. It’s usually a religious message, offering blessings and some sort of positive affirmation. But it doesn’t matter if the people on the other end of his texts share his faith. For Manfredo, he’s mostly doing it as a way to check in.

“I do it just to keep in touch with the people I love in my life, and to make sure they wake up every day,” Manfredo explained this week from his home in Rhode Island. “It’s just, you have a certain amount of time. We never know when that time is up. So I just make sure that I stay in touch with everybody before it’s my time.”

Among the recipients of the daily texts are family, old friends, newer friends, other ex-fighters like his fellow New Englander Micky Ward – and of course, a lot of his castmates he met 20 years ago on the first season of “The Contender.”

He listed Brent Cooper, Tarick Salmaci, Joey Gilbert, Jesse Brinkley. They all get the texts.

But what about that guy Sergio Mora, the one who defeated Manfredo in the finals of the reality-TV tournament?

“Sergio, yeah, I text him here and there, but he’s not on the every-day thing because I don’t know if he’ll get mad if I text him because they’re three hours behind in California. I don’t wanna wake him up and get him mad – I don’t need him trying to beat me up again, you know what I mean?” Manfredo said with a chuckle. “He already kicked my ass and won the million. Leave me alone.”

Nobody else on Season 1 of “The Contender” had a journey quite like Manfredo’s. It ended with that defeat to Mora on live TV on May 24, 2005, via lopsided seven-round decision with nearly 8 million US households watching. It also began with a loss – the first of Manfredo’s pro career, an upset in a five-rounder against Alfonso Gomez.

And in between, Manfredo got the ultimate redemption arc.

“The Pride of Providence” came into the reality show a 154-pound hot prospect, having gained acclaim fighting regularly on ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” and sporting a record of 21-0 (10 KOs). He made for a relatively easy casting decision after fellow Providence boxer Vinny Paz – who happened to be buddies with co-host Sylvester Stallone – convinced him to drive up to Brockton, Massachusetts, for a tryout. Manfredo had a target on his back from the moment he arrived on the “Contender” set. He was the most established fighter in the cast.

But the “West Coast” team was stronger top to bottom than Manfredo’s “East Coast” team and started out winning the challenges and earning the right to make the matchups.

And the then-unknown Gomez cleverly blindsided Manfredo by calling him out for the opening fight of the tournament.

“We had to weigh in at 158, and the weight was really hard for me to make,” Manfredo recalled. “I was walking around on the show at about 170, I believe, and then the weigh-in was on the day of the fight. I was used to the weigh-in the day before and then rehydrating myself and sleeping and coming in fresh, and I couldn’t do that for the fights on the show.

“So Alfonso, I believe I hurt him in the first round, but I expended all my energy trying to take him out, and after the first round, I was dead. He ended up beating me up for the rest of the fight.

“I thought I’d ruined my life. I really did. I thought my career was over after that. I kind of wanted to give up, because I knew I was better than Alfonso, I knew I could beat him, and I really didn’t know if I wanted to fight anymore. But I also didn’t know what else I could do. Boxing was all I knew. My father and mother, that’s all they had me do since I was a kid, was box. So I had no other options.”

As fans of the show surely remember, one of the other contestants from the East Coast team, Jeff Fraza, contracted chicken pox a few episodes in, setting up the remaining cast to vote for an eliminated boxer to come back and replace him. They picked Manfredo.

“All the guys were licking their chops,” he remembered. “They were like, ‘Peter Manfredo, he can’t make the weight, he’s probably not mentally ready to come back, and I want him to come back so I can have his name on my resume. It’ll be easy to beat him.’”

Here’s something most people don’t know about “The Contender”: When a boxer lost, he wasn’t allowed to go home. It’s similar to “Survivor,” where when a contestant is eliminated early, they travel with other eliminated contestants, because otherwise, the order in which people return home would provide spoilers. They couldn’t have the locals in Providence seeing that Peter Manfredo was back in the gym after just a few days away, as word would get around that he must not have lasted long on the show.

So Manfredo was sent to another house in the L.A. area.

“It was actually an even better house than the one we were staying in on the show,” he said. “It was beautiful. We actually had a TV, we had chefs and all that other stuff, and, you know, I didn’t even want to go back. It was better than the loft or being back home.”

Of course, keeping the eliminated fighters in southern California had the added benefit of making them readily available to return if a boxer got cut, or suffered a bad concussion, or, say, came down with chicken pox.

So Manfredo returned to the show. And he went on a three-fight winning streak, narrowly decisioning Miguel Espino, beating Gilbert, and then avenging his loss to Gomez in the semifinals.

The scores are all posted on BoxRec now, giving a sense of which fights were squeakers and which weren’t – something you couldn’t necessary tell as a viewer in 2005.

“They made every fight look close, which, every fight really wasn’t close. But they made every fight look close in the editing, like it came down to the last round,” Manfredo noted with a laugh. “Look, that’s what sells on TV. They want to make people watch and make it seem like the last round is gonna decide this fight.

“And it worked. I think it was a great show, really. It was great to watch. It was great for boxing. And it got to show the other side of boxers. We’re people, you know, it showed we’re not just animals. We’re regular people, we have wives, we have families, and it showed why we actually fight, what we do this for.”

Even though Manfredo started “The Contender” undefeated and finished it with two losses, he has no regrets about taking part in this pugilistic TV experiment.

“It was challenging because here we were, professional prizefighters, but now we’re on this reality show where we didn’t have our trainers, we didn’t have our comfort, our routines. But I’m glad I went on the show. I wish I won the million dollars, but I didn’t. It wasn’t in the cards. Sergio beat my butt in the end, and, he was the ‘Contender’ champion, but I was glad I did it. People got to know who I am and people still know who Peter Manfredo is.”

His celebrity has waned, of course. He remembers the craziness of that spring and summer of 2005, when he was getting stopped left and right for pictures and autographs while trying to enjoy Disney World with his family. Now it’s less frequent, and Manfredo says it’s usually more of a “Hey, you look familiar,” rather than people instantly knowing his name. In fact, he said appearing in the “Fight Night Champion” video game has probably done as much to make him recognizable to people in 2025 as his reality-TV run did.

That Contender fame, of course, also propelled him to further opportunities in the ring. There was an immediate rematch with Mora, which went “The Latin Snake’s” way by split decision, though Manfredo feels strongly the judges got it wrong. That was followed by back-to-back third-round KO wins headlining ESPN cards at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence, against Scott Pemberton and Joey Spina, setting Manfredo up for the ultimate shot: April 4, 2007, in Cardiff, Wales, against super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe.

To the surprise of nobody, it was a one-sided contest. But to the shock of Manfredo, referee Terry O’Connor stopped it halfway through the third round, with Manfredo yet to show any sign of being buzzed by any of Calzaghe’s punches.

“I never got a chance,” he said. “That stoppage, it just wasn’t fair to me. It left a bad taste in my mouth. I wasn’t hurt. Here’s the thing – Calzaghe, he was great, don’t get me wrong, I’ll never take nothing away from him. He would have probably beat me anyway. I know that. But it shouldn’t have been like that. I think I would have given him a good fight. But, basically, they used me. They knew I was popular from ‘The Contender.’ I just had come off two big wins, two big knockouts, and they wanted to bring Calzaghe to America soon, and they wanted to use me to do it, and they really didn’t give me a chance to win.

“But I can’t cry over spilled milk. It is what it is. Calzaghe was great, and no one can ever say Peter Manfredo didn’t fight the best, right? Because I fought him, and he’s one of the best of all time.”

There were ups and downs after that. Wins over David Banks, Matt Vanda, and Daniel Edouard; losses to Jeff Lacy, Sakio Bika, and Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr, the latter two by KO. Manfredo kept going, off and on, retiring and un-retiring, until 2019, when he was 39 years old.

Along the way, there were money problems, and Manfredo became a part-time boxer and a part-time construction worker, first out of the Local 271 labor union in Providence, later out of Local 22 in Boston (where he still works daily from about 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.).

“After I got beat by Bika, I said, ‘I gotta get a job.’ But I kept boxing, too, because I had bills and I had a family.”

Manfredo, 42-7-1 (23 KOs), was actually planning another comeback fight in 2022, against Daniele Scardina in Italy, but one punch in sparring changed everything.

“As I was leaving the gym, I noticed my right side was all numb,” Manfredo revealed. “My whole right side of my body was all numb, and it’s still numb to this day. The doctors found a bruise on my brain. He must have hit me so hard in the head, he put a bruise on my brain. They said eventually it’ll heal, but it’s been a couple years, I still feel the same.”

Manfredo explained that his right foot burns and he has a tingling sensation in his right arm, and it can be uncomfortable, but far from debilitating – and he holds out hope that the doctors are right and it will eventually heal and the numbness will go away.
“I think it was God telling me to quit fighting,” he said. “I had enough. It was time to hang it up for the rest of my life. But I’m OK. It doesn’t stop me from going to work every day. I’m just used to the way it feels now. It’s not ruining my life. It’s just a pain in the ass, and it’s always there.”

For what it’s worth, Manfredo sounds just fine – his mind seems sharp, his speech the same as it was 20 years ago.

Told as much, he responded: “Oh, yeah, I’m not that punchy. I still got a few French fries in my Happy Meal. Don’t worry about it.”

His current physical issues aren’t the only sad part of Manfredo’s story. Fans will recall that he was trained for much of his career by his father, Peter Manfredo Snr. But they’re not on speaking terms these days.

“I haven’t talked to my father and mother in over a year,” he said. “I used to send them those text messages, but they told me to stop sending them. It’s … it’s a shitty situation. I hate to talk about it. Everybody has a cross to bear in their life.”

Manfredo didn’t want to get into any details beyond that.

And there’s no need to dwell on it – especially when his current family brings him such joy. Fans of “The Contender” will remember his wife Yamilka as well as his daughter Alexis, who was 2 years old on the show. Alexis is 22 now, daughter Mercedes (with whom Yamilka was pregnant at the Contender finale) is 19, and son Peter is 17.

Peter and Yamilka have been together since high school, when she was 15, and they’re still married.

“I got so lucky,” he said. “I got her when she was too young to know better.”

That’s Manfredo’s personality summed up in two sentences: cracking jokes, thinking himself lucky, and appreciating every little thing that’s gone his way – including getting to be part of the first season of “The Contender.”

“It was a long process to get cast on the show, a bunch of different stages, but eventually I made it, I was one of the 16. I was lucky, ya know? I caught a break, which we all need to do in life sometimes.”

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.