“I mean, I don’t like ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ but I know it’s a good song.”

That’s how Jimmy Lange began his response to the question of whether he enjoyed watching “The Contender” on NBC week-to-week two decades ago.

Confused? Fortunately, Lange expanded on his analogy.

“The Contender wasn’t entertaining to me, but I know it was entertaining. My taste, the kind of stuff I enjoy – it’s not the kind of thing I enjoy. But a lot of people loved it and I appreciate that it was good for what it was supposed to be.”

Lange just isn’t a reality TV kind of guy. And he’s so not a reality TV kind of guy that in 2004, when offered a spot in the cast of a reality show, his initial instinct was to turn down the opportunity.

He’d gone all the way through the casting process, from a scouting session in Washington, D.C., to a tryout of sorts in New York, to the final round of cuts in Los Angeles. And like 15 fellow Contender contenders, he was handed a medal with Sylvester Stallone’s face on it at the end of those few days in L.A., indicating he’d been selected.

But Lange was still making up his mind.

So the guy whose face was on the medal paid him a visit.

“I get a knock on the door and it’s Stallone,” Lange, now 50, remembered. “I’m shitting my pants. You know, this is Rocky standing in front of me. I wasn’t a world traveler. I don’t think I’d ever been to L.A., California, anything, and I’m sitting in a Doubletree Hotel talking to the biggest movie star on the planet. I mean, it was like out of ‘The Twilight Zone.’

“The thing is, I didn’t like the idea of reality shows – they were kind of a farce. And I said that to Stallone, and he’s like, ‘Well, it’s not really a reality show, per se. This is a contest. You’re gonna fight and earn it, and that’s how the winner is decided.’”

It wasn’t quite Rocky Balboa bringing an arena full of Russians over to his side, but it was persuasive enough.

Lange was a junior middleweight prospect from Great Falls, Virginia, with a record of 24-1-1 (17 KOs), beginning to rise to prominence after six years as a pro, drawing decent crowds in the D.C. area while enjoying occasional national TV exposure. Other than Peter Manfredo and Ishe Smith, Lange was probably the most well-known, well-regarded prospect in the cast – to the point that the folks from The Contender pursued him, not the other way around.

On May 1, 2004, as word was spreading around the business about this forthcoming NBC boxing-focused reality series, Lange headlined a show at the Convention Center in D.C. in a 10-rounder against journeyman Sammy Sparkman – on paper, a showcase fight for the then-28-year-old Lange.

As Lange was warming up, his father/manager, Johnny, came into his locker room. “It’s weird,” Johnny told his son. “Jackie Kallen’s here, with Frank Stallone.”

The Langes knew about The Contender and put two and two together regarding the future Hall of Fame manager and the younger brother of Sly Stallone, but Jimmy didn’t dwell on it. He had a job to do.

And he was about to do it extremely poorly.

“They handpicked Sammy Sparkman for me, and he beat the ever living dog shit out of me,” Lange recalled. “I mean, it was 10 rounds of misery. I was sick. I had a real bad flu or something and I fought anyway, so that might have been part of it, but he beat the shit out of me. And I got the decision, which – it was total home cooking.”

You don’t see scores like this very often: 99-91 Lange, 95-94 Lange and 99-90 Sparkman.

Kallen and Frank Stallone didn’t end up paying a visit to Lange in the locker room afterward – leaving him to wonder if he’d fought so poorly they lost interest, or if they merely figured the time wasn’t right to chat up a fighter who’d just finished up 10 grueling rounds.

It turned out it was the latter, and Lange got a call the next week to come to the newly opened Trinity Boxing Club in Manhattan and meet Sly.

While others trying out had to hit the bag and show what they could do in the ring, Lange was required to do nothing more than shake Stallone’s hand and tell his story – which, as a father of twin three-year-old boys with another baby on the way, landed him right in the sweet spot for the show.

He got the invite to L.A., and the next time Lange found himself talking one-on-one with Stallone, it was when the co-host of the show was convincing the Virginia kid to become a reality star.

All these years later, Lange still isn’t comfortable with the term “reality show.”

“It was the most unrealistic version of reality,” Lange said. “It was so unrealistic because nobody spends a couple of months with their opponent, living in the same room, and then fights them, you know what I mean? It wasn’t what the life of a boxer is like.”

It was one of the most memorable experiences of Lange’s life, though, as he and his castmates instantly bonded.

“I wish they could have showed the camaraderie between the fighters more than they did,” he reflected. “We had a whole lot of free time on our hands, and all we did was sit around and play cards and gamble and laugh our asses off. We had a lot of fun. We’d talk about life and movies and play pinball, and most of us became pretty close.”

But, of course, in this “unrealistic version of reality,” these newfound friends had to fight each other. Lange thought his opening-round matchup was going to be against Anthony Bonsante, but after Bonsante pulled a swerve, Lange ended up paired with Joey Gilbert. And just like against Sparkman four months earlier, he didn’t perform up to his capabilities.

“Joey Gilbert did not belong in the same ring as me in terms of skill – his boxing skill was very rudimentary. But he was so big and strong that I just couldn’t fucking hurt him, and he got to me and wore me down,” Lange said.

As presented in the edited version of the bout, it appeared Gilbert won the first two rounds and Lange the next two, leaving the fifth and final round to decide it. And Gilbert clearly had more energy and outhustled Lange in that round – which Lange doesn’t deny, although he felt he should have been ahead through four rounds and deserved a close decision. Instead, all three judges scored for Gilbert, and Lange was eliminated from the show.

“I’m talking to you based on a 20-year memory,” Lange tossed in as a caveat. “It’s not like I recently watched the fight. Nobody’s seen the real, unedited fight, in fact. But, the way I remember it, I thought I won.”

Lange’s record dipped to 24-2-1, but it wasn’t really a career setback. As much as it would have elevated Lange to progress in the tournament and perhaps reach the semifinals or finals, just being on a show watched by some six million people a week proved a springboard for him.

“I went from fighting in 2,500-seat arenas to 10,000-seat arenas and having them close to being full,” he said.

He also got to experience a level of recognition he previously couldn’t have imagined.

“I had a period there of several years of being a celebrity,” Lange said. “When you’re a kid, you dream about being a celebrity, having people come up and get their picture taken with you, going to eat at a restaurant and the owner comes out and he comps your meal. I mean, it was really an enchanted period in my life.”

After losing to Gilbert, Lange bounced back by decisioning Tarick Salmaci in a “fan favorites” fight on the Contender finale card at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. His next fight was a KO of undefeated Perry Ballard at the Patriot Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia – a venue at which Lange became the local franchise, fighting 17 times there over the next 10 years.

One of those fights was a rematch stoppage loss to Gilbert. One was a TKO victory over Contender castmate Jonathan Reid.

But none of Lange’s post-Contender fights comes with a better story than his 2007 bout at the Patriot Center against Fontaine Cabell, whom Lange describes as “the only  opponent in almost 50 fights who I can say I didn’t like.”

Over the course of his career, Lange had the opportunity to work with a string of elite trainers: Pepe Correa, then Buddy McGirt, then Don Turner. By 2007, the iconic Angelo Dundee was in his corner as well – as much for publicity as for actual training, Lange admitted.

Lange and Cabell had battled to a 12-round draw five months earlier, and midway through this rematch, it wasn’t looking good for the local ticket-seller.

“I hurt my arm real bad in like the fifth or sixth round,” Lange explained. “Everybody says they’ll never quit. And I never have quit. But you do think about it. And the closest I ever came to quitting was that night.

“I was in so much pain. I couldn’t move my left arm. And I came back to the corner, and I said to Angelo, ‘I can’t move my arm, Angelo, I can’t move it.’ And I think I wanted him to say, ‘Oh, well, if you can’t move your arm, I’d better stop the fight.’ I was giving him an excuse so that he could do the dirty work.

“And he smacked me in the mouth with an open hand and he said, ‘Fuck your arm, use the other arm.’

“Now, this is a Vince Lombardi status guy. It don’t get no higher than Muhammad Ali’s guy, you know – this is Angelo Dundee. And so I went out and I ended up pulling off a knockout [in the eighth round]. That memory with Angelo – you can never take that away from me.”

Lange kept plugging away and drawing local crowds until his late 30s, when a seven-fight winning streak was snapped in 2012 by a split decision loss to Tony Jeter, followed by a two-year break from boxing and then a majority decision loss to Jeter in their 2014 rematch.

“He’s a guy I would have beaten with one hand when I was three years younger,” said Lange, who’d been boxing since the age of 6 and could feel all the years and rounds catching up with him. “After that, I knew I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

Except there was one last offer Lange couldn’t pass up. PBC was in the early days of its network TV deals and planned an NBC card at the Patriot Center (by this time renamed EagleBank Arena) headlined by Lamont Peterson vs. Felix Diaz. According to Lange, PBC thought Fairfax was a hot boxing town and didn’t realize “nobody gave a shit about boxing in Virginia unless I was fighting.” So, with ticket sales underwhelming, the promoters made Lange a late offer to fight on the undercard in an eight-rounder.

Lange was about 20 pounds over his fighting weight, but PBC said the fight could be at light heavyweight and he could take on his close friend Mike Sawyer, a club fighter Lange knew he could easily beat. Lange asked them to give his buddy Sawyer double the amount of money they were offering him, which they did, and Lange was able to go out with a hometown victory a couple of months after his 40th birthday, stopping Sawyer in the fifth round.

And the best part: His two younger kids were old enough to form a memory of watching their dad win a fight live.

As fans of The Contender will remember, Lange had twins Johnny and Angelo and his pregnant wife, Katie, with him on the show. Katie gave birth to their daughter soon after filming ended – but she and Jimmy soon divorced.

A few years later, Lange remarried and had another set of twins, this time a boy and a girl. That one ended in divorce also – “I’m just bad at being married,” Lange said – making him now a single father of five. The older twins are 24, the younger twins are 15, and in-between is a 22-year-old.

And one of the older twins, Johnny, now has his own BoxRec page. That’s right, he turned pro in May, and like his dad, got his career started with a first-round knockout.

“And he won an extra $100 from me,” proud papa Jimmy said, “because I bet him he couldn’t stop the guy quicker than I [won my pro debut], and he did it by like seven seconds.”

When he isn’t rooting for one of his oldest sons to score a knockout, shuttling his younger daughter to volleyball tournaments or engaging in other parenting activities, Lange makes a living as a boxing trainer – but not to serious fighters. He trains “weekend warriors,” white-collar aspirants essentially, both out of a gym and by making house calls.

His most notable clients: the coaching staff, offensive line and defensive line of the Washington Commanders football team. Head coach Dan Quinn is a huge boxing fan, and when Washington hired Quinn in February 2024, he was looking for a local boxing trainer. A mutual acquaintance put him in touch with Lange. And apparently Lange did a good job, because soon Quinn had Jimmy putting several of his players and fellow coaches through their paces.

As a newly minted quinquagenarian – he celebrated the big 5-0 in August – Lange said in his mind he feels like he’s still 25 years old, but “in my body, I feel like I’m a fucking hundred years old.”

He said his 39-6-2 (26 KOs) boxing career didn’t have any terribly damaging effects, though there are all sorts of minor physical issues, from general soreness to a bum left hand.

“But if you offered me that I could feel like I’m 25 for the rest of my life but take away my experience in boxing, I wouldn’t do it,” he said. “There’s no sport better than boxing, and these aches and pains are worth something to me. I wear the damage that’s been done. I wear it well.”

And he carries the same attitude toward his Contender experience. He made several friends for life – he remains particularly close with Kallen, a mother figure to him. Even in the case of members of the cast and crew he’s not in touch with anymore, Lange says they’d still have each other’s backs if they saw each other, no questions asked.

Reality TV is not his bag. If you took a look at Jimmy Lange’s DVR, you’re not likely to find episodes of “Project Runway” or “The Golden Bachelorette” on there.

Watching The Contender? Not for him.

But being on The Contender and living in that loft for a few weeks 20-plus years ago? He wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 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.