In the reality TV world that Najai Turpin entered when he was picked for "The Contender," a show that debuts tonight on NBC, he lived in an eight-bedroom Southern California loft -- "extraordinary living quarters," as the show's executive producer and co-host, Sylvester Stallone, describes it in the first episode.
In the real world, Turpin lived with his younger sister in a North Philadelphia housing project where "if you spit, you spittin' in someone else's yard," as a neighbor, Anthony Williams, put it.
In the reality TV world, Turpin spent several weeks training in a state-of-the-art gym with 15 other boxers who were promised "an opportunity of a lifetime": a chance to win $1 million during the show's live finale, a fight at Caesars Palace. In the real world, he trained with his friends in a one-ring gym where a painting of a fighter who was murdered last year hangs on the back wall.
Turpin's Hollywood life will unfold over 15 episodes as "The Contender" chronicles the "hopes, triumphs and defeats" of the boxers featured in the latest version of one of NBC's -- and television's -- most lucrative and successful form of programming. But in the real world, Turpin will not be watching. On Valentine's Day, three weeks before the show's debut, in which he vows to "fight my way out of the ghetto," Turpin shot himself in the left temple with a small caliber semiautomatic weapon after a conversation with the mother of his 2-year-old daughter. He was 23.
After Turpin's death, representatives of the show -- a collaborative production of reality TV mogul Mark Burnett, entertainment heavyweight Jeffrey Katzenberg, former boxer Sugar Ray Leonard and Stallone, star of the "Rocky" movies, the quintessential boxing fairy tales set in Philadelphia -- said a tribute to Turpin will be added in a future episode, but that nothing else would be changed because, as Burnett explained, "it would be totally spin TV to reedit because of a situation that had nothing to do with the show months and months later. . . . We are showing the reality of this guy's life."
Burnett's belief that Turpin's involvement with the show was not connected to his suicide is shared by police and Turpin's family and friends; one of Turpin's older brothers went on "Access Hollywood" last week to reiterate the point.
Family members also say Turpin was happy in California and ecstatic about the show when he returned to Philadelphia. But not all his friends agree. They say Turpin felt lonely and isolated and broke the rules by secretly calling them.
"It broke him down when they took him away from his family and all his friends," said Frank Walker, an older fighter from Turpin's Philadelphia gym. "They took him out of reality and put him in a reality show. They took a real person and made him into a character."
Given boxing's tradition of hardscrabble underdogs and overflowing emotions, it was perhaps a natural subject for reality television, a genre that has thrived on elimination contests in which viewers come to identify with charismatic contestants. Both NBC and Fox announced plans for boxing elimination shows last year, leading to a prolonged squabble between the networks.
While the Fox show, "The Next Great Champ," was a failure last fall, "The Contender" boasted a bevy of heavy hitters, led by Burnett -- who produced "Survivor" and, more recently, Donald Trump's reality show, "The Apprentice." And as the show's debut approached, boxing seemed once again in the cultural consciousness, with Ken Burns's two-part documentary on Jack Johnson airing on PBS in January and Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby," about a scrappy female fighter, winning multiple Academy Awards.
In a teleconference shortly after Turpin's death, Burnett said the show was more like a documentary than a reality show "because they're not fish out of water, people placed in an unusually stressful situation. This is a bunch of professional boxers, highly trained young men doing exactly what they normally do, which is fight each other [with] the goal to feed their families and try to achieve greatness."
Burnett said producers were drawn to Turpin for three main reasons: the "Rocky" connotations of a working-class Philadelphia fighter; the charisma and smile that dazzled female employees in Burnett's production company; and the drama of Turpin's background, because "with boxing, if you don't know their story, you don't care about them," he said.
And Turpin had quite a story. He had grown up in a housing project with minimal contact with his father and had lost his diabetic mother to a heart attack when he was 18; he subsequently helped support two younger siblings by working as a prep cook.
Even before his mother's death, Turpin got into fights in high school, beating up bullies, according to his trainer, Percy "Buster" Custus. When he was about 15 an older friend, Yusef Mack, encouraged him to go to the James Shuler Memorial Gym, located in "the Bottom," a West Philadelphia neighborhood a little more than a mile from the chic shops and restaurants of the city's university district.
Friends at the gym said Turpin was a slick, smooth fighter with quick hands who immediately took to the sport. "Ain't no doubt in my mind that he was going to be a champion," said Melvin "Mr. Mel" Carter, a 76-year-old trainer at the gym where such talk is now standard; one former fighter, Will Morris, said Turpin would have been a legend.
Turpin also was a loner who some relatives said retreated even more after his mother's death. And yet he talked about her constantly, asking relatives whether she would have been proud of his boxing career and telling friends how much he wanted to be reunited with her, to be under her wing. He talked about getting rich and building a big house where his brothers and younger sister, his nieces and nephews could be with him all the time. And he was obsessed with giving his daughter a better life.
"The Contender" seemed to offer such an opportunity, so in early June, Turpin, Mack and Custus went to a tryout. Custus said producers were interested in both fighters, but Mack was too heavy for a show that would feature 158-pounders, and only Turpin earned a callback.
Custus worried about Turpin being away by himself for the first time and also that Turpin would fall under someone else's sway since trainers would not be allowed to accompany their fighters during the show. But in July, Turpin set off for a round of interviews that Burnett said included two psychological screenings and five hours of written tests. Of about 60 fighters, 16, including Turpin, were brought back for the six-week taping in August.
"He was a happy guy -- he left happy, started happy," co-executive producer Jeff Wald said. "He never gave us a day's worth of problems."
Family members said Turpin was initially uncomfortable in the reality show dynamic but grew more comfortable by the end. In contrast, friends said he told them he was racially taunted by one contestant, whom Turpin later confronted off-camera. The trainer and a cousin said Turpin called and told them he wanted to leave. Other friends said Turpin told them he felt less like he was in training camp and more like he was in jail.
Burnett said he didn't know about Turpin having any racial confrontations; Turpin was secretive and seemed to take great pleasure in evading security, Burnett said.
"The Contender" was supposed to debut in November, but the feud with Fox's show led to a delay, and then the show was again pushed back from January to February and then March as NBC searched for a time slot. The contestants had signed contracts not to talk about the show's results and not to fight again until every episode had been broadcast; in the meantime, they were paid up to $1,500 a week to continue their training.
Friends and family who describe Turpin after he got back from California seem to be talking about two different people. Several friends said he seemed less interested in boxing and put on a considerable amount of weight, up to 20 or 30 pounds -- a problem he had always encountered between fights -- and he began going out and partying.
Others say he told them how badly he wanted to fight. "The money they gave him, the stipends they gave him wasn't enough to keep his drive as a fighter," Custus said. "It's like torquing up a racecar, just torquing it up and not letting it take off. It's like holding back all this thrust. It's gotta go somewhere."
Turpin told at least 10 family members and friends that he had advanced to the show's final and would have a chance to win the million dollars, and he introduced himself to girls by saying "I'm NBC," or "I've got NBC money."
Burnett will not say how Turpin fared in the tournament but indicated that, in addition to the finalists, eight boxers would be brought back to fight before the main event.
In the week before his death, Turpin twice left a training camp with Custus and three fighters in the Poconos, telling Mack that he couldn't get focused and wanted to go home, was ready to leave. Custus and the show's producers said he left the camp to tend to a personal matter. Turpin's girlfriend has declined all interview requests, putting out a statement that said the couple had their issues, but that they had "more love than issues."
The night he died Turpin called a friend, Donnell McGriff, and promised that after that night he would stop partying for good. He had already called Custus, the trainer, and they had made plans for Custus to bring him back to the Poconos the following morning. He went to a club, met a local rapper and told her that "everybody gonna know me, I'm gonna be the champion of the world," Walker said.
A few hours later he was dead.
The funeral was held in a neighborhood church, attracting hundreds of mourners, including 12 fighters from "The Contender," and a host of television producers and executives. A continuous loop of footage of Turpin played on a television placed in a stairwell. The TV showed him running, Rocky-like, up the Philadelphia Art Museum's steps.
Outside the church, Stallone said the tragedy spoke to the fact that the show's contestants lived in "such a real world . . . real flesh-and-blood guys, you know, real salt of the earth men."
