Boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard, a former world champion at five weights, explains to Darryl Broadfoot what motivated him to embrace reality TV show The Contender.

Sugar Ray Leonard put the nobility in the noble art. A member of ring royalty, he had a jab that flashed quicker and brighter than his smile, and often to similarly disarming effect. Leonard was also the ultimate weight-watcher, fluctuating between middle to light-heavy with regality throughout.

He was the pioneer of pay-per-view entertainment: people paid money, lavishly at that, to watch Leonard's litheness and knew they would be entertained.

The six-time world champion at five different weights is in his 51st year. He looks as fresh as the day he entered professional boxing, at the Civic Centre in Baltimore, for a six-round decision against Luis Vega in 1977.

Leonard, named by his parents after Ray Charles with an old trainer providing the sweetness, visited London to promote a new series of The Contender, the undisputed champion of reality television.

The success of the original series is manifold: it has offered a shot at glory for one-time middleweight no-marks, Sergio Mora and Peter Manfredo, and given a new audience of admirers to Leonard and his co-star, Sylvester Stallone, who filmed a redeeming chapter of the Rocky Balboa franchise on the back of boxing's new-found appeal.

The Contender is real-life Rocky, and Leonard the show's Mickey Goldmill. In his prime, Leonard fought wars in the ring, wars he had no right to be in, far less emerge from with the spoils. Roberto Duran, thrice no less, Thomas "The Hitman" Hearns twice, and, most astonishingly of all, "Marvellous" Marvin Hagler, were all vanquished by one of the smoothest exponents of the art.

Fast forward 20 years since his greatest triumph and Leonard surveys a barren landscape. A sport that has lost its respect, integrity, mystique and, worst of all, the identifiable heroes who had, in a golden era, taken on mythical proportions. It is PT Barnum played out on 17 square feet of canvas.

Where did boxing lose its once-compelling human interest? "The fragmentation of the world titles," he says, a not surprising start point for many of the genuine articles.

"It diluted that championship aura. In my day there was one champion. Now we have four different heavyweight champions and three of them are Russians. There are also more controversies than ever, from people biting opponents' ears to punching below the belt.

"In the 70s and 80s boxing was an event: people got dressed up to go to the boxing. You simply could not miss it, access was free and everyone knew who you were, where you came from and how you got there. It's all about the era. Now you have pay-per-view and CBS and NBC, but you know what? The fighters who are being hyped on pay-per-view are not really pay-per-view at all.

Universally, they are not as big as the greats from before."

He cites two exceptions hewn from very different moral fibre. In the red corner, the pugilistic poster boy, Oscar De La Hoya. Imperious boxer turned scrupulous promoter, he has been lured into the ring for one last fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr, reckoned to be the best pound-for-pound operator on the planet in Golden Boy's intermittent absence.

And then there is Mike Tyson. A once chilling and savage dictator of the heavyweight division, he has now resorted to $50-a-head training stints and has even threatened to fight women to offset his crippling debts. They are polar opposites of a brutal business, yet unmissable in their own unique ways.

"Now we have what I consider to be two genuine names in boxing: Oscar De La Hoya, a man who maybe has one last great fight in him, and Mike Tyson, for all the wrong reasons," says Leonard sadly. "Tyson remains box office, though, because you know something will happen. It's train-wreck entertainment.

"The key for any great fighter and any great fight is mystique. When I fought, Marvin Hagler and Duran and Hearns all had that. When I said I was fighting Hagler, they said he would knock me out. They could not accept I fought to win. People did not believe me but look at how Muhammad Ali came back. I expected him to be murdered by George Foreman but it didn't happen, because he had heart and will."

Fighting Hagler was arguably the defining moment in Leonard's long and distinguished career. He was not given a prayer against the hard-hitting and implausibly built middleweight champion of the world. The pessimism even extended to his long-serving trainer and surrogate father, Angelo Dundee.

"They all tried to dissuade me. I said to Angelo, I'm fighting Hagler', and he said, You are what?' Nobody truly believed me. They thought I was bluffing."

Little wonder. By 1987, Leonard had been out of the sport for almost exactly three years, an absence stemming from a detached retina. Hagler was no fledgling but had a history of inflicting pain regardless of opponent.

Leonard prevailed, by what Hugh McIlvanney memorably described from ringside as "the art of optical illusion", or known commonly among the boxing fraternity as the Schulberg Effect. In short, he stole rounds to impress the judges en route to a split decision that rankles with Hagler to this day.

It ignited a second coming for Leonard. He collected the WBC super-middleweight and light-heavyweight titles by beating Donny Lalonde, then retired, came back from the canvas twice to record a draw in a rematch with Hearns, then retired, and finished his trilogy against Duran in a long and mutually pulverising slog. Yes, then retired.

There is a finite timescale to a boxer's last great fight, yet the nature of the sport's heroism and adulation fogs the senses. So it was that Leonard wantonly scarred his legacy with two utterly meaningless defeats by Terry Norris and Hector Camacho; pugs by comparison, yet youthful and nimble enough to reinforce Leonard's folly in a Sinatra-style philosophy to comebacks.

"Ha ha, I'm glad you asked that," he responds, theatrically, to the regrettable and forgettable career appendix. "Yeah, I go S***, I shouldn't a done that." Everybody says to me I saw your last fight,' and you go Aw, man'. Then they say I can't believe you beat Hagler.' That's where it ended for me in their minds and I'm happy with that.

"I actually own the footage of those last two fights. They are in a vault and will never come out again. I rarely see them to be honest, which is good. If I do, I see the first round and think Oh no.' "They are two fights I shouldn't have taken, because I was without the one thing that made me what I was: the edge. I had responsibilities and was balancing things. You cannot do that if you want to get to the top because it is a lonely business. When you live a good life you are no longer driven by adversity and hunger. A young man can recharge but when I got older, it took me longer."

Leonard is still in championship nick, his flawless features a testament to his defensive skills, and his slender frame maintained by a more modest fitness programme.

"My regimen now involves tennis and a few three or four-mile runs," he says. "I am 51 in May and I cannot do things as crazily as I did before. I try to eat healthy during the day but at night the demon comes out and makes me eat ice cream, three scoops of it, and cheesecake."

It is this kind of personal colour that is at the root of The Contender's success. The original series had it all, intense five-rounders, professional and personal pain and suffering.

In one case, Najai Turpin, the extinguishing of the impossible dream resulted in suicide, with Leonard and Stallone attendant at the funeral as pallbearers. It can be cruel, it can be harrowing, but it is real.

Not even Leonard was immune to the struggles. He has admitted to problems with cocaine use between 1982 and 1986 and during his early days told Juanita, his former wife and then 16-year-old mother to his child, to deny knowledge of the father's whereabouts in order to claim benefits.

"The Contender revitalised the sport by taking it behind the scenes, telling the real story behind a fighter; where he comes from and what motivates him and inspires him," said Leonard.

" The biggest surprise for us was that women were so touched by it. I hope this gives us an opportunity to stage an annual event that will generate excitement and genuine interest in these young men trying to make a living for their families.

"It is a poor man's sport. It brought me from under the rock. I was introverted and quiet, yet now I am able to do motivational speaking in front of thousands of people.

"A lot of people who enter boxing have a low self-esteem, and progress with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Being a part of this show has been a wonderful experience and it's an extension of my legacy."