Rather than repel him, those conditions appealed so much to Mark Burnett, the immensely successful producer of "Survivor" and "The Apprentice," that his next reality television series, "The Contender" on NBC, will feature 16 boxers living and training together in Southern California in pursuit of a $1 million prize.

Sylvester Stallone is the host, and he and Sugar Ray Leonard are the boxers' mentors. George Foreman and other celebrities are scheduled to appear on the series, for which NBC is paying $2 million an episode. It is to launch in January.

But the series is in one fundamental way different from those that Burnett has set on a secluded island or in Donald Trump's Manhattan boardroom with Type A people drawn from a variety of backgrounds who are voted off their islands or fired.

This time - as with Oscar De La Hoya's "The Next Great Champ," which survived four episodes of low ratings on Fox before moving to cable - Burnett has chosen an industry that is regulated by state athletic commissions and federal boxing law.

By doing so, he has set up a clash between the secrecy needed to protect the results of a taped reality series and the wide-open world of boxers fighting in front of a paying crowds that did not have to sign nondisclosure forms (as those who attended "Contender" matches did).

Reality television is governed by internal rules that foster competition, jealousy, pressure, hatred, love, adventure and drama. The result, in past series, has been to create a winner who is wilier, stronger, more daring, more attractive, more gullible.

The boxers in "The Contender" had to sign a 28-page participant contract, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. The contract outlined the restrictions they would live under, the extent to which the they would sign their life stories away and the penalties they would incur for disclosing what happened in their hermetically sealed world. The rules add up to a voluntary surrender of some of their civil rights, a characterization that Burnett did not dispute.

They have been required to:

Permit, with no legal recourse, the program to portray them by using potentially "personal, private, surprising, defamatory, disparaging, embarrassing or unfavorable" information.

Allow concealed cameras to follow them in ways that would "in other circumstances be considered a serious invasion of my privacy."

Agree to let the producers "make certain misrepresentations to me and others" about themselves, their rivals and the prize purses.

Pay a $5 million breach-of-contract penalty if they disclose anything about the series, without authorization by the producers, until after the final episode is broadcast. A $500,000 fine is suggested for those who speak without permission afterward.

Earn, at times, "food, food money and/or catering" at the producers' discretion. At other times, the boxers were told, they would get a "reasonable supply" of food.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one producer of the show said the most draconian rules were designed to frighten participants into compliance and that it was unlikely a boxer would be sued for $5 million.

Burnett plans to promote the boxers beyond the program, and he has received licenses from California and Nevada. So has Brian Edwards, a lawyer for DreamWorks SKG, the co-producer of the series.

"Boxing is broken, no doubt about it," Burnett said by telephone last week. "But if I'm right, and based on my other unscripted dramas, I can take 16 young men, and each of them will leave the contest way ahead of where they came in, in terms of their value to themselves and to us. We know that marketing is the key to their economic success."

Despite the wall of silence, some results have leaked, and many of the boxers' names are known: Sergio Mora (who has a 12-0 record), Peter Manfredo Jr. (21-0), Jesse Lee Brinkley (23-1-0) and Ishe Smith (14-0).

Mark L. Tuft, a lawyer in San Francisco who specializes in the media, said there was no problem in a person agreeing to waive what would be grounds for defamation or invasion-of-privacy claims. "But what are the outer reaches of this?" he said. "I suppose there is a line beyond which it becomes unconscionable."

Burnett defended his practices and suggested that if some of his famous alumni, like Richard Hatch of "Survivor" and Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth of "The Apprentice," were willing to suspend their civil rights for money and fame, so should the boxers. He said that the boxers had representatives read the contracts with oversight by the California State Athletic Commission.

"You can't value the boxers' rights over Richard's or Omarosa's," Burnett said. "Based on the state of boxing, and the value of these men, all of whom came in disenfranchised, pushed aside and lied to, we've kept our word and gave them a fair chance."

The boxers were unavailable for comment.

The California commission has no purview over the participant deals and did not examine them, said Dean Lohuis, the interim executive officer of the agency. "Our job is to look out for the safety of the fighters and to be sure they were ready," he said, adding that the commission kept strict oversight of the bouts.

The agreement by the boxers to abide by reality TV rules that do not exist in their normal lives would be useless to Burnett if viewers knew the results of the bouts, which have been taped, except for the final; it will be carried live in April from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

To shield the results from public view, Burnett persuaded the California State Athletic Commission to waive - to some critics, violate - a federal boxing reform law that requires results to be reported to three boxing registries within 48 hours. The purpose of the provision is to protect boxers from being injured in a bout that has not been reported, then taking another match in a state that was unaware of his condition.

To counteract the effect of the waiver, the boxers signed contracts that required them to suspend themselves until the final episode is shown. That means that some fighters will be prevented from taking any other fights for at least seven months, or possibly longer. Burnett is paying them "holding fees" through April, to make up for any lost income. "They're not losing much compared with what they were paid in the past," he said.

Originally, episodes were to start this month, but they were delayed to distance them from the failure of De La Hoya's series.

Burnett said it was purely "common sense" that results be held back, especially if the boxers' safety was not compromised. "We're not going against the intent of the law," he said. "Why does somebody want to know? Does the existing way of knowing things make it right? No."

Chris Mears, chairman of the commission, said that not waiving the reporting rule would have been a "triumph of bureaucracy over reason."

"We don't need to run to the federal government every time we're confronted with an interpretation of rules," he said.

Sen. John S. McCain, Republican of Arizona, who co-sponsored the boxing reform law, was unavailable for comment. He met with Burnett several months ago, but he has not said anything publicly about the program.

But Tim Leuckenhoff, president of the Association of Boxing Commissions, which certifies one results registry, Fight Fax, wrote in an e-mail message that his organization did not approve of the California commission's decision to violate the law.

Patrick English, a boxing lawyer who helped draft the federal law, said, "Local commissions cannot decide what portion of the act they obey and don't obey." He added, "It's pretty clear that California bent itself into a pretzel to accommodate 'The Contender.' "

New York State would not have been host to "The Contender" if it meant waiving the reporting requirement, said Ron Scott Stevens, the executive director of the New York State Athletic Commission. "I'd be taking the law into my own hands," he said.

Stevens said there were other provisions in the promotional contract the boxers signed that he would have challenged, such as how training expenses are paid and how Burnett's group can unilaterally assign a boxer's contract to anyone else, but the fighter cannot do the same.

"Contender" boxers also had to waive their rights to appeal the results of any pre-championship bout to the California commission.

Hauser, a respected boxing writer and a former consultant to the show, said the convergence of the reality and promotional contracts offered the possibility of abuse. "The people on 'The Contender' may be completely well intentioned and treat the fighters fairly," he said. "But it's not like putting a truck driver on a desert island. This is these boxers' livelihoods. They should be treated with dignity."

That's precisely what Burnett insists he is doing as he grafts his reality paradigm onto a sport that he says he wants to reclaim.