Stefan Raab is approaching 60 – and is boxing on TV. We don’t know what he looks like. We don’t know what he’s up to. But one thing is clear: his fight against Regina Halmich is the PR coup of the year.
Is Stefan Raab finally coming back to the TV screen? While very young people might be wondering who he is, another age group has been freaking out for weeks. For decades, Raab stood for new, funny television. As a presenter and producer, he set standards for what we define as entertainment. Whether on the music channel Viva, on his comedy show “TV total”, as the mastermind behind ESC winner Lena Meyer-Landrut or at his Wok World Championship. In 2015, the now 57-year-old retired from the screen – and now he is literally coming back in one fell swoop.
On Saturday evening (8:15 p.m.) Raab will step into a ring in Düsseldorf and box against Regina Halmich (47) from Karlsruhe. The Düsseldorf PSD Bank Dome is completely sold out with 14,000 spectators. Raab and the former boxing world champion have already fought twice, in 2001 and 2007, which feels like an eternity ago. He lost both times.
Is what the Cologne-based private broadcaster RTL is broadcasting live a kind of “Wetten, dass..?” revival feeling for the entertainment generation of the 90s and 00s? Does it work? RTL calls it “The biggest boxing event of the decade.” The media, at least, are calling it the PR coup of the year.
There will be a lot of attention. Since Raab’s “farewell” almost a decade ago (“Take care, thank you very much, I hope you had a bit of fun.”) the former butcher’s apprentice from Cologne-Sülz had become a kind of phantom. People knew he was still around – but they didn’t see him anymore. At the same time, his non-appearance made Raab even bigger year after year – we know such phenomena from religions. He continued to produce shows in the background. Someone had made the perfect jump. Or so people thought.
It was thought to be an April Fool’s joke
When videos appeared around Easter that suggested a comeback of the “killer belly,” many observers thought it was an April Fool’s joke. In one clip, Raab was shown looking sluggish and overweight in a chair by a picturesque lake, pretending to be a dropout, but then announcing the fight. The date spoke in favor of the theory that it was a joke. Against this, the punch line – his supposed physical change – sounded like Raab’s cosmos and could have appeared in an earlier “TV Total” edition.
Now, shortly before the fight, Raab used this PR gag again. On Instagram, he once again staged a clip of himself as a sweaty, sluggish, much too heavy guy. He presented himself panting while training on a punching bag and stressed that he couldn’t do any more. Then he went one step further: He visited the plastic surgeon Dr. Lamborghini, played by Bully Herbig. He allegedly had the fat sucked out, tightened and transformed into a handsome guy with a blonde quiff and sparkling teeth. Can we believe that he looks like this now?
Play could become serious
The game of vanity could, however, become serious elsewhere. If Raab wants to put himself in the spotlight, will he be the last to enter the stage, as a big bang? But that would contradict common practice. The challenger would then be the first to enter the hall – that would probably be Raab, who has already lost twice to Halmich. The “Raabinator” will not like that, as “Bild” predicts.
Is all of this a one-off TV campaign? The rumor mill has long since stopped assuming this. RTL is keeping quiet. But Bild, for example, claims to have heard of plans for a Raab show on RTL, which is about looking for a “show heir” who will follow in “Raab’s TV footsteps” – and that on the Wednesday after the fight at 8:15 p.m. That would be very explosive, because Wednesday evening is now the broadcast slot for “TV total” on ProSieben – Raab’s old show, now hosted by Sebastian Pufpaff.
“Blood can also flow”
And in the RTL interview she announced: “I at least hope that my nose won’t be broken, because I actually had it fixed after my career; it was broken three times. In the first fight I broke Stefan’s nose and so we’re excited to see what breaks this time.”
