The Fight Life: New Top Rank series on ESPN+, ESPN2 gives an unvarnished look at boxing as you've never seen before

Todd duBoef is a boxing promoter, and the business of boxing promoters is to build stars. Stars are the lifeblood of this often brutal sport.

Top Rank's new five-part documentary series uses its biggest stars -- Tyson Fury, Teofimo Lopez, Josh Taylor, Seniesa Estrada and Naoya Inoue -- to tell a much broader, and more compelling story. This series, which debuts on Monday on ESPN+ and then will have airings on ESPN2, isn't designed to build any one individual into a star.

It's an attempt by duBoef to give his customers a look at the sport from a vastly different angle.

"What we're trying to do is take people and give them an inside look at the ecosystem, the world of this sport that is webbed together and knitted together on a global basis," duBoef said. "There are things that our fans don't see, don't hear about, and don't know about or understand. Nobody knows that, 'Hey, this guy just got arrested,' or, 'That guy just missed his flight,' or 'This person is three towns over when they're supposed to be here.' There are so many things going on at so many levels behind the scenes and we wanted to pull back the curtain and open the door and give people a sense of what it is really like.

"People don't see the drama between Teofimo and his father, or between Seniesa and her father. That don't see the cultural moment Inoue experiences. They don't know what goes on for that guy who opens the gym at 5 in the morning in Belfast. So we're trying to demonstrate how everything and everyone operates and how this all comes together."

It uses interviews with promoters, media members, fighters, their families and teams to try to tell the story of how a fight gets from A to Z.

In one scene, podcaster Dan Canobbio says, "When done right, boxing is the best sport in the world." And indeed, boxing can produce spine-tingling moments like few other sports can do.

But it's not always about the hero overcoming adversity to beat the odds and retain the title. It's about the battles of the mind, the fights with family, the difficulties of everyday life that make what these people do so extraordinary.

For years, duBoef has been trying to change the narrative of how boxing has been presented and perceived. 

"Forever, we have been about immediate gratification, of trying to get people's attention on one night and get them to tune in as we go around saying 'My Superman is better than your Superman,' " duBoef said. "This [series] isn't that. It's not that at all. We say in there, 'You've seen the fights, but you haven't seen the unfiltered, unearthed stories that go on.

"So this is much bigger than trying to say, 'Hey, watch this one even on this one night between these two guys.' It's trying to show what takes on daily over a 12-month period, a 24-, or a 36-month people in a sport that is literally a worldwide thing."

This is a look at the sport the way it hasn't been done before. You see boxing as it is. When you hear Estrada in the documentary says "the business of boxing is brutal," you see for yourself what she's talking about.

Episode 1, called "Tyson Fury: A heavyweight task," premieres on ESPN+ on Monday and at 6 p.m. ET on ESPN2 on Oct. 9.