The Challenge: World Championship started with the tried and true strategy of MTV’s Legends playing it safe by continuing to target the same teams in the game.
That’s been witnessed repeatedly in MTV’s show and even in the All Stars spinoff on Paramount Plus, leading to some fans and critics calling the show boring and predictable.
However, things got shaken after the first four episodes of the World Championship, thanks to some of the targeted OG Legends and a few MVPs making some moves in the game.
Seven-time champion Johnny Bananas even admitted he was completely surprised by the elimination vote that ended up happening in Episode 7.
It resulted in another top star getting ousted from the game much farther ahead of the World Championship final than viewers might have anticipated.
This report will contain spoilers from The Challenge: World Championship spinoff season.
Johnny Bananas comments on World Championship Episode 7 elimination
During his latest Death, Taxes, and Bananas podcast, the multiple-time champion of The Challenge had Jordan Wiseley on his guest to talk about what recently went down in the World Championship.
In Episode 7 of the spinoff, viewers saw Bananas, Tori Deal, and other Team USA members try to get on the same page to swing the vote so that Jodi Weatherton and Benja Alfonso would go into elimination to face the daily challenge losers, Jordan and Kaz Crossley.
Their plan seemed foolproof, with the exception of their needing to get KellyAnne Judd to vote with them. However, KellyAnne hadn’t forgotten that she was an easy vote early during the season.
Instead of going along with the MTV Legends who approached her, KellyAnne rallied other outsiders, including Jodi and Darrell Taylor.
Along with assistance in the vote from Amber Borzotra and Troy Cullen, and Ben Driebergen refusing to vote with Team USA to create another stalemate situation, KellyAnne’s plan worked.
Bananas with Justine Ndiba and Theo Campbell with Sarah Lacina were the two teams that got voted in as elimination options.
Based on comments from Bananas during his latest podcast episode, he had “no clue” that he and Justine would be voted in.
“No hint whatsoever that it was gonna be Justine and I, and that’s why when the first vote fell on us, I looked at her, and I was like, ‘Damn, it’s going to be us,'” Bananas told Jordan.
While that was a shock, Bananas said there was no shock regarding which of the two teams would get picked to go into elimination.
“We knew regardless of how many votes Sarah and Theo got, it was never going to be them because of Sarah’s relationship with Emily [Seebohn],” he added.
Jordan was sequestered with his teammate Kaz and the daily winners, Yes Duffy and Emily, when they saw the two teams’ names on the screen. The three-time champ admitted to Bananas that he was surprised to see his castmates pull off that big move.
Bananas said he gave his Legends castmate a heads-up about votes but didn’t get the same back
According to Bananas, something else that didn’t pop up in the footage was a conversation he had with his longtime castmate Darrell Taylor about the vote that was coming up.
Bananas said the plan was to put Darrell and Kiki Morris up for elimination along with Jodi and Benja. He informed Darrell that the vote might go that way, and he might end up going in.
“I pulled Darrell aside right after that, and I was like, ‘Listen, dude, just so you know, this is the way that it seems like the votes are going to go. It looks like the votes are going to fall on you, and if I say your name, just know that it’s like, that’s where the numbers are going, and it’s nothing personal at that time,” Bananas shared.
At the same time that he had the conversation with Darrell, he said his MTV castmate knew other votes were going towards Bananas but didn’t say a word to him as a potential warning or heads up.
Bananas mentioned that Darrell often came up to him asking why he didn’t talk game with him, yet Bananas felt he was transparent ahead of the voting, whereas Darrell wasn’t at that moment.
The result was Bananas and Justine went into the elimination event, where Jordan finally got a win over the seven-time champion for the first time in three eliminations against him. With that, Justine and Bananas’ World Championship quest ended in The Arena.
While the vote to send in Bananas was shocking for many people, including viewers, it was something he admitted made sense to do from a strategic standpoint.
“Listen, if you want to get a strong team out of the house, putting you and I up against each other, I mean, it is the best play at this point,” Bananas said during his podcast.
The Challenge: World Championship episodes arrive Wednesdays on Paramount Plus.
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