If Johnny Bananas were to appear on The Challenge: All Stars Rivals, he would likely have a group of suitable teammates.
One of the most notable would be former show winner Sarah Rice, who stopped doing The Challenge after her infamous reality TV moment with Bananas as her partner.
Fittingly, she and Bananas were teammates on one of the original MTV Rivals seasons, with Bananas opting to leave her penniless and keep all the prize money after they won the final.
Sarah previously won Battle of the Exes II with Jordan Wiseley as her teammate. Bananas felt betrayed by Sarah, whom he’d considered a friend and ally that season.
Since leaving the competition show, she’s succeeded in her professional career and co-hosts a podcast with Susie Meister, another Challenge alum.
The duo recently spoke with their former castmate, Ryan Kehoe, and they all shared thoughts about Bananas.
Bananas’ former castmates blast him as ‘getting a little cringe’
“What was it like living with the creepy uncle version of Johnny Bananas?” Susie asked Ryan during the Brain Candy podcast.
“I think as the viewer, you’re starting to be like,” Susie said in another soundbite, with Sarah adding, “It’s getting a little cringe.”
Ryan praised Bananas for making a “serious career” by appearing on The Challenge and reality television. Susie and Sarah agreed with that.
“I don’t act like that. I can’t do the things he’s done. There’s no grain inside of me to make the moves that he’s made,” Ryan said, adding that he thinks Bananas is “entertaining.”
Suside said she always felt Bananas was “being paid by the syllable,” as if he had “no inner monologue” in his brain and just constantly spoke.
She called it “so much noise” and said she needed “quiet time” away from him.
Ryan said during the Battle of the Eras season that he only lost it on two castmates: Bananas and Laurel Stucky.
“You’re only human,” Sarah joked.
Bananas had an off-season controversy with another reality show winner
Many fans would likely describe the seven-time champion as entertaining, and he seemingly brought that during Season 40.
Bananas entered the game looking to add his eighth Challenge championship but left with a third-place finish and several newly ignited feuds.
Among them were his spats with showmance couple Devin Walker and Michele Fitzgerald and beef with Tori Deal.
Other castmates’ opinions about him could’ve influenced how they gave him high or low Karma votes, which factored into his potential finish at the final.
Most of Bananas’ feuds in Season 40 seemed to get resolved when the reunion was filmed and aired on MTV.
More recently, Bananas had an online controversy with his X account when others saw him seemingly reply to a post from Taylor Hale, a former Big Brother, with a gorilla emoji and several bananas emojis.
However, Bananas later cleared things up by issuing statements to deny he was responsible for the since-deleted emoji reply.
The Challenge star claimed the emojis were a “rouge” reply from a social media team running a recent campaign on his account to promote his new meme coin cryptocurrency.
He and Hale also spoke about the matter, with Hale acknowledging that he’d reached out to her to explain things and apologize for it.
She also indicated she was getting hate messages from Bananas’ fans and that he could’ve prevented that if he’d publicly apologized on social media earlier.
The Challenge: All Stars Rivals airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on MTV.
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