Cara Maria Sorbello had critical remarks about The Challenge’s production and format based on recent highlights of her castmate’s elimination appearance.
The two-time champion appears among the returning champs who participate in a single elimination event during the season, also known as Battle For a New Champion.
She’s also been featured alongside her friend Darrell Taylor in social media video clips as they review the various eliminations that their fellow champs participate in against Season 39’s cast members.
The former champs have provided comments and critiques about their castmates Jordan Wiseley, Tori Deal, Kaycee Clark, and Devin Walker.
A recent episode’s elimination featured Cara’s longtime rival, Laurel Stucky, as she arrived at The Arena and struck fear in at least a few cast members.
During her commentary on the elimination, Cara called out how the format worked against Laurel during her appearance on the show.
Cara calls out Laurel’s elimination appearance on Season 39
In the recent episode of The Challenge: Battle For a New Champion, Laurel showed up to compete against one of two nominated cast members: Ravyn Rochelle or Zara Zoffany. She also had the potential to draw the Chaos weapon, allowing her to pick anyone else who wasn’t on the winning team.
Laurel made it clear she would’ve chosen Michele Fitzgerald due to their history on Ride or Dies, but she instead drew Ravyn’s name.
That set up the two women to go head-to-head in a battle involving pulling a long chain with links in different sequences of colors. The objective was to pull the entire chain to their side, grab colored pegs from a locked box, and then assemble the correct order of the pegs in colored slots on a puzzle board to match the chain links.
Each woman used their preferred strategy during the event to arrange the chain or remember the colors. However, Ravyn got an advantage as more than a few of her castmates watching the event started helping her out by yelling out the color sequence so she could check her puzzle.
However, Laurel had no assistance and struggled with arranging the color sequence on the board. She noted that during a confessional interview but said she didn’t care.
“Wow, now they’re helping her, huh?” Cara said as she watched cast members offer assistance to Ravyn.
“Are you kidding me? They voted her in, and now they’re helping her? Get out of here with that,” she exclaimed.
Cara mentioned that it’s “helpful to have a second group of eyes” in an elimination like that and that she doesn’t like that aspect of “audience participation” on The Challenge.
Meanwhile, Darrell reasoned with her that it’s part of the game and can provide drama for the show later at the house.
“Damn, Ravyn and the whole house just beat Laurel. That’s what it takes,” Cara said after TJ announced the winner.
“A win is a win at the end of the day. Nobody’s ever gonna see the asterisks,” Cara said, adding, “They’re just gonna see the win and who it was against. So, on the books, Ravyn has beaten Laurel. That is a huge accomplishment, but in reality, we know it was basically Ravyn and the entire house versus Laurel.”
Cara didn’t hesitate to mention that despite Laurel being her rival during The Challenge, she had to give credit where it was due for her overall abilities in the competition series.
“Laurel’s rarely bad at anything. So if it wasn’t for the entire house helping Ravyn, I’m pretty sure that would’ve been Laurel’s,” she said.
Cara also took to the comments on an Instagram version of the clip above to provide further thoughts about what happened in the elimination.
Ravyn joins ‘small club’ of elimination winners
With Ravyn’s victory on Battle For a New Champion, she remained in the game and preserved $10,000 of the cast’s final prize purse. She also improved her overall elimination record to 2-1 as a Challenger.
During the episode’s airing on MTV, Laurel tweeted and praised Ravyn for her win, indicating in her message that she beat her “fair and square.”
Cara also mentioned that Ravyn is part of a very small club of individuals who have defeated Laurel in an elimination. Others included Natalie “Ninja” Duran during that controversial restart and finish in War of the Worlds 2, and more recently in Ride or Dies as she and teammate Jakk Maddox lost to Jordan and Aneesa Ferreira.
It’s worth noting that Laurel’s Challenge Wiki page at Fandom counts this as her first mercenary loss. She previously appeared on Vendettas in a surprise mercenary role and eliminated Britni Thornton from the season.
The Challenge: Battle For a New Champion airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on MTV.
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