Darrell Taylor had his share of fights and arguments in his earlier days on The Challenge, but fans likely didn’t expect to see him get heated in his Season 40 return.
Darrell, a four-time champion on MTV’s competition series, participated in Battle of the Eras as part of the Era 1 team.
Teammates included many other OGs and champs, such as Mark Long, CT Tamburello, Derrick Kosinski, Jodi Weatherton, and Rachel Robinson.
However, they were up against some tough competitors, and it seemed the three other teams wanted Era 1 entirely out of the game.
One of Season 40’s unique twists involves competitors who win eliminations getting to select a target player from each team.
After Darrell won, he got to select one female from each of the four teams and decided upon Laurel Stucky from Era 2, seemingly upsetting her.
Laurel and Darrell had a heated exchange in Season 40
When castmates get picked as potential targets for elimination, it sometimes leads to bruised egos and hurt feelings. That may have happened when Darrell selected Laurel from Era 2 as a target.
However, Darrell’s decision probably made the most sense to him due to his ties with Laurel’s teammates, including Cara Maria Sorbello and Aviv Melmed.
As part of the season’s twist, if target players are on the team that wins the daily challenge, they get to choose which other team’s target players go into elimination.
Era 2 won the trivia challenge, which meant Laurel and teammate Johnny Bananas stayed out of elimination and gained power over who to put in.
Immediately after she’d won the tiebreaker for the daily, she began to yell at Darrell, leading to a heated exchange at the event.
“We’re safe! We’re safe! F**k you, Darrell!” Laurel shouted at him from the sand as she danced around with castmates to celebrate.
“F**k you too,” Darrell fired back at her, as seen below, also calling her “Fake a** bully.”
It continued once Laurel rejoined her teammates in the stands. She said Darrell targeted her because her teammate Emily Schromm gave him more massages.
“Get more massages when you’re married,” she yelled at him.
Darrell seemed heated in a confessional interview shown during that interaction.
“Lingering Laurel. Always trying to jump into conversations. Can you just shut the f**k up?” he said during his confessional.
Darrell said he’s ready to confront Laurel after ‘bully’ behavior
As viewers saw, Era 1 teammates Darrell and Tina Barta got eliminated in Episode 7 by Era 4’s Kyland Young and Michele Fitzgerald.
Darrell didn’t have any parting words for his castmate in the televised footage, but based on his remarks in a recent interview, he may call her out later.
“Don’t get me fired up. I’m going to save this for the reunion…I don’t know what’s going on with her. She done lost her mind,” he told Entertainment Weekly’s Sydney Bucksbaum.
“If she doesn’t get her way, she just throws a temper tantrum,” he said, mentioning how she acted immature at past season’s reunions.
He shared that Laurel acted that way other times. He believes she was “trying to bully” him and make him “snap” to do something stupid. According to the MTV OG, her behavior included throwing peanuts at him from a seat behind him on the bus.
He said after he got hit by several peanuts, he yelled out that it didn’t matter if a man or woman threw them; he would “beat [their] ass.” He said he later found out it was Laurel.
Darrell said his back was really bothering him at that moment, and he was so angry that he was “trembling” and “shaking.”
He also claimed Laurel got in his space at other times and gave a look as if trying to instigate him or “intimidate” him.
Following the incidents above, Darrell got into it with Laurel when she trash-talked him after her team’s win in Episode 4.
“I get it’s a game, but she was taking it to another level. You’re like 40 years old, acting like you’re 12. You’re doing too much. It’s disappointing for such a smart woman. I don’t know what happened to her. I think the game just [got to her],” Darrell told EW.
“Maybe it’s a front; she just tries to intimidate people in the game, but it looks like it ain’t healthy for her because that’s just way too much energy for me to be spiraling like that and fighting with everybody. I ain’t got time for all that,” he said.
It’s unclear when and where the Season 40 reunion will occur or if Darrell will appear among the cast members at the event, but it seems he has more to say in person to Laurel.
The Challenge: Battle of the Eras airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on MTV.
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