Jonna Mannion says that her going into elimination on The Challenge: Battle of the Eras was due to a setup by her team.
Jonna, a former Real World: Cancun cast member, achieved back-to-back wins during her return for The Challenge: All Stars spin-off.
She also appeared on the World Championship spin-off, but her time competing there got cut short due to her partner’s unfortunate injury.
It was her first MTV season since 2015’s Battle of the Exes II, and she joined the Era 3 team, which also featured show winners Jordan Wisely, Tori Deal, and Devin Walker.
However, Episode 5 saw Jonna and her teammate Cory Wharton as her team’s targets heading into elimination.
While Cory managed to oust Era 1’s Brad Fiorenza from the game, Jonna couldn’t defeat former The Challenge winner Rachel Robinson.
Jonna calls out the Vacation Alliance after her Season 40 elimination
Following her aired exit from Season 40, Jonna said her team “was playing to not lose, but not win” during the daily challenges. She mentioned during the trivia challenge that Jordan told Era 2’s Laurel Stucky that he couldn’t say Aneesa [Ferreira]’s name, and she said that she could, which may have indicated why Era 3 didn’t win.
Jonna pointed out the “Vacation Alliance,” which includes Devin and Tori, Josh Martinez, Kaycee Clark, and Aneesa.
Jordan isn’t necessarily part of that group but has connections to Tori and others. However, Jonna claimed she was against difficult odds because they were teammates.
“The problem with me being on their team, or the Vacation Alliance, they have their core people, and then they have basically sheep people that follow suit with what they say, and I feel like at a certain point, Devin and maybe Tori realized they can’t make me do what they want me to do, so I had to go,” Jonna explained to Enter.
Jonna recalled trying to talk to Tori about how the women in Era 3 would handle the nomination process for targets. However, she told her Tori was dismissive, saying she wanted to enjoy an “off day” and not talk game then.
In addition, she mentioned an earlier point in the game when Devin told teammates he wouldn’t self-nominate himself that particular time, and it seemed OK with everyone. However, Jonna said that when she tried not to self-nominate, her teammates viewed her as a bad person for it.
Jonna calls out her teams ‘side deals’ and says she was ‘set up’
While her team had a stacked group of competitors that could win, Jonna said many of her teammates had “side deals” with castmates from other teams. That likely hindered her chances of winning daily events and remaining out of elimination.
“I was all about Era 3, but I knew there were so many side deals going on and I was being set up. Jordan kept saying, ‘You’re not being set up. We’re going to win.’ And I’m like, ‘There’s a possibility we won’t, Jordan.’ And he’s like, ‘What do you mean? Era 3 is the best.’ But we don’t know what the challenge is!” Jonna told EW.
Jonna also claimed that she thought the format of Season 40 might switch at some point, so they wouldn’t have to worry about selecting team targets each time. Unfortunately, she didn’t survive past Episode 5 to find out.
“I don’t know if it’s going to switch to individual, but I was hoping to make it past that point because then I wouldn’t be pinned as a selfish person. Because to be honest, everybody’s playing for themselves. I just didn’t want to follow suit with your plan,” she said.
In additional remarks, Jonna indicated she’d make herself available for “next season” of All Stars or MTV’s The Challenge. However, she’s unsure if she’ll continue making herself available to participate in The Challenge as she doesn’t want to end her career on such a decline in performance after winning All Stars twice.
The Challenge: Battle of the Eras airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on MTV.
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