The Challenge’s Male Stars Defend Performance: ‘Wanted to Compete’

This week’s episode of The Challenge was exciting, especially the daily challenge consisting of contestants battling it out on a cargo net swinging from a helicopter above the frigid Icelandic water. The challenge had a lot of potential and the two women’s heats did not disappoint, with Kaycee and Theresa coming out victorious in their heats. However, fans were disappointed to see that most of the men did not compete in the challenge and simply hung on until they were disqualified, with the exception of Jay Starrett and Leroy Garrett.

MTV’s The Challenge Twitter account fired some shots in posts on Thursday, sharing the clip of the daily challenge and writing, “There’s no secret that the women dominated the aerial take down mission going full force with a win in mind, while the guys chose to play it safe.”

In another tweet, the account wrote, “TJ’s not the only one that hates quitters,” tagging the male cast members who did not compete in a reply to ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky who tweeted, “Man all the dudes on @ChallengeMTV soft as heck on tonight challenges….weak weak weak weak weak.” He also called out the performances on NFL Live.

At the elimination, host TJ Lavin told the men who didn’t compete that their votes wouldn’t count. Although it had no impact on the result of this week’s house vote, that information will hopefully push contestants to compete in future daily challenges.

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Josh Martinez & Fessy Shafaat Hit Back at People Criticizing Their Performances in the Daily Challenge

Josh Martinez and Fessy Shafaat both responded to the call-outs on social media, with Fessy writing simply, “I would never quit” and telling his followers that if they want the “real story,” they should check out his Patreon account. Josh wrote a longer reply to those tweets in a now-deleted message which read:

Should have shown what really happened! I was told if I didn’t stand with the group to not compete I would have been the automatic house vote. Me & Fessy [were] one of the few that actually wanted to compete. But we’ll save that part for the reunion.

Devin Walker also responded to Orlovsky’s call out and said, “Hey Dan what’s 8×9?! I’ll give you a hint, it’s 3.3 less than your career QBR [Total Quarterback Rating].” Orlovsky responded, “Dev-I’m not Josh. You can’t rile me up man lol. Although I love the creative attempt.”

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Aneesa Ferreira Spoke About What Happened Behind the Scenes of the Daily Challenge

During MTV’s Official Challenge Podcast hosted by Tori Deal and Aneesa Ferreira, Aneesa spoke about the background to the daily challenge and said it was something that production had been planning for quite some time but were unable to do before because of tricky weather or strong winds. “Production’s worked really really hard to set this up for us.”

She said the women were waiting in one trailer and the men were in another and they waited for about six hours, which they thought was due to weather. She explained:

The guys got scared and didn’t wanna do it so they tried to protest and go and they were like ‘We’re not gonna do it.’ So we didn’t know, we thought we were just waiting for the weather to chill out.

The whole time, the guys had already driven back to the rest stop where we had first stopped and were like, ‘no, we’re not doing the challenge.’ So then we’re like, ‘we’re going,’ so the girls had to go first and we were like ‘F it, we’re going.’

Tori asked if it was a decision based on fear of falling in the water or if it was because they didn’t want to show their cards by targeting other opponents. Aneesa explained that the guys agreed it would have ended in a stalemate so didn’t want to fight it out and Tori said it was probably due to pride.

She added, “If I was production, I would be pissed. Because how much money and time goes into every single challenge. … You’re gonna tell me you don’t wanna compete? You know how many people would die to be on this show?”

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