Challenge Dirty 30 Episode 9 Recap: Is there a new elite competitor?
I chose to separate what went down with Camila in this week’s episode into its own piece.
While those events enveloped the entire episode, there was an epic elimination also in the episode. Following the Camila antics, her and Tony voted Nelson and Nicole into the Presidio. Tony chose Nelson, because Nelson has a history of voting Tony in (twice on Invasion, once with the double cross this season). This makes the draw Hunter-Dario-Jordan (losers from last week’s challenge), meaning Hunter needs to pull the double cross to keep himself out of the draw. Camila chooses Nicole to ensure that three strong girls (Tori, Kailah, Jenna) have the chance to double cross Britni.
Nelson says that he plans on coming back, and he’s not afraid of Tony as a player. There’s nothing I love more than the person being voted in flexing on the person with power. Nicole is ready to go in, she understands the game.
Double Cross
Jordan pulls the double cross again, he chooses Hunter for the second week in a row, meaning Hunter has to face alliance members in back to back episodes.
Jenna pulls the double cross and throws in Britni.
Eliminations: Hunter vs Nelson & Nicole vs Britni
The elimination is similar to the Bananas/CT backpack elimination, except in this one, the ankles are also tied to each other, meaning this will involve the entire body and basically all muscles. The game is played in three rounds. You are on top of a hill, and have four total sides that you can use to roll your opponent down the hill, two for each person.
Britni is not afraid to face Nicole, because Nicole is tiny. It ends up being a decent fight by Nicole, but Britni takes the 2–0 win. Nicole gives no excuse, she knows that she lost because she is small. She leaves us with the quote of the night: “Camila’s a bitch, and nobody likes her, and everybody hates her, I have a great life at home, and I bet she has a miserable one.”
The words that come out of Nelson and Hunter’s mouth before and after the elimination are really hilarious, and a bit head-scratching.
Nelson: “I don’t think words can even describe how I am feeling” (He says a couple sentences after this.)
Hunter: “I’m in a house full of cheerleaders, they’re all pussies (pans in on Jordan), all scared to say each other’s names. LeRoy wants to ride Bananas, Tony wants to ride Bananas, I mean Dario hasn’t done shit this whole motherfucking Challenge, there’s literally no fucking competitors, if you ain’t here to compete, get the fuck out.”
This elimination is pretty epic, though the edit probably didn’t give it justice based on how the crowd was reacting. It’s hard to get a good shoot of two guys dragging each other on the floor grunting, so we don’t really get a true sense of how intense it was. In the first round, everyone is stunned by how easy Nelson is pulling Hunter — right as Nelson is going to pull away, Hunter makes a nice swipe and flips Nelson for the first point.
When the second round goes down, Nelson BRINGS IT.
Nelson flipped a 205 lb ball of muscle down a hill. CT was 240 and Bananas was around 170–180 when the backpack happened. This was a guy around 180–190 flipping all that muscle. That’s impressive.
The third round becomes an endurance battle. Hunter even grabs Nelson’s fingers and tries to break his fingers. Eventually, Nelson proves to have more gas and pulls Hunter down.
My favorite part is that immediately after the elimination ends, CT says: “Nelly stays, Hunter’s going home, or to the Redemption House, I think there’s another Redemption House.” The show has become Meta.
After the loss, they play sad music for the friends.
This Kailah tweet in response to saying nobody cared when we went up against each other as friends was incredible.
Hunter: “It took legs, it took core, it took upper body, and he wanted it more. Congratulations to not only my best friend, but a brother.”
Nelson: “I’m speechless, I don’t know what to say (proceeds on). I’m happy I won, but am I happy I took a friend out of the game? No. … Who he is as a man is who I want to grow up to be (Nelson is 28, Hunter is 24).
The reason why Nelson won was because he has a more complete body than Hunter, plus better core strength and endurance. Hunter is a monster, but he focuses on arms, legs, and explosiveness. Nelson’s lean and muscular body was able to flip Hunter because of his incredible core strength. He was built for that elimination.
After the round, we get a confessional of Nelson talking about how he is now in the game where it is 7 against 1. Weirdly, I like his chances. Nelson has won 4 straight eliminations, dating back from Invasion, is 5–1 overall in them, and there’s not one guy I would outright favor over Nelson besides CT and LeRoy in anything physically. Nelson is definitely better than Dario and Tony, and has the size over Bananas, Jordan, and Derrick.
Nelson has proved himself quite a bit of times on this show, but now its time to start talking and thinking about him as an elite competitor for a change.
