Challenge Fan Friday: Alton Williams, the first Challenge Avenger

Allan Aguirre
6 min readMay 4, 2018

When people hear the name Alton they recall a great Challenge competitor who dominated on the Gauntlet 2 and fizzled out during a disappointing comeback on Battle of the Seasons (2012). Alton did Battle of the Seasons when producers begged him to be on. He had no desire to return, he did it as a favor for a friend because they so desperately wanted him and Trishelle back. A despondent Alton wanted off the show for weeks and finally got his wish when he quietly threw his elimination against Robb and Marie, it was not overt, but if you watch the elimination, Nany destroys it while he is jogging.

The last image we got of Alton was one of weakness. He left fans with a bad taste. People have short memories, but the last taste is one they will almost always remember. I’ve decided to revive “Fan Friday” in order to commemorate one of the biggest badasses in Challenge history. Let’s look back at some of his biggest feats:

Alton’s First Gauntlet

Apologies for the awful photo quality, finding a free, good quality version of the Gauntlet is not a simple feat. Alton’s debuted on Gauntlet 1, the first season with eliminations. He proved himself a strong team member in challenges all season, then in the Gauntlet, faced a solid competitor in Laterrian Wallace. They competed in giant pole climb which started from underwater. Laterrian was in phenomenal shape and had experience under his belt, however, that did not matter, Alton obliterated him. Laterrian barely got out the water, and Alton finished in less than twenty seconds.

Even though his Real World team would end up losing the final, due to a spider bite knocking out Coral, Alton proved himself a great competitor.

GAUNTLET 2 CAPTAINSHIP

He outlasted all the “rookie” males in a battle royale in order to become Team Captain and win 1000 dollars. He would later find out that being captain in Gauntlet 2 was a bit of a curse. Even though captains won rewards (e.g. Best Buy gift cards and Nintendo DS’) when their teams won challenges, they were going into the Gauntlet when they lost a challenge. Therefore, Alton was forced into three eliminations, and he won each one in dominating fashion.

Alton vs Danny Dias

In the same challenge where Derrick proved himself by taking out the gargantuan Syrus, Alton devastatingly squashed Danny a few episodes earlier.

An angry Danny rushed at Alton. Alton smartly pulls a matador move and gets out of the way, resulting in Danny falling out of the ring from his own momentum. Danny wanted so badly to get a good hit and Alton flat out embarrassed him. The next round, Danny was terrified to fall because off a screw so he stays still until a small Alton shove knocks his feet out of the ring. Alton is giving 1% of his full effort, he has no desire to embarrass him, and by doing so is embarrassing Danny.

Alton vs Adam King

When they spun the wheel to determine the elimination, it fell on Captain’s Choice and Alton picked Capture the Flag, because it was the only elimination in which Adam had a theoretical chance against Alton. Adam was a quick and nimble competitor, who juked out Danny on Gauntlet 3 and ran away from CT for a few hours on Duel 2.

What happened? Alton charged up the fucking cargo net in like ten seconds. And Adam actually did pretty well. Alton was literally a freak of nature who Adam out of the water, surprising even TJ. TJ was so shocked he tried to make Adam not feel bad about his performance, citing nobody but Alton could ever climb the net that fast.

Adam vs Jeremy, plus etc Gauntlet 2 stuff

He faced Jeremy in Capture the Flag and pulled out another dominant win. Meanwhile, Alton is hooking up with Jodi all season to create one of the strongest duos in Challenge history from the showmance side. He goes on to win the season as captain with other strong competitors like Landon, Jodi, Susie, and Kina.

Alton’s Inferno 3

Look at those fucking abs. Jeez.

Throwing himself into elimination

The Inferno format of seasons contained lifesaver challenges available to nominated players to win a veto out of elimination and replace themselves with another competitor. Abram won the first lifesaver for the Bad Asses on Inferno 3, and took himself out of elimination, nominating Tyrie as his replacement. Davis Mallory was nominated for the Good Guys; and Alton chose to use his lifesaver to replace Davis in the Inferno. Could you imagine Johnny Bananas ever doing something like that? Bananas is afraid to face his own shadow in elimination at this point; Alton went in because he knew he would win and he wanted to prove he was the true Bad Ass even as a Good Guy.

His Dick and the end

There was a challenge on the Inferno 3 where players were forced into tiny bikinis. Players would be crushing grapes and the team that created more juice wins. Three of the guys on the Good Guys team chose not to compete, Timmy and Ace cited they were too masculine and did not want any embarrassment from back home about wearing the attire.

Wanna know Alton’s reason for not wearing it? He said it was because he was hung like a horse. TALK ABOUT A HUMBLEBRAG. Alton would go on to make the final as the best player of the Good Guys team, they ended up losing as the Bad Asses were simply a stronger overall team.

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I don’t know if you guys think of Alton in a much better light now, but I hope you have a greater appreciation for one of the coolest competitors in Challenge history whose career gets buried because of the way things ended on Battle of the Seasons and the fact two of his seasons are basically impossible to find. Alton was a nice guy who was always came to compete. Happy Friday.

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Allan Aguirre

27 years old. I blog about MTV's the Challenge and will dabble into other subjects occasionally. Follow me on Twitter for the occasional bad joke.