The Challenge Battle For a New Champion Episode 11 Recap: 10 Biggest Takeaways
The 11th Episode of The Challenge Battle For a New Champion is in the books. You probably have some thoughts, so let’s compare. Instead of giving a simple summary, I decided to focus on the 10 Biggest moments/takeaways from the 11th Episode.
10 Daily Challenge
Once again, I am tired of the “random teams.” Please let us have a schoolyard pick where we get to see how the players in the game view their fellow competitors. With that constant grievance out of the way, I did enjoy this daily challenge. It was a mix of trivia, physicality, and an eating challenge.
Some questions were very easy, and others felt like true coin flips. Ravyn (and Jay) sunk her team’s chances by whiffing on the trivia questions. Then again, she had three teammates (Jay, Olivia, Asaf) who could’ve stopped her.
Berna’s lack of physical capability was a big takeaway from this daily challenge for me. Going into this season, Berna was supposed to be a massive physical threat — I rated her incredibly highly after being stunned by some of her performances on Spies, Lies & Allies. I assume Berna’s groin injury from a week or two ago is still hampering her; if not, then she is truly a lay-up in this game as she has no mental/puzzle skills.
Shoutout to Moriah, Colleen, James, and Corey for going all out with the eating to get themselves the win.
9 Ranking The Foods by Best to Worst To Eat
4 Brain Soup: It didn’t seem too difficult to eat. It looked like a grosser version of lentils; seemed doable.
3 Skin and Colon Stew: While it wasn’t appetizing, it did look soft and easy to toss a bunch in your mouth.
2 Bour Snot and Ear: Very clearly the grossest to look at. I would be terrified to eat it. The texture would be tough to deal with. The only positive is that you can get it done in a few mouthfuls.
1 Spicy Surprise: The way it was described is that it was spicy grease. I’ve had to take shots of Soy Sauce as a dare before, and each time, I was either puking or on the verge of puking. This Spicy Surprise is that except x100 is worse due to the volume and then multiplied by another x100 because of the spice. Although the others are grosser-looking, this one would fuck with my throat for multiple days after.
8 Winner’s Choice & Ravyn’s Reaction
With Moriah & James winning, I expected them to commandeer the elimination nomination. Moriah tried to take a shot at Berna. Corey quickly protected Berna and instead threw out Ravyn’s name. Colleen jumped on Ravyn, and James didn’t back up Moriah fully. If I were Moriah, I’d be pissed at James. Although, I believe James thought Zara had a better chance of surviving a house vote than Berna, which is a logical thought.
Ravyn’s reaction to getting voted in was everything I want in Reality TV. She wouldn’t take it lightly, especially as she thought she was on good terms with Moriah, James, and Corey. Ravyn is supposed to be part of the USA/Ride or Dies alliance, and they threw her in rather than Zara or Berna. Ravyn was demanding to find out who had thrown out her name, who had fought for her, and tossed some strays in the process. I wish we had more Ravyn’s on this show.
7 Horacio & Nurys
Part of the meta aspect of The Challenge is we watch scenes like in tonight’s episode where Nurys & Horacio are heartbroken as they don’t know whether a relationship is viable. Except since this is a taped show (sorry for those who thought it was live), we now know that Nurys & Horacio are now an official couple. While it was not explicitly stated in the episode, Horacio didn’t know whether they’d be able to date as he was set to compete on Exatlón México All-Stars (his original show). He’s been filming that show for 10+ weeks now, and Nurys even got to be his family visit while he was on the show! I’m rooting for those two crazy kids. Well, actually, I’m rooting for the one crazy kid and the one kid who drinks milk for dinner and has a 9:30 PM bedtime.
6.5 Michele’s Massive Alliance
I don’t know what I fully think yet. Will update you next week.
6 ABC Party
I was a big fan of the ABC Party. Why? People looked hot and like they were having a fun time. That’s what being in a Challenge house is all about.
Wish we got some drama out of it.
5 Zara’s Bravado
Zara is a badass competitor, and I love seeing a woman confidently say they can beat anyone in the Final, man or woman. That said, Zara carrying that bravado into the deliberation by immediately volunteering herself as the vote-in elimination nomination was idiotic.
Even though Zara was likely to be a unanimous vote, bypassing the deliberation and thus allowing people to refrain from showing their cards was a bad game move. Not to mention, we’ve seen people bury themselves week after week in the deliberations. Considering the person Zara was up against was Berna, Zara should’ve forced Berna to talk. Berna blows up at her #1 allies looking out of her (Emanuel/Michele); imagine how she’ll react with her game being on the line.
4 Cockblocker of the Year
A few weeks ago, I blogged that Ed should have gotten automatically disqualified for breaking up the incredible fight between Ravyn & Melissa. Do I feel the same way about Berna cockblocking Nurys and Ravyn?
No, because it was fucking hysterical and created drama in itself.
Nurys has been waiting weeks to cuddle up and fully make out with Horacio. It could’ve been Ravyn’s last night in The Challenge house, and so she was trying to have some fun.
Berna came in there, hit them with the Horny Bonk, and said, “No fucking on my watch.”
Ravyn & Nurys have such a shaky relationship; at this moment, though, Berna’s cockblocking united them. It’s unbelievable watching Berna be such a terrible social gameplayer and an all-around rude human, all while blaming everyone else, pointing out their flaws, and getting away scot-free. Michele is truly powerful in this game because Berna would’ve been nominated for elimination week after week without her. Even funnier is that Berna is biting the hands that protect her as she’s unhappy that Michele isn’t the greatest friend in the world to her.
3 Michele’s Nightmare
Look, I’m a short man. I’m 5'6 and was the short kid my entire life. At the same time, I’ve played sports my entire life. Specifically, I still play basketball 1–3x a week, and thus, I stand next to many people who are 6' and taller. I mention this because I finally met Laurel Stucky in person in June of 2022, and she felt like she was 8 feet tall. The craziest thing is Laurel is someone who reads my blogs, and she was so friendly and kind, and later even sought me out for us to get pictures together. Laurel could not have been nicer of a person to me, and yet, her personality and powerfulness to her were so massively looming.
Now, imagine a world where that same person fucking hates you and wants to destroy you? I completely understand why Michele was terrified.
Laurel is the perfect mercenary because she strikes fear into her opponents. I thought TJ undersold how great of a competitor that Laurel is. We’re talking about someone who won 9 consecutive eliminations in a row, and it wasn’t due to racking up exile wins due to a weight advantage like Wes on Fresh Meat 1. Laurel stacked up those 9 elimination wins, going against multi-time champs like Camila (2x), Cara Maria (2x), and Sarah, along with wins over solid competitors like Theresa (2x) and Aneesa. She also has a win over Jonna (w Jasmine) that’s now retrospectively looks better on paper.
A stat I love to repeat is that Cara, Camila, and Sarah Rice are a combined 27–7 all-time in eliminations when not facing Laurel (.794 win percentage), and they are 1–5 when facing Laurel (.167). Laurel might technically only be a 1x Champion, but the amount of stats and accolades I can build up for her is limitless. TJ put respect on Laurel’s name, no doubt — I just wish she got the Tori red carpet.
2 Ravyn’s Legs
One of my big takeaways from the elimination is that Ravyn has very impressive legs. That’s all I’m going to say, respectfully.
1 Ravyn vs. Laurel
I am incredibly interested in seeing how fans will react to the Ravyn vs. Laurel elimination.
For starters, I think Ravyn did a much better job organizing all her chains. Ravyn’s chains looked much cleaner, whereas it looked like Laurel failed Ghostbusters school as her streams of chains were crossing over sloppily.
When it came down to memorizing the chain’s color patterns, Ravyn was mixing up the order of colors less than three seconds after repeating them to herself. While Laurel was less organized, she had Ravyn beat when it came to memorization, and I think, ultimately, she would’ve gotten there first in a world where they faced off purely one-on-one. Fortunately for Ravyn, the crowd stepped in and gave her an assist.
Now, crowd interference is a controversial topic in The Challenge world. In this circumstance where 10k dollars gets taken out of the Final pot for everyone in the crowd, in a way, they’re all facing the mercenary.
Ravyn should be incredibly proud to have walked away from an elimination alive. I thought Ravyn performed well and did a lot of stuff right. Was this 100% a clean win over Laurel? No, but it’s not like it got completely handed to her. Laurel got frustrated, and it was funny as I thought at times that we would get the second coming of Laurel vs. Ninja. Instead, Laurel gave Ravyn her props. If this was Pro Wrestling, Ravyn wins via interference, and both wrestlers walk out without taking a clean loss.
