Two-time champion Jodi Weatherton is amongst The Challenge OGs, appearing in the second season of the All Stars spinoff on Paramount Plus.
Jodi competed in just three seasons of the MTV show after debuting on Road Rules back in the day. However, fans never saw her return after that second winning season of The Challenge.
She recently opened up that it was an easy decision not to return to the show because she wasn’t getting any calls to appear on The Challenge. She also shared why she decided to appear in All Stars 2.
Jodi says she didn’t get any calls for The Challenge
In the early days of The Challenge, cast members came exclusively from The Real World and Road Rules. Jodi Weatherton debuted on the Inferno II season in 2005 after appearing as a cast member on Road Rules: X-Treme. Among her castmates was another future multi-time champion, Derrick Kosinski.
While Jodi didn’t win in her debut season of The Challenge, she returned for The Gauntlet 2 and was part of a nine-member Rookies team in her second season. That team captured the win, with her teammates including Alton Williams, Kina Dean, Landon Lueck, MJ Garrett, and Susie Meister, among others.
Jodi’s second win came in The Duel season, which aired from October 2006 through January 2007. That season featured a male and a female winner, with each getting $150,000 for first-place. Jodi made history as the first female competitor to win a solo Challenge rather than a team format.
She banked over $167,000 in prize money with those two wins, but even though she won two seasons, she says she never received any calls to return to the show after that.
“No, I actually was never called again, so it made it easy to not go back because there wasn’t an opportunity to. I know a lot of fans think that we’re the ones who make the call saying we want to be on the show, but that’s not at all how it works. You have to get the call from them asking you to be on the show,” Jodi said in the EW interview.
Jodi chalked it up to everything happening for a reason. She mentioned that she probably would’ve returned, but since she didn’t get called, she could focus on other things.
“But it honestly ended up being a good thing for me because I feel like it would have been enticing to go back, but I was ready to start a family, I got married. So it was good for me that that didn’t happen,” she told EW.
Jodi shares why she returned for All Stars 2
With 2006 the last time Jodi filmed a season of The Challenge, she returned after a 15-year hiatus. It may have many people wondering why she chose to return.
“It felt like the timing was right in my life. My kids are old enough, they’re not babies anymore. I was in between a part-time job and starting a full-time job. It was kind of like the timing all aligned. I just turned 40 and I was like, ‘Let’s see what I can do now, 15 years later.’ I can still compete,” she shared.
Jodi went on to say that she decided to return because it was the spinoff rather than the regular season.
“…when this opportunity rolled around, it just felt different. It felt like this is a family reunion with all my crazy cousins that I haven’t seen for years. It was really nostalgic for me,” she told EW.
Jodi admitted she hasn’t watched The Challenge since she appeared on the show. She told EW she “wouldn’t know any of those people,” although recent MTV seasons included OGs she competed with, including Wes Bergmann, Aneesa Ferreira, CT Tamburello, and Johnny Bananas. These cast members were part of Jodi’s Duel 2 season, with Wes, the other winner, alongside Jodi.
However, the All Stars spinoff provides a quicker turnaround time with filming episodes since there are half as many as the regular season. That works out perfectly for OGs who have established families and careers since appearing on MTV’s The Challenge years ago.
Fans will undoubtedly be ready to see if Jodi still has that competitive ability after all these years. The premiere episode drops on Paramount Plus Thursday, November 11.
The Challenge: All Stars 2 premieres Thursday, November 11, on Paramount Plus.