With The Challenge: All Stars spinoff season, competitors are mostly enjoying being back together for a fun reunion to reminisce over their days on MTV’s reality competition series.
However, there’s still the intensity of competition involved in the spinoff on Paramount+, with daily challenges or missions putting competitors’ physical and mental capabilities to the test.
During one of the episodes, competitors worked as teams, then in pairs, and then on their own. Based on recent comments from Syrus Yarbrough, he believes one of his teammates sabotaged him during the daily challenge.
Spoilers will follow in this report up through Episode 5 of the All Stars spinoff season on Paramount+, including recent elimination winners and losers.
All Stars Episode 5 featured competitor struggling
During that fifth episode of All Stars, host TJ Lavin introduced the competitors to their latest daily challenge, which involved several legs of transporting logs and solving puzzles. The first leg had competitors transporting a long, heavy log together across mountainous terrain without putting the log down.
Several of the teams took an early lead and looked to have a good pace as they worked well together. However, a team that included Syrus Yarbrough and Alton Williams seemed to be having issues. Those issues were coming due to Alton’s supposed struggles in handling the weight of the log as he seemed to be winded.
In a video clip from the episode (below), Alton is shown gasping and asking for rest breaks. That caused his teammates to have to pick up the slack for the extra work. Even worse, it kept them from being able to later finish the event on their own quickly.
Laterrian Wallace and Kendal Sheppard ended up being the first male and female competitors to cross the finish line. That kept them safe from elimination. However, the worst-performing competitors were Syrus Yarbrough and Beth Stolarczyk.
Due to that, they automatically faced elimination, and ultimately were sent home from the season after losing at The Arena.
Syrus believes he was sabotaged by teammate
Following his exit from the show, Syrus appeared on the Challenge Mania Podcast to discuss All Stars. He shared a video he recorded from the interview on his Instagram account (below).
At the beginning of the video, podcast host Scott Yager asks for Syrus’ take on what all went down in Episode 5. That’s when Syrus says he believes he was “sabotaged” by his teammate and referred to the daily challenge situation as “Murder Mountain.”
“There’s always more to it, man, but you know I didn’t want to make a big deal out of things. But he definitely sabotaged me on the mountain,” Syrus shared.
“Murder Mountain was designed by him to get rid of Syrus pretty much. They don’t show it, but he’s 10 feet behind me, 10 yards behind me. I’m the last person holding the thing up…He wasn’t with us for at least 30 percent of the run,” Syrus revealed.
“He clearly was not part of that first thing at all. He hindered us, and in my mind, you get [disqualified]. If our team comes in last, you’re definitely last because you didn’t do the event,” Syrus said during the podcast.
He went on to say Alton asked to stop “between five and 10 times” during the daily challenge, which was a lot more than competitors on other teams seemed to need to stop. He also referred to Alton as “this perfect physical specimen of a man,” which made it questionable that he needed rest breaks.
In the episode, Syrus wasn’t happy about automatically going into elimination due to the daily challenge circumstances. That’s why he requested his castmates give him Alton as an opponent at The Arena, which they did. Some viewers probably wondered why he’d choose a tough opponent like Alton.
He explained during another interview why he didn’t go for someone who people might think is a “layup” like Eric “Big Easy” Banks. Syrus said it was due to their bond and that he figured if the elimination was a Hall Brawl event, Big Easy wouldn’t be an easy opponent to face.
Of course, once they got to The Arena, TJ dropped a twist on everyone that it would be a double-elimination event, meaning Syrus was paired up with Beth to go against Alton, and his partner of choice, Aneesa Ferreira. So there wasn’t a physical one-on-one battle involving Syrus versus Alton.
Unfortunately, Syrus’ decision to go against the person he feels got him put into elimination didn’t pan out. However, based on his exit interview, the OG competitor seems like he could appear on a future season of the spinoff.
The Challenge: All Stars episodes arrive Thursdays on Paramount+.