There have been plenty of memorable moments over the 37 regular seasons of MTV’s The Challenge. A recent bracket was unveiled by MTV on social media to help determine which is the best of them all.
Fans regularly voted in the social media poll called MTV’s The Challenge Holiday Binge Bracket. In the end, one particular highlight stood out above the rest, and it features two of the all-time greats in the game.
Fittingly, it features recent Spies, Lies & Allies winner, Chris “CT” Tamburello, and seven-time champion Johnny Bananas, going head to head in an elimination moment that not many people saw coming.
The Challenge fans vote classic elimination moment as favorite
LeBron or Jordan? CT or Bananas? Those are the hot debates that regularly pop up amongst fans when discussing the G.O.A.T. competitors of the world.
While those debates will probably continue for a while, it’s undeniable that Chris “CT” Tamburello owned Johnny Bananas in their classic Back Up Off Me elimination battle.
That moment arrived during the Cutthroat season in 2010. It involved being strapped back-to-back with your opponent and having to drag your opponent over to your barrel to knock it over as quickly as possible.
CT arrived as a surprise elimination competitor for Episode 8 that season, along with OG Tina Barta. With Tyler Duckworth and Bananas both voted into the Gulag for elimination, CT was the opponent rather than someone competing on the season.
In a display of his brute force and explosive power, CT walked step by step over to his barrel, wearing Bananas like a backpack as he advanced to the other side and knocked the barrel over. It’s now commonly referred to as “The Bananas Backpack.”
The moment regularly pops up in highlight footage, including the CT’s Best Moments video below. It’s no surprise this one won the fan vote for all-time favorite as it’s amongst the most talked about moments in Challenge history.
The Challenge: Spies, Lies & Allies brought back memories of that moment for many fans when veteran castmates Tori Deal and Amanda Garcia faced off in a late-season elimination matchup. Their event required fighting over a silver football which they needed to pick up and bring over to a podium.
At one point, Amanda was clutching onto Tori, who stood up carried Amanda like a hip or fanny pack, as she retrieved the football and placed it into the podium to win the round.
Three Challenge stars featured in all of Binge Bracket’s final four
MTV’s The Challenge Holiday Binge Bracket on Twitter began with 32 moments considered the biggest in the show’s history. Fans participated in Twitter voting for each round, with the winning moments moving on to the next round. It eventually was the Bananas Backpack as the winner.
Unsurprisingly, the final four selections all featured Johnny Bananas and/or CT Tamburello. Two of them also featured one of their infamous rivals, Wes Bergmann.
Finishing as the runner-up was that infamous moment when Bananas took all the prize money in the final at Rivals III and left his partner Sarah Rice penniless.
CT and Wes Bergmann’s fight from the first Rivals season also made the final four in the bracket. The two would later go on to team up for Rivals II and win the season, though.
Wes appeared in the other moment as well. This time it was his fight with Johnny Bananas from the Ruins season. As fans have seen, Wes and Bananas seemed to put aside their rivalry on Total Madness to become allies.
However, Wes made a bold move to go into elimination against Bananas that season and lost, while Bananas went on to win championship No. 7 for his all-time total.
Other moments included in the Binge Bracket were the late Diem Brown removing her wig during The Duel season, the Pizzagate scandal from Vendettas, Shauvon Torres popping an implant on The Ruins, and that epic elimination featuring Joss Mooney vs. Derrick Kosinski on Vendettas.
Check out the full bracket and how the voting went below. Fans can also use the code “THECHALLENGE” as shown below to get a free, limited-time Paramount Plus subscription and watch All Stars 1 or 2, as well as many seasons of The Challenge!
The Challenge is on hiatus, with Season 38 expected to return to MTV in 2022.