In reaction to The Challenge: Ride or Dies Episode 12, seven-time champion Johnny Bananas believes production may have assisted one team in getting a necessary win.
Bananas, appearing in his first season since Total Madness, suggested that his castmate Jordan Wiseley may have missed the mark during the recently aired episode’s daily challenge.
He took to Twitter on Thursday to make the claim, hinting that maybe production rigged things, especially with how the final footage was presented.
The latest event involved a helicopter ride over water, with competitors hanging onto bars via ladders beneath the flying chopper.
Jordan and Team Underdog needed a victory since they’d lost the previous two challenges to Fessy’s stacked team of competitors. Based on Bananas’ comments, production made sure they got an advantage to achieve that win.
This report will contain spoilers from the latest episode of Ride or Dies.
Bananas suggest Ride or Dies Episode 12 win was rigged
In Ride or Dies Episode 12, competitors participated in Chopper Drop. Hanging onto the bars beneath a flying helicopter, their objective was to drop into targets floating on the water, each with different sizes, colors, and worth varying points.
Once they landed on a target, the competitor had to swim as fast as possible to reach the finishing point, a dock. The team with the fastest time to complete the event would become daily challenge winners.
Jordan was part of Moriah’s team, looking for their first win in three episodes– since a Challenge twist split up the Ride or Dies partners into two larger teams. He dropped into the water for the final target, worth the most points, 100, with teammate Horacio.
They’d go on to win the event, with host TJ Lavin claiming they had a faster time by two seconds.
In a tweet reacting to the show, Bananas shared a short video clip of Jordan’s drop into the water, suggesting he may not have landed inside the square target. Bananas indicated there was a “ZERO Percent chance” that Jordan hit the target in the water during Episode 12.
“This just confirms what we saw from the shore,” he tweeted, adding, “Literally the only pair we didn’t get a Birds Eye view shot from the chopper splashing down. I can’t imagine why.”
Fans argue that Bananas got help on The Challenge
While Bananas raises a good point about the footage shown in Episode 12, some commenters were quick to point out that he may have also received some help in the previous daily event.
That was Ride or Dies Episode 11’s trivia challenge, where most participants received questions about famous individuals who were partners or teammates. Some of the answers that participants struggled with included “Adam and Eve,” “Jay-Z and Alicia Keys,” or naming C3PO’s counterpart, R2-D2.
However, Bananas was given a math equation for one of his questions, which wasn’t necessarily trivia. He was able to solve the computation, which helped his team win.
“You got a math problem during trivia,” a fan wrote in reaction to Bananas’ tweet about Jordan and Episode 12.
Other fans brought up how Bananas is rumored to have had assistance from production in his previous season that he won on The Challenge.
“Lmao you are the LASTTTTT person to talk about this, 3 out of your 7 wins have been because of production,” one individual wrote.
“You got caught taking steroids in the Rivals III final and production still let you win,” another fan remarked.
During The Challenge: Rivals III season, Bananas was teamed up with his rival, castmate Sarah Rice, who previously commented on Bananas cheating by having prescription drugs with him to gain an edge.
However, Sarah said Bananas had those drugs without a prescription. They allowed him to have an advantage in an overnight portion of the final, which helped him get a better overall time or score than his partner, giving him the option to keep all their prize money or split it with Sarah.
“They caught him with Adderall, and he beat me on a Challenge where you had to stay up all night…Then at the finish line, right before TJ announces, you know who won, the crew like searched his jacket and found Adderall that he didn’t have a prescription for that he was taking the whole season to give him an edge,” she said.
Jordan’s never a competitor that fans would believe has an edge due to the competitive fire he’s shown and finding ways to compete in all events despite having just one hand.
The footage from Ride or Dies Episode 12 seems to suggest Jordan may have missed the mark, though, which could mean that all of Team Underdog didn’t complete the daily event as required. Does Bananas make a good point, or is the video evidence too unclear to decipher?
The Challenge: Ride or Dies airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on MTV.