The Challenge can be a brutal game with injuries possible in the game that can put competitors at a disadvantage or, even worse, get them medically disqualified.
While CBS’ spinoff, The Challenge: USA, isn’t necessarily as brutal as the MTV version, it’s still physical enough that injuries can happen.
The footage is also highly edited, so some of those injuries never make it onto the show, which is what one competitor recently revealed.
In addition, many other things don’t make it to the episodes, such as unaired cast hookups and dramatic blowups.
One of the eliminated competitors recently spoke about their time on the show and shared several things that never made it onto USA 2’s final cut.
This report will contain spoilers for The Challenge: USA 2 through Episode 8, including elimination results.
Big Brother star had an early injury in The Challenge: USA 2
Early in the USA 2 spinoff season, the competitors were involved in a daily challenge on a platform above the water where they had to get across from one side to another.
The team that could transfer the most players would win the daily challenge. However, getting across involved grabbing onto hanging poles and not falling off, which was easier said than done.
Some of the biggest competitors fell into the water, while others, including Amanda Garcia, were able to use being smaller in size to their advantage.
Big Brother star Monte Taylor was one of the bigger players in the game, making him a potential threat to others. However, based on his post-filming comments, he suffered an injury early in the game.
“I dislocated my shoulder after the Working the Poles challenge,” Monte said while on Rob Has a Podcast.
“So that happened. I got an X-ray the day after. They said it was in place, but it definitely affected my swimming afterward. Thank God there were no hanging challenges where I literally had to hold on for dear life for something,” he said.
He was able to last relatively deep into the game. Despite having some votes thrown against him during episodes, The Hopper was kind to him. That was until he received a majority of votes in Episode 8.
Monte says blowup occurred after ‘intense’ daily challenge heat
Monte said that was one of several things that didn’t air involving a daily challenge. The other happened at the event featuring moving semi-trucks. Competitors had to grab a disc from the side of one truck and swing over to place it on the side of another truck.
As viewers saw, the Blue Team devised a strategy to throw that daily challenge to help the Red Team win. MTV vets Johnny Bananas and Tori Deal decided to stop playing to win during their heat and instead played defense to prevent Michaela Bradshaw and Monte from scoring.
The strategy worked, as the Green Team could not get the necessary points to defeat the Red Team. However, Monte revealed things were much “more intense” than people realized during and after his heat involving the Blue Team’s defensive strategy.
He admitted he “rammed into Bananas a good four or five times” when he realized what was happening so he could “make him regret it.”
“After that, it was at least 10 minutes of us just screaming back and forth at each other,” he said, adding, “It was all not personal stuff, very competitive, like inspiring stuff.”
“Then after that, we had our conversations, kind of had like a peace treaty between the three of us,” Monte shared.
In Episode 8, viewers saw Monte’s time on the spinoff show end. His friend and ally, fellow Big Brother star Tyler Crispen, sacrificed himself to go into elimination to protect his showmance interest, Alyssa Snider.
Unfortunately, that gave others the perfect opportunity to stack votes against Monte, as he received a majority in The Hopper and lost an intense elimination event to his friend.
Now that he’s had his first experience on the competition series with USA 2, he told TV Insider he’d love to return for another season of the CBS spinoff.
“I would definitely do The Challenge again. I feel like I have this daredevil that’s sort of unlocked now that I’ve done all these crazy things. It’s like I want to just do some crazy stuff,” he said.
The Challenge: USA 2 airs Thursdays at 10/9c on CBS.