These 30 people are more important than any other people in my life right now. This ranking is based on how much I love and cherish them. All future rankings will be based upon their performance.
Female Rankings
15. Aneesa
Aneesa has got to stop with this. I assume she’s doing the “I’m going to keep doing these until I win one” thing. In which case, I can’t wait to see her caretaker wheel her wheelchair down into the elimination chamber in 2065 when CT’s son votes her in, because it is not happening for you. You are never ever going to win one of these things.
Best Moment Ever: She was Rachel’s partner in a season with all other male/female exes, which was progressive and dope.
Worst Moment Ever: Whenever she talks about being good at eliminations 15 years ago.
Season Prediction: She will continue to live into her truth that, because she’s been on this show 400 times, she is entitled to never ever have to compete for anything, and will treat being voted into or sent into elimination as a tragedy of justice.
14. Ashley M
Goodbye.
Best Moment Ever: Took $500,000 away from Hunter, who is the 4th corniest person to ever be on The Challenge (1. Trey 2. Swift 3. Nelson 4. Hunter, for the record.) And made him do my favorite thing which is to watch southern men who claim to be super into their faith use Christianity as a weapon (“I’m gonna pray for you”, “You’re going to hell”) while acting disgusting and degrading when it suits them.
Worst Moment Ever: Obviously telling Cory that his family could own his family.
Season Prediction: I predict she pairs up with CT and then gets eliminated by Natalie in the first episode, but that’s just a wild guess.
13. Kam
Kam is one of those people that I know is a good person, but I can’t stand to listen to her talk, and I wouldn’t be able to ever be around her in a social situation.
Best Moment Ever: Convinced Leroy to be with her.
Worst Moment Ever: Anytime she uses one of her self appointed nicknames. Especially one that has already been claimed by my 2nd favorite member of the Dipset.
Season Prediction: She will take credit she doesn’t deserve and redirect blame that she does deserve.
12. Amber 11. Gabby 10. Amber 9. Liv
I can’t wait until a month from now when all of these people are all off of my TV screen and I never have to see them again.
8. Kaycee
I don’t really feel any feelings about Kaycee, so she’ll remain in the middle. I wanted to give her props for hooking up with Nany but then I realized a the collection of MTV personalities that Nany has hooked up with would get like five electoral votes.
7. Lolo Jones
Imagine being a super hot olympic gold medalist and somehow ending up competing in a physical activity against Aneesa. Seems like a weird trajectory. I like what i’ve seen from her so far, but I’m hesistant about what got her to this point.
6. Big T
Big T is a weird character because I probably would have loved her on The Real World but she just isn’t built for this, which would have been fine in the era where “i’m just here to hang” people could get away with that. This shit’s way too serious now.
5. Natalie
It’s wild that there is an Olympic Gold Medalist on this cast and I am not certain that the Gold Medalist is the best female athlete of the group.
Best Moment Ever: Natalie was sent to an island that’s SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE than the regular Survivor Island, and stayed there for 4 weeks with like 6 spoonfuls of rice per day. She then proceeded to dominate every physical challenge on that island without breaking a sweat, beating women and men who were significantly more well-fed and more rested than her. She also spent two minutes dunking on noted piece of shit John Rocker.
Worst Moment Ever: Well, she got voted out of Survivor first, which sent her to the aforementioned island…so…
Season Prediction: The girls are going to realize REAL quick that they don’t want that smoke, and do everything they can to get someone to get her out.
4. Nany
The backbone of the Challenge is the preloaded understanding we have of these people. I don’t care about any of these British nerds because I’ve never seen their shows, and even if I did, I’m sure they don’t contain the kind of emotional complexities to really attach anyone to them. Nany is the case-study for why The Real World was the ultimate feeder system into this mess.
I don’t even think I really like Nany. But I would jump in front of a moving train for her. She is just a big old mess. But I’ve witnessed her grow up in front of my eyes in the same way I’ve watched Lebron for his entire career. That’s like 3 different people I’ve compared to Lebron James in this shit. I need therapy.
Best Moment: Whenever she gets drunk it’s the most electric television of the week. She’s fought with her best friends more times than she’s fought with people she doesn’t like.
Worst Moment: When she was in the most classic 101-level abusive relationship on her season of The Real World in Vegas.
Season Prediction: I think part of the reason I love her so much is because she always stays around so long so we get a lot of time with her. I think it’s because she’s the perfect combination of being a 10 time vet, being a good person to be around, and being terrible at physical activities. She’ll last til about the final unless something weird happens with a partner.
3. Tori
Tori reminds me of Sarah Rice. She just loves to do fun things and wants to be the wholesome voice of reason while also valuing the sacred Challenge lore. She is certainly not to be fucked with, physically, or interpersonally.
2. Nicole Zanetta
She literally didn’t even wait until the first challenge was over to start trying to make in roads with Lolo Jones. Everything she does makes me laugh.
1. Theresa
Fuck your feelings. Theresa Jones-Gonzalez is dope. She’s good at stuff. She doesn’t give a shit what you think about her. She is a killer. She might be the coolest person to ever be on this show. She was literally so cool, that she had to make herself less cool to try to fit in. That seem’s like a joke, but I’m dead serious about it.
Best Moment Ever: Playing 1-on-1 with CT in the first episode of Free Agents and being a legitimately good basketball player was as good of a “I’m in this bitch” moment as we’ve seen in Challenge history.
Worst Moment Ever: Her entire run on Fresh Meat 2 was pretty rough.
Season Prediction: She’ll be like the third or fourth best girl athlete, she’ll generally fly under the radar. Make the final, and do well.
Host Rankings
1. TJ Lavin
It’s been so long since we’ve seen TJ, I forgot what TJ truly stands for. Obviously, it’s short for “Took all his Jeans and threw them in the garbage because he only wears slacks and pea-coats now.”
Best Moment Ever: Any time he’s broken character to laugh at someone hurting themselves, or made fun of someone for quitting or being a baby, that’s the most pure TJ we have.
Worst Moment: When no one was sure if TJ was going to host anymore after his crash in 2010. That was terrifying. Watching the cast real-life welcome him back at the beginning of (i think it was) Rivals 1 (or maybe Cutthroat) was an incredible moment.
Season Prediction: He’s going to continue to use incredibly corny spy language, and I’m going to continue to hope that one day TJ get’s to call me his ‘agent.’
Male Rankings
7 Billionth out of 7 Billion People on Earth: Josh
I think I am a good person, but Josh Martinez makes me feel like a bad person.
Because normally I wouldn’t make fun of someone who could fit 3 regulation-sized slow pitch softballs in their mouth.
Normally I wouldn’t make jokes about a person that talks like they are perpetually shoveling spoonfuls on peanut butter into their mouth before they speak.
Normally I wouldn’t make fun of someone for digging themselves so deep in the friend zone that it would require the strength and might of Wayne Enterprises for him to even consider getting out.
But Josh Martinez is the exception to all of those rules. Because he is the most annoying person in the history of reality television.
I promise if he didn’t care so much about being in the spotlight, I would be nicer to him, but when you act like a fictional character, you get treated like one.
He also loves to co-opt the “let men feel their emotions” movement, but only because it allows him to do whatever he wants with impunity. “I’m just an emotional guy” says Josh, after he stands up on a table in a public bar to scream at someone with ill-formed arguments just so the camera can be on him. That’s not promoting mental health, my guy. That’s called being a lunatic.
Best Moment Ever: Last season when he was in the interrogation room with Wes, trying to convince Wes that they were “coming for each other” and Wes dunked on him calling him irrelevant for 6 minutes.
Worst Moment Ever: Literally every other time I have had to see his face on my TV screen.
Season Prediction: I assume people will keep him around for a decent amount of time. Josh will think it’s because people think he’s a “good competitor.” Everyone else will know it’s because Josh needs no help finding a way to get himself out of the game whenever the rubber hits the road.
14. Nelson
Nelson is unbelievably dumb and unbelievably corny and I pray to God that whoever the person is who has decided to let Nelson speak in confessionals so often is doing it because they know how absurd it is, not because they believe his comments to be adding to the emotional gravity of the situation.
13. Lio
Has he ever flipped anyone twice his size before as part of his job?
12. Fessy
If I had a dollar for every MTV reality personality who played college football and then made up a dumb excuse for why they didn’t make the NFL, I could buy the rights to The Challenge and make myself the host.
Fessy is in a long line of these dudes who like to think playing football can make up for a complete lack of personality and intellect. The best version of this dude is when CJ from Cancun described his status as an NFL free agent as “not being tied to one particular team.” That’s a spin that any one of Trump’s 52 press secretaries would be proud of.
We’re unfortunately stuck with Fessy, who is the most vanilla person in the galaxy, who will inevitably be able to become friends with four other vanilla dudes and talk to the camera like he’s Nick Saban at media day.
11. Joseph
Has kind eyes
10. Cory
He remains 5% likable and 5% unlikable. I don’t know how anyone on this show can elicit such a lukewarm reaction after like 7 seasons of this. I think he earns points by standing next to Nelson all the time and being the ‘cool guy’ of the duo by default.
9. Mechie
Dudes that think that they’re attractive have so many weird ways of describing themself as attractive. “You might think because I’m smokeshow that my life has been easy…”
8. Nam
Nam is now one of my favorite German people AND one of my favorite excuses my grandpa uses to drink so much. German people trying to speak English is a very endearing situation. Excited to see Lolo usher him along here like Nany did to Turbo. It was so sweet.
7. Devin
I’m certain Devin is the smartest person on the show, and one of the smartest people ever to be on these shows. But I’m also convinced that he’s a moron. I’m continuing to reconcile those two truths. I think he’ll do well this season. I think I will like him, which hasn’t always been the case.
6. Kyle
Great television, would probably be a great hang. He’s seemed to mellow out a bit in the absence of Paulie and Cara Maria, which will serve him well in terms of making it far.
5. Jay
Every time I watch a show like The Challenge or Survivor and see a new person that I enjoy, I say to myself, “Hey, maybe they’re cool and normal.” After watching Jay’s season of Survivor, I was convinced he was cool and normal. Just a regular “cool guy” who found himself on reality television. But then I looked at his Instagram after I finished the season. Sure enough, not a cool guy. A bunch of longboard pics and a bunch of ‘Life is short, live in the moment’ type shit. I guess we’ll have to settle for him being just a Jay, an entertaining guy to watch on TV.
Best Moment: He beat CT in a thing that looked like it was built for CT
Worst Moment: He did the thing where he verbally respects the Challenge and its canon too much.
Prediction: He’ll be meh and get eliminated sometime in the middle
4. Leroy
Leroy is an American treasure. Clone him and put him next to the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum in Myrtle Beach and Pigeon Forge and Panama City and Hollywood Blvd and all the other places where people flock to. The world needs more people to experience Leroy’s general being. I love him. I want him to be my dentist.
Best Moment Ever: His friendship with Mike from his season of the Real World was an all-time friendship in the history of television.
Worst Moment Ever: He’s never won one of these despite being physically gifted AND the most likable person in the house.
Prediction: I think Leroy is the one person that people will let slide into the Final. I think he’ll get 3rd place, maybe win some cash, and ride off into the sunset.
3. Darrell
For a lot of people that come back to The Challenge after being gone for a minute, it feels sad and desperate. Darrell’s key to avoiding that stink was by fully embracing his oldness and his dad-ness. He wears it well.
Best Moment: Realistically, winning all those Challenges should be the answer, but I prefer when he came back on Invasion and talked about wanting to win the money to buy a camper. True dad shit.
Worst Moment: When he let drunk Brad goad him into socking Brad in the face right before the Final on Ruins. It was hysterical. It was probably the ‘worst’ moment for him. But it was a great moment for me.
Season Prediction: I think he’ll get close to the Final, but not make it.
2. Wes
Wes is essential. He is as key to the Challenge ecosystem as anyone. Who in the hell thought MTV was REALLY gonna let Wes or CT go home in the first episode. They’re way too smart for that. A quick audible and everything’s good. Wes is the rare person I love and root for on the Challenge but really wouldn’t want to hang out with them in real life. That speaks to his power on this show.
Best Moment: The whole Rivals 2 season with CT.
Worst Moment: His hair upon his arrival into the Real World: Austin house.
Season Prediction: I literally have not the foggiest idea. Which is part of his charm.
Christopher “CT’” Tamburello
I saw Drake and Lil Wayne in concert in 2013. My corny friends were excited to hear Lil Wayne play ‘How to Love’ live because they were never fucking around on datPiff downloading the good Wayne music. I, like any reasonable fan of good things, was more excited for him to maybe play some of the No Ceilings songs that I listened to a lot on the way to baseball games my senior year of high school. Swag Surf to be exact. It’s objectively a smash. One of the best rap songs of my lifetime. Shoutout to the Fast Life Yungstaz, wherever they are, for bringing the concept into the universe.
But I knew it was a unlikely. You could put together a 5-hour set with just Lil Wayne and Drake songs that got heavy radio play. It seemed like a long-shot for Lil Wayne to even sniff any of his mixtape songs that night. But then, in one glorious moment, he stood in the middle of the stage and yelled for his DJ to “Gimme that mixtape shit.” The Swag Surfin’ beat came on, and I knew the next 3 minutes were going to be some of the most incredible minutes of my entire life.
That is the exact same feeling I get every time I watch Christopher Tamburello on my television.
My heart is dripping with expectancy everytime he is on the screen. What weird Boston thing will he say next? When will his next outburst be? In which way will he prove to me that he is one of America’s best athletes? It’s like Christmas morning, and CT is the biggest box under the tree.
He is wonderful, he is perfect, he is the best. 95% of the things I do in my life are an attempt to carefully put myself into the position to be CT’s best friend on the off chance we ever run into each other in public.
I want to grow old with him.
Until death do us part.
Best Moment: Choosing a favorite CT moment is like choosing a favorite grain of sand in the Sahara Desert, like singling out a single star in the night sky. But if I have to choose one that comes to mind, it’s when Wes was trying to rile him up on Rivals 1, Wes throws his mattres from the second floor down to the pool deck, and CT puts it back on his bed and says to Wes, “you think you’re going to get rid of me by throwing a fuckin’ twin size mattress off the balcony?” and then proceeds to rip him seventeen new assholes for the rest of the night.
Worst Moment: ‘Worst’ is certainly a relative term, but the fact that he almost murdered Adam King at the beginning of the the Duel II is probably not the greatest, although it was spectacular television.
Actually I just remembered two actually bad moments. The first is losing to Jay last season, and the second is every time he has claimed on instagram that he’s getting back into shape and then never does. Come on.
Season Prediction: He avoids doing any real hard work, and then someone gets mad at him for coasting to the end, and then when that person forces him to perform, he absolutely dominates everybody in everything.
Until next week. 7 Days is much too long.
