Warning: This article contains spoilers for the season finale ofThe Challenge: Total Madness.
TheChallengecurse of Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio has officially been broken.
“Everything this season in conjunction with everything else just really made this one special.”
Credit: MTV
JOHNNY “BANANAS” DEVENANZIO:It really shouldn’t have changed anything.
Oh my God, it was indescribable.
To be the last man standing, that never ceases to amaze me.
MTV
And I feel terrible for the first time ever in aChallengefinal for the other people who didn’t win.
We did it for a reason.
Everybody else walked away empty-handed.
MTV
During your six-season drought, you spoke out a lot against the idea of any curse existing.
Now that it’s behind you, can you honestly say you never believed in the curse?
In the beginning I did not.
I’ve never been a person that believes in extraterrestrial, spiritual forces working against me.
Does karma exist, or do good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people?
That was my argument.
However, as time goes on you start to wonder, what the hell could it be?
I wasn’t necessarily doing anything differently.
And self-doubt starts to creep in.
And if there was a curse, I broke it.
Did you ever regret stealing the money from Sarah because of how the next six seasons went for you?
For a few reasons.
We wouldn’t be talking about it right now.
What made that moment so amazing is the fact that I did what I did.
It was such an incredible moment, good or bad.
I took for granted how difficult it was.
She is an absolute machine of a human being.
In prior seasons, we’ve seen only the top winner get the prize money.
I think it was an appropriate way to do it.
In the past, they’ve run into problems.
You look back atWar of the Worlds I, first, second, and third place were all guys.
That rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way.
It was fair to have a male and a female winner.
But I knew with her ahead of me, it didn’t matter to me.
That was all that mattered to me.
It’s taken a lot of pressure off of me.
I don’t feel like I have to white-knuckle it anymore.
At this point moving forward when I come back toThe Challenge, I’m playing with house money.
That’s good for me and bad for everyone else.
And I’m okay with that.
I just enjoy showing up, I enjoy competing, I enjoy entertaining, I enjoy stirring the pot.
You put a lot of rivalries to bed this season, like with Cory and most importantly with Wes.
Who do you consider to still be your rival in this game moving forward?
That’s the funny thing this season did it erased a lot of vendettas or rivalries that I had.
All of the ones I had all somehow stemmed or spawned off of Wes.
Moving forward, I don’t know.
Whoever wants to be my rival, I guess!
Take a number at this point.
Why did it took this long for you and Wes to team up?
Do you regret not doing that sooner?
With Weston, we just weren’t ready before.
We were forced, make no mistake.
This wasn’t something that we did out of the kindness of our hearts.
If we don’t do this, we’re going to keep on getting eaten alive.
For the sake of our own legacies, we need to put our differences aside.
It happened when it needed to happen.
But you saved him instead.
We pretty much knew the final elimination was going to be Hall Brawl.
There’s nobody that was in that house, maybe C.T.
this season, that could have hung with Fessy in Hall Brawl.
I knew even making the deal with Kaycee, you send him in, he’s coming back.
Plus it gave me the opportunity with Kaycee and with him to make a deal.
Would it have made better TV to watch Rogan go against Fessy?
Maybe, but the days of me producing and doing things for television were over.
That was strictly me doing what was going to benefit me the most.
What surprised you about this final?
I was able to solve a math equation by writing it with a ski pole in the snow.
Had I been off by one number, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now.
How are you preparing for future seasons, now that the game has leveled up in recent years?
I just don’t have it in me to play that pop in of game anymore.
So I have to be just an overall smarter player.
When I was my 20s, you’d show up, work out every day in the house.
It’s just a lot more difficult.
What are the chances we’ll see you compete in the just-announced season 36?
Out of 23 seasons since I started, I’ve done 20 of them.
So the odds are pretty good that you’re going to see me back.
People thought that potentially after this season, this was going to be my swan song.
That’s not the way I’m going to go out, man.
I’m going to ride this one till the wheels fall off.
This just proved to me that I still have what it takes to compete and to win.
