‘The Challenge’: Darrell Shares Who He Really Wanted to Go Against in Elimination

This season of The Challenge, subtitled , involves the contenders going up against some of the franchise’s most celebrated champs in the hopes of becoming one themselves. In the most recent episode of the series, “Feeling Used,” Kyland Young was sent into elimination against four-time champion, Darrell Taylor. Ultimately, Kyland managed to keep $10,000 in the contenders’ bank account as he beat Darrell in a fiery elimination. PopCulture.com recently got to chat with Darrell following that episode and he opened up about the elimination and shared who he would have chosen to go up against had he pulled the “chaos” option.

As fans know, Darrell has dominated classic eliminations such as Balls In and Pole Wrestle in prior seasons. But, considering that he had to navigate one of the “carnival games” that The Challenge frequently throws at competitors, it took him a bit to get the hang of the elimination. He explained, “My mind is focused on winning, and I’m not trying to say, cry about, and hope for, I wish it was this [elimination] or that, because you can’t, it’s not that … So I mean, I wasn’t excited about the way it looked, but I knew it was time to go to work, and I knew that $10,000 could possibly be mine, so I tried not to think about it too much.”

Darrell remarked how it was hard to go into the elimination with any sort of strategy and that he needed to learn how to do it on the fly. Still, he encountered some difficulties when attempting to light his fire pits, saying, “I had to feel it out first, and then once I got it, it was still more frustrating because you would literally put the fire pit under the flame, and for some reason, mine would not light up. Or if they did, they would light up for a second and then go out. So you had to really leave it there for a long time. It was pretty frustrating.” Despite the frustrations, Darrell noted that Kyland won fair and square and that he did so after around an hour or less. 

Since Darrell only showed up as a mercenary, he wasn’t privy to everything that was going on in the house. Now that he can watch it as a fan, he has an appreciation for what the competitors are bringing to the table. He said that having this theme allows the “newer players” to have “their own chance to shine.” Of course, he also noted that he appreciates the “messy” and “petty” aspects that they’re bringing to the table. 

“I mean, you would think there’s a lot of whispers. They hear something, they go and tell somebody right away,” Darrell said. “A lot of rookie mistakes. Some of them are playing it very smartly from what I’ve seen.” He specifically said that he thinks competitors like Horacio Gutierrez, Jay Starrett, Nurys Mateo, and Olivia Kaiser have what it takes to win, especially as he has firsthand experience watching them at play when he was competing against them on Ride or Dies. On the other hand, there’s one member of the cast that he has his eye on, and it’s someone he would have chosen to go up against in elimination if he had the chance. 

Darrell said that if he pulled the “chaos” option, he would have chosen Asaf Goren without question. The champion explained his decision, saying, “Because just from Total Madness, just something about him from the two episodes or whatever it was that I saw. I might get along with him. I don’t know. I might get along with him. It was just something about him that, out of all the people that I knew that was there, I was like, I want Asaf … I wouldn’t say he rubbed me the wrong way. He didn’t do [anything] to me, but just watching him on the TV, just the way he carried himself, and how he thought he was… He just talked a lot about himself.”

It sounds like Asaf narrowly avoided getting chosen by a legend of the game this time around. But, will he, and the others, be able to escape elimination when another major champion comes in? Only time will tell. 

The Challenge: Battle for a New Champion airs on Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET on MTV. Stay tuned to PopCulture.com for Challenge coverage all throughout Season 39.